All right, everybody, if we could take our seat. We're having a segue here, as we said. Moving between solid waste, industrial waste, medical waste. They do behave eventually. There's 900 of them out there, so it's you know, it's like herding cats. So it's my pleasure to introduce with us, Clean Harbors' Co-CEO Mike Battles, and with him, his CFO Eric Dugas. I'm gonna let my colleague, Brian, lead off this conversation, and then I'm gonna wade in the middle of it. But welcome, and thank you for being here. Thanks for having us and t hanks for the Stifel team for sponsoring us again. Yeah. It's certainly quite an honor to be here with you, Michael. Cool. Really excited for you. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank Thank you very much. Yeah, it's a new, cool honor. All right, everybody, sit down. Good luck. All right. Well, we can start off on maybe just the high-level demand side, maybe kind of think about, you know, industrial production, PMI, kind of where that is, where that might be going, and then maybe kind of talk about your short-term kind of drivers for growth, you know, that you see. Yeah. First of all, welcome, Brian. Thank you. It's 25 years in the making. Well, well-deserved. Looking forward to continuing to work together with you and the team at Stifel, so- Okay. Congratulations to you. Thank you. You know, when you think about industrial production, so we've always considered ourselves industrial production, you know, plus, and whether that be, you know, reshoring, you know, captives closing, you know, environmental regulation, new environmental enforcement of regulation. You know, there's been a lot of good growth. Government spending obviously been up quite a bit. There's a lot of good growth, so we think we've been growing at a rate much higher than industrial production. As you know, industrial production's been coming down a bit, and yet we've been still growing, and now that it's actually moving, we're actually moving even faster. You know, in Q1, our technical services line of business was up over 10%. Our SK Branch business, also part of environmental services, also up, you know, high single digits. So really a great growth story, kind of well beyond, you know, industrial production. And I see that continuing. I see the demand really strong, the pipeline very strong. I don't see that changing over the near term. When you think about that, that short-term or that growth you've seen recently, how much of that is, is price versus volume, you know, that mix? Yeah, so organically, in Q1, we did 7% in environmental services, and we said 2/3, 1/3, so we had good price still again to cover off on inflation and other costs we're seeing in our business, but then good volume growth. And an important point for people who follow the company and, and understand Clean Harbors, you know, incinerator capacity is very, very important, but, you know, there's over 100 permanent facilities across North America, and so what we've been able to do is- Inside the Clean Harbors- Inside the Clean Harbors. Yeah. Right, inside Clean Harbors. There's, like, 500- Yeah. There's, like, 500 total in the market. There you go. Yeah, right. There you go. So, what we've been able to do is use our assets that aren't—maybe incinerators are challenged space-wise, but there's plenty of things we can do, and we've been able to sell what we can sell around things that feed other aspects. Maybe they don't go into incineration, but we've been able to drive revenue growth there and good volume growth, even as we're raising prices. Okay, and when you think of outside the technical services, the industrial services and the field services. What do you think about, like, billable hours and the utilization there? You know, what's your opportunity to grow that looking forward? Yeah, so utilization's been pretty good, you know, high 80s, I'd say. I think the secret that's been a part of our strong success in that business is our approval of voluntary turnover. Voluntary turnover is down over 400 basis points since this time last year, and I think that's been allowing us. A A new person shows up, they need training, they need—I mean, there's, it takes them time to learn how we do what we do, safely and compliantly. And so there's probably. That, I think, is the secret sauce here. Driving that voluntary turnover down has allowed us to get better utilization and better cost per employee. That's really been helpful in that area. Why, why do they leave you, when they do leave? Why they- Yeah, the voluntary departure. I don't know why. Look, you know, it's a hard job. Yeah. It's not for everyone. When you're driving a truck, you're not just driving a truck. You're going out, and you're hauling hose, you're moving things around, you're picking up heavy drums. It is not for all. And so although we tell them very clear in our interview process and our onboarding process about the type of work they're doing, it's just not for everybody. And, and- But we have found, though, once they stay past that first year- That's, y eah. They stay for quite a long time. So there's an initial, get them through that- That's right. The curing aspect of this- That's right. And then they stay. The beautiful thing, Michael, is that, you know, we believe in internal promotions. We've had over 1,000 internal promotions last year. As you know, my co-CEO started as a Clean Harbors chemist, as a driver. Yeah. He's moved up to be co-CEO. So we believe in that, we strive for that, and people see that, and if we get them through their first year and get them kind of out of the manual labor and see a career path, they stay for quite a long time. How many drivers are there, roughly? Over 1,000. Yeah. I think over 1,000. Approximately then be about 100 mechanics, 'cause it's sort of 10 vehicles per mechanic kind of. I think we do a lot more internal mechanics than most. I'm not sure how many exact mechanics we have there's quite a few of them. Okay, and then maybe, talking about your other segment, the used oil piece, you know, how do you view that from a strategic point of view? Is that something that needs to be a part of Clean Harbors? Is that really fit in, with the strategy kind of going forward? Yeah, when you think about the SKSS business and you think about what it is, it is very core to what we do at Clean Harbors from the perspective of it's a collection business. We're going out, we're collecting used motor oil and other lubricants. The difference is we're using that as feedstock for our finished good. And so it is. We sell a lot of the Safety-Kleen branch services in that business line. So when you think about the strategy going forward, we'll continue to grow that business. We were very excited about the acquisition of Noble Services, really filling out a nice geography in the Southeast part of the United States, which is, we all know, is growing. But long term, we do get questions on, you know, does it, where does it fit? How does it fit into the portfolio? Could you, could you sell that business? You know, the one thing that we, we do share with people is that business very much is integrated with the entire Safety-Kleen business. So when you think about the highly profitable Safety-Kleen branch business, that's within TS. Many of those sites share rooftops, with SKSS sites. It's a singular legal entity, so to split it out would be very, very difficult. So there, there's a lot of synergies. There's a lot of reasons to keep it. The free cash flow profile of that business is very good, so- Is it better than the corporate average? It's right around the corporate average of 40%. Yeah With that business, but, like EBITDA, when the EBITDA grows, the free cash flow grows. So when you think about the tremendous year we had in 2021 and 2022 in that business, created a lot of free cash flow that we're able to reinvest in all aspects. Well, but if you got your price cost spread back to a stable level continuously, then I would argue that that's all incremental cash. Yeah. 'Cause there's no incremental cost to that. Yeah. It's just a more stable price cost spread. That's how we look at it, Michael. Yeah. Then, you know, we drive it. It's not just the spread, right? It's managing the cost. It's getting into strategic relationships. Right. It's all those things to drive that business. Is there additional steps that need to get taken, you know, to kind of remove some of the volatility? Because, you know, you had such ups and downs, and you don't really control the price side that much. That's selling on the Group II. So is there other steps you guys can take to kind of limit that? Yeah, I'll bring up a couple that we talk about almost every day in this business, and some of the things we talked about in our release last week. But moving more towards blended products at more stable prices, selling those products under contract pricing rather than in the spot market. All those things are gonna bring some more stability to the business. And then we're really excited about the partnership that we talked about on our call with Castrol, and getting into an agreement with them, whereby they can go to the market somewhat on our behalf. We partner with them. We collect the used motor oil from customers that Castrol procures. And then we can sell our base oil to Castrol as part of that circular offering. Really excited about that opportunity. It's something we've been working on for quite a while, and to get into a partnership with a Grade A company like Castrol, we couldn't be more excited. So you've basically pivoted. Not, Not, you're not moving away from one strategy, but you've, you know, changed your frame and said, "Okay, I got to find a different angle to get to tackle this? Michael, we've sat on the stage for years. 12 years talking about this. For years, talking about this. Yeah. You know, why can't we go after the large fleets? Yeah. And the challenge with that is that our Performance Plus blended lubricant is a high-quality motor oil. But when you're talking about, you know, purchasing agents that want, t hey wanna buy Castrol, they wanna buy Valvoline, they wanna— and I get that. And so we did a great job of selling our blended oil to the small, to Mike's auto body shop. Right. We've grown that business, and we'll continue to grow that business, but we never got into the fleets. We never broke through to the people in this room, for example, to sell them their fleet, even though it is an immediate Scope 1 sustainability winner, you know, carbon footprint winner. It's hard to sell that when we have this brand, that marketing is not our strength. Well, and I- And yet Castrol has, you know, is a well-known, trusted brand, and so I'm excited about the more circular opportunity. So, it's leading with the brand is the breakthrough, potentially, to expand this sort of window, if you will, 'cause the fleet resistance you just haven't been able to overcome it. I mean, we've been talking about it for- It validates the quality of our- Right. Of our base oil. Right. It validate the fact that Castrol, with their marketing muscle and their sales muscle, you know, they'll take our great base oil and sell it, and we're really excited about that partnership. It's years in the making. Yeah. We did a few pilots the past couple of years to kind of make sure it worked, and we couldn't be more excited. We don't really have a big number in our guide for that because it kind of is dependent upon Castrol and their ability to sell the oil. But they're certainly putting a lot of effort and a lot of oomph behind it, and again, we're super excited about it. There's no resistance from the engine makers and what have you. They've all recertified their warranties if you use these products, so that's not a limiting factor either, then. It really is, I think, the fact that it's, it's recycled motor oil. Yeah. But I think as, as ESG becomes more and sustainability becomes more and more important, this is a, this is a day one winner. It takes 75% less energy to make a gallon of oil from our re-refined product than from crude. We can give you certifications of that. We can help your sustainability team sell that, and I think that's a winner for you. As you get, the bar gets higher and higher in the world to find out what the next great idea is, this is an automatic winner. And oh, by the way, we're gonna have a Castrol team partnering with us, selling that oil on our behalf. Can this be a hydraulic as well as an engine oil? Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. So I know there's a lot of people in the room that probably manage fleets and are looking for a sustainable solution. Yeah. You know. We're here. We're here. Yeah. Castrol, powered by Safety-Kleen. They're here till Tuesday until 4:00 P.M. Yep, I'm okay. When you implement that, and you think about the benefits, I mean, obviously it's a circular benefit for the fleets, and then how much benefit versus selling just into the Group II virgin market, you know, does this help you out? I mean, 'cause that seems like from a margin perspective, should be pretty attractive. Yeah, it's at a much better margin than selling into just a spot market. And that's why we did it. It's again, I think the thing that we talk about virtually every day with this business is reducing that volatility, moving up in the food chain, making better sales, driving profitability and stability. So we always looked at it about $1 a gallon. Is that a reasonable place to live? Yeah. We wanna sell more contracted versus spot market. Right. That's good. And we sell that oil at a reasonable price to our contracted customers, but it's better than the spot market. Right. Spot market, you're taking it for whatever you get it for. Right. Right. And you got 155 million gallons today, is producing about $200 million of EBITDA, and if I could, a nd 35 million of those 155 are contract now, and so, you know, if we can move 50 more of it, in theory, we're gonna pick your $50 million up, right? I mean, is that, have I oversimplified that? I'm not gonna fall into your trap and say yes. There's lots of math in there. That's, that's simple. We're gonna miss you, brother- I was so close. But I won't miss that. Are we in the right neighborhood? But here's the flip side of that, though. This is the tough part of this question, is you had a hard time predicting the bottom through what was happening last year. What do you need to change, either internally or what were you not seeing that would've allowed you have to predict the bottom of where we ultimately landed in that $180-$185 kind of number? Yeah, so I, I'd say that, you know, our goal for the SKSS business is to be boring, is to continue to drive marginal growth every year through things like Castrol and selling more blending and companies like Noble, you know, to kind of bring that level, that more stable profitability. So I'm telling you, when I sat on this stage two or three years ago, and the business threw off $300 million of EBITDA, you're overearning, and no one, no one believed it. We weren't getting any credit for it. So, you know, my view on that is that we have to manage the spread. We have to be disciplined around our cost structure. We have to be disciplined, more, more contracted work, more blended work, less spot work, and with things where our strategy around that business is to, is to be a little boring and, and, and stick around $200, and when oil prices are rising, let's go to $210. And when oil prices are shrinking, okay, $190, $180. But let's stop the, stop the whipsawing because I don't think anyone's happy about that. It's a hard business to predict. I'm not saying we're doing better, we're doing a better job. It's still a hard business to predict, but I think we're doing a better job of that. And the good news is that, you know, we stabilize that business, we get that business under control, and we focus our energy on growing, you know, that business and the aircraft carrier, which is environmental services. So $200 million a year forever at 40-something percent free cash. That doesn't sound too bad. But t hat doesn't sound too bad. Put that in a box, and let's do that. I got to get you a yes to that. Okay, that's good. Okay. Awesome. Let's maybe switch over to PFAS. I mean, you have the destruction technology, but we've had a lot of regulatory changes. We got the limit, you know, for drinking water. You know, maybe let's talk about where you fit in there, what you're currently doing business-wise, and, and, and maybe, what's the opportunity both on, is there any in drinking water? Is it all really on the leachate managing? Yeah. Yeah. So I'll start, and Eric, feel free to add on. You know, we're really excited about the PFAS opportunity. It really is very consistent with the growth of this company over the past 43 years. It is. You know, we have a total PFAS solution today, which includes analytics, sampling, analytics, and testing. We have a lab in Baltimore, which we can do that for them. We have water filtration, both, you know, drinking water as well as industrial water. We're doing a large project, as you know, Michael, with the U.S. government at Pearl Harbor. We can also do the big part of our world right now is soil remediation and AFFF firefighting foam clean-out work, and that's done through both our technical services business, as well as our field service business is also doing that work. That's certainly growing. And then from there, we actually have, you know, it's incineration or landfills. And just so we're all on the same page around these businesses, and we have the end-to-end solution, whether it be the media from the filtration systems, and we, you know, to handle that waste, and we have five closed-loop landfills. So those landfills, the leachate from that never leaves the site. It never leaves Clean Harbors, excuse me. It either gets incinerated or gets treated on-site and discharged. So it really is, we provide a certificate of destruction to our customers. We take care of, we've proven with our technology in incineration, six nines, 99.9999% destruction in disposal. We have the OTM- 45 testing. We've proven that. We're working with the EPA. We're working right now on OTM- 50 with the EPA. So help everybody understand the difference, just the subtle difference. Not too scientific. One is, it's just a more volatile type of test. Right. Right. Right. It's more volatile type of substances in OTM. Yeah, it's volatile organic compounds is the issue. There you go. Right. Okay. And so that's a new rule. So the DOD's come out with more regulation, the EPA on the drinking water. Obviously, PFAS and PFOA are now covered under CERCLA. So these, with their 1,300 in Superfund sites across the U.S., just FYI. And so, you know, there is a great opportunity for us. I think this is gonna be a growth engine over the next few years. This year, $50 million-$70 million of growth. It all depends on how fast regulations get put in place. You know, we think that our guide is pretty conservative around PFAS and this year, but obviously, it's a great. I'm sure you've all the people that are on this stage and people in the audience, it's on their minds. We have a solution for them, and it's been growing. I think that as regulation continues to increase and get enforced, I think there's a great growth opportunity for companies like Clean Harbors to really be the PFAS solution for our customers, which we are marketing the heck out of today. And if you thought about just a five-year look, there's not a hockey stick. There's this sort of steady progress towards a level, and then a little bit like PCBs were late 1980s through the early 2000s. It's gonna run at a, you know, kind of a constant for a while. I totally agree with that. Right. I think that- I got a three years out of them. You know, we have, we have to get through the courts. We have to get the regulation out. We have to get through all this, but, but for example, AFFF, you know, AFFF firefighting foam, we know, is heavily laden with PFAS, so we're doing a lot of work in field service, tank clean-out work, obviously a lot of on military bases, as Michael said earlier, we're doing a lot of work there because, you know, they've been doing a lot of firework, you know, firefighting training there. On airports, we're doing a lot of work there, and so that's happening today. I think that this is gonna continue to grow, and as regulation, it could grow faster, but I think at some stage, like PCBs, we're finding PCBs today. There hasn't been a PCB manufacturer in 20, 30 years. We still find PCBs in many things that are in work that we do, and certainly in large cities. So this is gonna be there forever, and I'm really, I'm really excited about the growth prospects of this business over the next few years. How quickly can OTM- 50 be the testing be done? The, like, the one that you did that was published in the, the CERCLA rules. I mean, when they put the rulemaking out, they actually cited you. That's right. So the best thing about it is we're working today with the EPA to do that, the OTM- 50 testing. We're gonna do it in our incinerators, and there's no, i t's not like we need to change our incinerators. Our RCRA permanent incinerators to do this. To collect data. They do it today. Yeah. I think that we're working with the EPA. We're thinking later this year. You know, the government moves at their own pace. Right. We can't control that. But, we're hopeful that we're working with them today to make sure that that testing meets that new standard, and there's nothing we need to do differently to qualify for that. I mean, we've done our own work. I think, we think we're in pretty good shape. Do you need that to get tested and, you know, successfully passed for kind of to accelerate that growth? Or is that really even without that, you're still seeing enough, you know, voluntary demand, I guess, would be a way to say it on. It depends how fast you want to see the growth, Brian. I really believe that, I really believe that if regulation. It's hard for our customers. It's how clean is clean, right? We need regulation to determine how clean the soil has to be. Do we need to go down six inches or six feet? That changes the game. We know with firefighting foam, that's being done today. We know there's a lot of learning, a lot of training being done. We're working on that today. That's your $50 million-$70 million growing at a pretty decent clip. But when new regulations are put in place and enforced, I think you're gonna really see some growth there. Until you get that, it's hard to see that real material growth until, you know, we determine what the rules are, right? 'Cause I don't wanna do it and then do it again if I'm a customer. Right? Right, and that's, that's been a kind of a delay since then. Yeah. That's right. All right. Maybe we'll talk about incineration, just kind of the market in general. It's been a little bit on the tighter side for a while. Yep. You know, does it stay tight? There's definitely some new, you know, capacity coming online, both you guys as well as competitors. Maybe talk about, you know, the way you view that, you know, the Kimball facility coming online, timeline, and, you know, what does that do, you know, market-wise from a, from a capacity perspective? Sure. Sure, I'll start. You know, we're really excited about a new 70,000-ton incinerator being built in Kimball, Nebraska. We took our board out there in March. It looked great. The team is working very hard to ensure that it's gonna be online later this year. We're working on, you know, all the different final steps to make sure all the compliance is put in place, and we're really excited about that opportunity. So the question you ask yourself with us and another competitor also building a similar type of incinerator, does that gonna create a problem from a oversupply standpoint? And does that somehow put pressure on a price point because there's gonna be, all of a sudden, it went from tight to excess capacity? I'm here to tell you, in my opinion, now we read what one of our competitors said, and they said that publicly that they don't see that changing. I don't see that changing at all. I think that I can't wait for that incinerator to open, and I think we're gonna be able to fill that kind of no problem. And if you talk to some of our customers in here who we do some work with, they want that open, too. I don't think that there's anyone here who feels that adding our capacity and our competitor's capacity changes the price kind of one iota. I think that price increases that we've been doing to cover off on our costs continue to should continue to go forward, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. I don't. There's just too much out there. I mean, we're really kind of being, trying to be super creative in how we manage our waste streams and bringing waste streams to other sources that probably the best and easiest answer is to incinerate. So let's get those things open. I don't see that changing anytime soon. Does new capacity like this, both yours and Gum Springs, accelerate the captives closing? I think that we've been in active conversation with our captive customers. As you know, Michael, when those captive incinerators close, that waste has to go somewhere. Right. We know all our customers. Obviously, 3M was a big closure that happened a couple of years ago. You know, this is a great opportunity for them to reconsider and continue to consider, you know, closing or, or providing an opportunity for them to, either we can manage their plant, they can close their plant. You know, we can take over their plant. I mean, we're open, we're open to kind of any ideas there. So can we talk a little bit about strategy? There's two angles on this strategy. You've seen a consolidation happening in the industrial waste space of other waste operators getting big in this. There's that one angle, sort of a curious sort of your perception of what that means overall to market behavior, and then the other side of that strategy is your own efforts on participating in this consolidation and sort of the obvious things that should be added to the model. Not the names of companies, but lines of businesses or areas of service expertise that would be in an obvious place that the market would say, "Oh, yeah, that makes sense why you're going there." Can we talk about those two things? Sure. So, you know, you think about an acquisition like HEPACO, which we did, you know, within a couple of months ago in the, in the field service business, and I think that, that business you can see, you know, kind of a hand in glove with Clean Harbors, and they provide a lot of good, a great emergency room. They have actually an excellent emergency response business that we're gonna leverage, and we see that them using a fair amount of third-party field service remediation work, we can internalize all that. I feel great about the opportunities for HEPACO to grow that business and drive that synergy. When you think about kind of 2024, pretty modest. We put a pretty modest number out for a guidance standpoint. The synergies come in 2025, and I see a real strong line of synergy savings as you think about HEPACO going forward. As far as consolidation in the industry, that's gonna happen. I'm not gonna comment on you know, where we see that growing. You know, we feel there's great M&A opportunities in both our business, both in environmental service and the different lines of business, and in the oil business with an acquisition like Noble. I think those are good winners for us. So I see that opportunity for us, and I see that us playing a because of our national footprint, because of our network of assets, you know, being able to provide good value to sellers and to our customers. Free cash conversion. So this is an industry that converted cash, whether you look at it EBITDA or percentage of adjusted net income, you know, given the capital intensity, it was, it was okay, but it wasn't good on a comparative basis, and you have to translate that back into return. So 30%- 40% of your EBITDA or less than 100% of your net income, how do you get to 40%-50% on the EBITDA or a greater than 100% of the net income. Yeah. Cash conversion? Yeah, I think we keep doing a lot of what we're doing, Michael. So, you know, if you look at our guide this year, you know, we've got some very large capital projects. We're finishing Kimball. We're expanding a large facility on the East Coast in Baltimore. When we take that capital workout, we're gonna have free cash flow conversions of a tick over 40% this year. How are we gonna grow that? We're gonna continue to be very disciplined on pricing. We're gonna continue to bring great value to our customers to drive that pricing, continue to be very smart with acquisitions. We look to longer term, we're looking to generate free cash flow conversion of 45%-50% long term, and it's gonna be through a lot of the great strategies we've begun already and just carrying those through. But certainly, it'll be on the heels of our environmental services business, as that is the largest portion. Like I said, every day, we set targets. Our Vision 2027 target that we laid out about a year ago has us growing to those free cash flow conversion levels, and, you know, I think it's definitely achievable. Great! Well, we're at the end of our time, so I wanna thank you for making time for us.