Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Heritage-Crystal Clean, Inc. fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all callers' microphones are muted, and you will have an opportunity at the end of the presentation to ask questions. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up your question. We ask that all callers limit themselves to one or two questions. Some of the comments we will make today are forward-looking. Generally, the words aim, anticipate, believe, could, estimate, expect, intend, may, plan, project, should, will be, will continue, will likely result, would, and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include a variety of factors, some of which are beyond our control. These forward-looking statements speak as of today, and you should not rely on them as representing our views in the future. We undertake no obligation to update these statements after this call. Please refer to our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K, as well as our earnings release posted on our website for a more detailed description of the risk factors that may affect our results. Copies of these documents may be obtained from the SEC or by visiting the investor relations section of our website. Also, please note that certain financial measures we may use on this call, such as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization or EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA are non-GAAP measures. Please see our website for reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP. For more information about our company, please visit our website at www.crystal-clean.com. With us today from the company are the President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Brian Recatto, and the Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Mark DeVita. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Brian Recatto. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Katrina. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. On behalf of the entire Crystal Clean team, I want to let our investors know how pleased we are with the record-setting fourth quarter results and full year performance. We produced record revenue, EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA during the fourth quarter. Mark will provide additional detail, but total fourth quarter revenue exceeded expectations at $169.5 million, which helped produce record EBITDA of $33.1 million. Now I would like to discuss the results of both of our reporting segments. Let me start with our oil business segment. During the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021, oil business revenues increased 60.1% to $65.8 million compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020. The increase in revenue was mainly due to an increase in our base oil netback of $2.06 per gal compared to the fourth quarter of 2020 and by $0.09 per gal compared to the third quarter of 2021. Oil business segment operating margin improved 24.7 percentage points to 33.7% in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to 9.1% during the same period of 2020. The higher operating margin compared to the fourth quarter of 2020 was mainly due to an increase in the spread between the netback on our base oil sales and the price paid or charged to our customers for the removal of their used motor oil. Our re-refinery team continued to execute well during the fourth quarter. It has been several years since we've had significant unplanned downtime in our re-refinery. We produced 14.2 million gal of base oil, which was approximately 10% less than the fourth quarter of 2020 due to the timing of a planned turnaround. Remember that in 2020, we intentionally took an extended shutdown during our second quarter due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the years before the pandemic, we had always taken our once per year extended shutdown during the fourth quarter. We have now returned to that cadence during 2021. We're very pleased with the consistency of our re-refinery operations demonstrated over the past three years. Let's now move on to the environmental services segment. In the environmental services segment, revenue for the fourth quarter of 2021 was $103.7 million, compared to $90.9 million for the same quarter of 2020, an increase of $12.8 million or 14%. The increase in revenue was mainly due to the continued increase in the demand for our services compared to the prior year quarter. We experienced volume increases across the majority of our service lines in the segment when compared to the fourth quarter of 2020. While it was great to see our improvement relative to the pandemic impacted results from 2020, we were also pleased to see that our revenue for the fourth quarter exceeded revenue for the fourth quarter of 2019 by 7% in this segment. Environmental Services segment profit before corporate selling, general and administrative expenses was $22.8 or 22% of revenue, compared to $22.4 million or 24.6% of revenue in the year ago quarter. The decline in operating margin percentage was mainly due to the higher transportation and disposal related expenses as well as higher container insurance and workers' compensation expense. Labor costs and staffing vacant positions will continue to be a challenge as we exit the pandemic. However, I am happy to report that our COVID-19 case count has declined meaningfully as of the end of February. Last but most important, I want to recommend our team for achieving the lowest lagging indicator safety metrics in the history of our company. We're very proud of our performance given the tremendous turmoil the pandemic has caused our field personnel. Now I would like to look forward to discuss our outlook for the future. In our environmental services segment, we experienced a great start to our first quarter from a revenue perspective. Despite the fact that we experienced more confirming cases of COVID-19 in January 2022 than any previous month during the pandemic, we still have managed to generate double-digit revenue growth on a year-over-year basis for the first several weeks of the first quarter. Assuming the overall U.S. economy remains steady, we expect to achieve low double-digit revenue growth during the first half of 2022, with slower growth in the second half of the year as we face tougher comparable results from 2021. From an operating margin percentage standpoint, we expect to continue to battle higher costs during the first half of the year. While our fourth quarter price increase in the environmental services segment was successful, we did not anticipate that the factors driving higher costs in various parts of our business will not only continue, but worsen throughout the fourth quarter and into the first quarter. In response to these higher costs, we implemented additional price increases during the first quarter. Since some of these increases were not implemented until the end of February, we expect operating margin to be in the low 20% range during the first quarter, with gradual improvement throughout the remainder of the year. We expect to exit fiscal 2022 with segment operating margin at or close to 27%, provided inflationary conditions stabilize as expected. From an oil business segment perspective, we're happy with the start of 2022. During the fourth quarter of 2021, the base oil market moved into an oversupplied position, which put downward pressure on base oil pricing. In response, virgin producers sold excess supplies into the export market, and some also reduced production runs to bring the market back into balance. From a pricing standpoint, several virgin base oil producers raised their posted prices in the past few weeks. These moves are in response to higher crude oil prices. The supply and pricing moves have stabilized the market going into the busier spring and summer driving seasons. Demand from our customers remains steady, and we expect it to remain consistent provided additive supply improves as we move into the busier spring and summer seasons. While the higher crude oil prices will continue to put pressure on our pay for oil, we believe the combination of factors I just discussed will allow us to generate operating margin in the mid-20% range during the first half of 2022. I'm also happy to report that our acquisition related activities are in full swing as we look to utilize our strong balance sheet to build on the momentum generated from the two transactions we closed during the fourth quarter. Our focus will continue to be on businesses that expand our ES footprint and operational capabilities. We now own eight non-hazardous waste processing facilities, which allow us to not only treat wastewater, but we also have the ability to consolidate and solidify waste drums at a growing number of these locations. These capabilities will help offset the high cost of third-party disposal services. Two of our current operating locations will be commissioning drum processing and should become operational during the second quarter of 2022. With that, Mark will take us through our fourth quarter financial results. Thanks, Brian. It's great to speak with everyone today. In 2021, we generated $515.3 million of revenue, compared to the prior year revenue of $406 million, an increase of $109.4 million or 26.9%. The company's 2021 fiscal year was comprised of 253 working days compared to 256 working days in fiscal 2020. On a sales per working day basis, revenue increased approximately 28.5% in fiscal 2021 compared to the prior year. The increase in revenue was due to improvement in base oil pricing in our oil business segment, along with our recovery from the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as continued organic and inorganic growth in our environmental services segment. Net income attributable to common shareholders was $18.1 million or $0.77 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2021. This comparing to a net income of $5.3 million or $0.23 per diluted share in the year earlier quarter. Let's get into the details and discuss our Oil Business segment results. As Brian mentioned, our Oil Business segment revenue increased 60.1% to $65.8 million compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020. An increase in base oil prices was the main driver of the increase in revenue, along with increased revenue as a result of 2021 acquisitions. Fourth quarter revenue growth as a result of 2021 acquisitions was approximately $0.7 million or 1.7% in this segment. From a profitability standpoint, Oil Business segment operating margin was $22.2 million or 33.7% of segment revenue during the fourth quarter. This represents a fourth quarter record on both a dollar value and percentage basis. The largest driver for this improvement was the spread between the netback on our base oil sales and the price paid or charged to our customers for the removal of their used oil, which Brian previously mentioned. Brian also mentioned the large increase in our base oil netback. This increase was only partially offset by a $0.43 per gal net change in what we charge customers to pick up their used oil during the fourth quarter of 2020 compared to what we paid customers for their used oil in the fourth quarter of 2021. Compared to the third quarter, our price paid for oil increased by $0.05 per gal during the fourth quarter. We were able to sell 14 million gal of base oil in the fourth quarter. This was down by 2.7 million gal compared to the year earlier quarter because of the lack of a planned extended shutdown during the fourth quarter of 2020, as well as the fourth quarter of 2021 having one less week compared to the fourth quarter of 2020. From the re-refinery perspective, we finished fiscal 2021 with a record 50.5 million gal of base oil production. Based on the performance over the past two years, we officially increased the nameplate base oil production volume of the re-refinery from 49 million gal to 50 million gal per year. This change is effective beginning with the first quarter of 2022. Now let's discuss Environmental Services. The Environmental Services segment reported revenue of $103.7 million, an increase of $12.8 million or 14% during this quarter compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020. The increase in revenue was mainly due to volume increases in our containerized waste, wastewater vacuum and antifreeze businesses, as well as improved pricing in parts cleaning, containerized waste and wastewater vacuum. In addition, fourth quarter revenue growth as a result of 2021 acquisitions was approximately $3.9 million or a 4.3% increase. On a sales for working day basis, overall Environmental Services segment revenue increased approximately 18.5% compared to the prior year quarter. Our profit before corporate SG&A expense as a percentage of revenue decreased to 22% compared to 24.6% in the year-ago quarter. The decline in margin was driven by the factors Brian mentioned earlier, along with higher expense for solvents as well as higher parts cleaning machine costs. While we implemented a price increase across most of the Environmental Services segment businesses during the beginning of the fourth quarter, this was not enough to offset the extremely high inflation we experienced in this segment during the quarter. Our overall corporate SG&A expense of $20.6 million increased by $4.3 million compared to the year-ago quarter. The increase was mainly driven by higher share-based compensation and management incentive compensation expense, as well as higher legal fees, partially offset by lower retirement and severance costs. Corporate SG&A expense as a percentage of revenue was 12.1% compared to 12.3% in year-ago quarter, driven by the increase in revenue, partially offset by higher overall SG&A expense. EBITDA of $33.1 million was a record and up $14.7 million compared to the year-ago quarter. Adjusted EBITDA of $35.7 million was also a record and represents 21.1% of revenue and an 88.9% increase compared to the prior year quarter. The company's effective income tax rate for fiscal 2021 was 25.8% compared to 28.8% in fiscal 2020. The decline in the effective tax rate is principally attributable to the diminished impact of certain required adjustments to financial reporting income in determining taxable income in 2021 as compared to the impact of those adjustments in fiscal 2020 due to financial reporting income in 2021 increasing substantially over financial reporting income in 2020. Looking at the balance sheet, we had $56.3 million of cash on hand at the end of the quarter. Our primary sources of liquidity for the quarter are cash flows from operations and funds available to borrow under our revolving bank credit facility. We generated $27.9 million in cash flow from operations during the quarter, which represents a 27% increase compared to the fourth quarter of 2020. We also generated free cash flow of $15.9 million during the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to $15.2 million during the fourth quarter of 2020. To summarize, we are excited with the strong top line growth we're experiencing in our Environmental Services segment, and we're working hard to combat the negative impacts inflation is having on our business in order to restore our margins in this segment. We continue to be pleased with the execution in the Oil Business segment and our ability to capitalize on favorable market conditions. This concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now turn the call over to Katrina to take your questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, If you have a question at this time, please press the star, then the number one key on your touchtone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press the pound key. Our first question is from David Manthey with Baird. Yeah. Hi, good morning, guys. Hey, David. How are you? Hey, I just a few modeling questions here, if I could. We can talk about the segments in a second. On the corporate SG&A side, I think you historically said you grow about half the rate of the revenue growth, but obviously a lot of unusual dynamics going on near term here. How should we think about that in 2022? Should we just escalate it slightly from what we saw in 2021? Just if you can give us any kind of clue into that corporate SG&A line. Yeah, I think that's the right approach. I know the management team would love to have the bonuses that are higher than target and some of the other things, but we did incur that. We mentioned legal fees, Brian or I did. I don't think you're gonna have as much of an increase as you might normally have from what I guess is what I'm saying is an inflated 2021 number for SG&A. Okay. S peaking of the abnormalities, as we look at 2021 Environmental Services business, it seems like in 2020 you had a large project in there. You had some strange parts washer trends. Is 2021 a pretty reasonable base to think about more normalized growth off of and adding a price increase and getting a little bit of volume growth potentially? Or is there anything unusual in 2021 we need to consider? No, I really think we're coming out of all these unusual and a lot of it's pandemic-induced, but these unusual items that make comparability in the traditional year-over-year basis. It didn't really work that much in the last six-plus quarters. We're really beginning with this quarter we're in now, first quarter 2022. I think comparing that to 2021 is gonna be a valid and valuable comparison. We're planning on, from a management approach, really getting back into that mode. Yeah. I definitely agree, David, on that. I mean, obviously, you've listened to us relative to prepared remarks around cost structure. It's been in the industrial business for 35 years. I've never seen cost creep like we've seen in the last 12 months. It's been a big time battle, especially the last six months. Unfortunately, we'll have to do another price increase where we have in the first quarter. Who knows what inflation's gonna bring for the balance of the year in terms of additional price increases. We're trying not to be so disruptive to our client base. I mean, we're already an expensive provider because we deal with a lot of smaller quantity generators. We wanna be careful, make sure we treat our customers the right way. We know this is not gonna last forever. It will stabilize, and so we're not gonna price ourselves out of business. W e've got to work on the cost side of the business, the T&D piece of it, and we're doing that. We're adding our own capabilities. That costs money to get it done, and we'll reap the benefits after the plants are up and running, and we can maximize throughput and reduce the operating cost. Okay, Brian, thank you for that. Finally, you've historically thought about the ES business as being kind of a mid- to high 20%s segment operating margin business. I think you used to talk about the oil businesses optimally running about 15% segment operating margin. Correct me if I'm wrong on that. G Iven everything that's going on here, ultimately, three-five years out, is that where we're headed again, do you think? Or is there just too much volatility to even put a pinpoint on where profitability should be ultimately? Yeah, I definitely agree with your commentary on ES. I mean, you know where our goal is relative to margin. That's been impacted. Whenever you're growing like we're growing, David, and obviously, we've had to deal with the issues around inflation, it's been tougher, but we'll get back there. We know how to get back there. Oil's a little bit harder to predict. We certainly think we've seen some structural changes in the business, but we're not gonna go out and say that our run rate margins are gonna look like they do today. We think 10%-15%, 15% would be a number that we could live with going forward on a day in, day out basis as the structural changes become very stable. It's just volatile right now, hard to predict. The spreads are high. In Q1, I mean, the business looks good. We expect Q2 to be good. We do know that the virgin refineries are back up and running. I mean, they produced 61 million bbl last year of lube. The market's back in good shape post the events of last year, pandemic and the severe winter storm. We know the supply's out there. We do think we'll begin to see a little bit of weakness in base oil pricing as we get to the back end of the year. We're still bullish on the fact that we can perform better than we have historically in the oil business. 15% for sure. Got it. That's helpful. All right, guys, appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Brian Butler with Stifel. Hey, Brian. Good morning. Good Good morning, guys. Morning, Brian. Just I guess on the oil business, since we've been talking about it. Just what are you seeing in the spot market when you take a discount to kind of the posted prices? Has that tightened up? Is there any increased demand for the renewable nature of your oil? Yeah, we haven't seen any spot pricing discounts. We've actually sold some base oil at prices above spot. You know, certainly at spot or better is what we're seeing now. As we talked about in our prepared remarks, we're seeing pretty good demand on the base oil front from our customers, which are, as you know, more Midwest-based. We're not competing as much with the industrial complex down south, the virgin refineries. Yes, they do like our oil and certainly we're talking to quite a few of the super majors. T he energy cost to produce our base oil versus a virgin refinery, we're gonna try to really quantify that over the balance of this year. We think it's probably half the energy cost to produce our base oil versus a virgin refinery. That's exciting for the virgin producers to participate in that. Yes, there's a lot of attraction to our green base oil these days because of ESG. Yeah, not just the producers, but anyone that's gonna be an end user of a finished look. Yeah. Yeah. They're gonna love that story more and more. Okay. When you look at the facilities for 2022, can you give some color on the timing and maybe the planned turnarounds? Is that again? I think you alluded to it was gonna be fourth quarter again. Can you give some color on around the quarters? Well, I think we'll have the normal cadence. We had pre-, 2020, or pre-pandemic, and not too much different than what we had in 2021. It should be, and I kind of was saying this when talking with Dave a minute ago. You know, 2021 is gonna be a nice comparable base for us. And that even flows through to how the re-refinery is at least planned to when the turnarounds are gonna happen, when the long one's gonna happen. It'll be in that Q4, beginning of Q4 into Q3 timeframe again. Yeah, we're thinking that the long turnaround will be in September. Then we'll have our normal pegging cycles as we always do, which are shorter turnarounds. Similar cadence as the last year. Okay. On the ES side of the business, what's the plan for new facilities? Is it still that three-four? You talked about exiting the year kind of at 27% margins. Does that suggest the new facility growth kind of slows down in 2023? No, I think most of our growth will come from acquisitions. We don't have a lot of plans to open organic branches unless it's around a tuck-in acquisition. I think we've talked about that the last couple of quarters. We prefer to open up in new markets, with a tuck-in acquisition and bolt on our service lines. It's just much easier in this environment because of the difficulty in recruiting employees, staffing route trucks. I mean, it's a tough labor market. We're gonna go the tuck-in acquisition route, and we'll expand that way. Well, Mark. No, finish. Go ahead. Part of that, Brian, is driven by where our map is not as dense. It's in those western areas where we're most likely to get an acquisition. You usually get some logistical complement to that or support with it. If we're gonna do any more greenfields, they're more likely to be in an area where we have the logistical support already. It starts to get pretty cost efficient and attractive to do it organically. If not, given our cash position, since most of the opportunities are where we're less dense, we're gonna be doing the acquisition route. Then as we talked about in our prepared remarks, we're gonna work harder on our own internal processing. We were on a run rate last year of about 60,000 containers that we processed internally. We like to see that number get into the near 100,000 in 2022. As I've talked about in the prepared remarks, we have two facilities that'll be commissioned here fairly soon. They'll start receiving drums. The permits are in place. You know, we really need to lower our T&D costs. Difficult to do when you're utilizing mostly third parties. You've listened to their conference calls, they've all raised prices quite a bit over the last six months, and we've had to deal with it because we don't process a lot of waste. Our objective is to internalize more, get our capabilities built up so we can control our own destiny from a cost standpoint. Okay. Just if I can put one last one in, just on the bookkeeping side. What should we be using for our tax rate for 2022? I think we've been guiding before. I have, Brian, when we spoke at the 27% number. Given the outlook for profitability and the lessening impact of some of those permanent items on just a larger income base, I'd probably ratchet it down to 26%. 26%. Great. Thank you for taking my questions. Thank you. That assumes, I mean, there aren't any plans that are different from 8-12 months ago when we all thought corporate income tax rate increases were imminent. I think, we all think the opposite now, so that is embedded in my comment or my guidance. Thank you. Our next question is from Jim Ricchiuti with Needham & Company. Hi, Jim. Hi. Good morning. Brian, I just wanted to go back to the comments you made about exiting two on the ES side with, I think you said, margins gone, that, this is an environment that you really haven't seen in some time just from an inflationary standpoint. I'm just trying to get a better sense as to how much can you do in terms of increases if we continue to see this kind of inflationary pressure what gives you the confidence you can get to that kind of operating margin on ES ending the year? I mean, I think we're confident provided inflation begins to stabilize. I mean, it's very difficult to stay ahead of it when you're having to third-party a lot of your own waste streams. W e talk to the disposal sites every day. We feel fairly confident that they're done with their price increases, at least near term. As we talked about in our prepared remarks, we're raising prices again this quarter, which will match the price increases that we've been dealing with. W e have the ability with our client base to raise prices. We just don't wanna be predatory because we don't think this is gonna be permanent, and costs will get back to normal at some point. We care about our customers. We value the growth. We're not the lowest price provider out there now, so we wanna make sure we don't price ourselves out of business. We're gonna do the price increase in Q1, and then obviously we'll continue to monitor it. W e'll probably be back on our normal cadence for a price increase as we approach the fourth quarter, like we do every year. We'll analyze inflation at that point and make our decision. We're confident that we can get close to that 27% number, provided we don't see continual inflationary pressure through the balance of the year, 'cause you're always gonna have that lag to get our price increase out there. Got it. You mentioned potential for additional acquisitions. I may have missed it. Was any of the M&A that you've done recently contributing a meaningful contribution to Q4 ES? What's the pipeline look like in terms of additional M&A as we think about 2022? Yeah, I'll let Mark talk to the revenue impact, but I'll talk about the cost impact. It's, you know, it's never easy when you do acquisitions. Obviously, we have operating standards that we wanna meet. We, for example, one of our acquisitions, we're doing capital projects at the acquisition now. We suspended waste treatment to get the capital done. That negatively impacts your cost structure. We love the revenue side of it, and we're seeing tremendous opportunities on the revenue front. That's why we bought the companies. It does take time to line out logistics and cost structure, especially in this market. Probably hurt our profitability in the fourth quarter, helped our revenue, and we'll get the profitability back as we make the changes to the plants that we were gonna make as we bought them. We knew the changes had to be made. I'll let Mark comment on revenue. Yeah. From a numbers standpoint, overall on a combined basis, it was a little more than $4.5 million to the top line. That's both segments, and ES was a little less than $4 million. It was a vast majority up there. Just a few of them have a smaller oil component. That's when we look at deals, and again, who knows, it may change in the future depending on as we get more clarity on how the oil market is gonna unfold further out. Right now, our acquisitions are clearly, and Brian might have mentioned this, so I'll just reiterate, clearly focused on the environmental services segment and related environmental businesses. W hen we get the opportunity, some of these companies also dabble a little bit in oil. It's obviously a great fit for us, especially if we're getting gallons where we're still bringing in a little bit of third party. It does still fit. Got it. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Our next question is from Kevin Steinke with Barrington Research. Hey, Kevin. Good morning. Morning, Kevin. How are you? Hey. I'm good. How are you? Good. Good. Hey, so in the earnings release and the discussion here, you called out, on a year-over-year basis, the margin decline in environmental services, mainly due to higher transportation and disposal related expenses. Yo u've talked about your initiatives to internalize more of the waste disposal. H ow much do you think that can help from a cost perspective, kind of going into the second half of the year? Is that something you're factoring into your target of getting to that 27% margin by the end of the year? Well, it's definitely a factor. You know, it's meaningful. It could help, you know, certainly 100+ basis points, maybe a couple hundred. It really depends on getting some scale through there. We certainly have the demand. The fit is, when you think of our business, and this is a general trend in the industry, it's more and more non-regulated or non-hazardous, not the RCRA hazardous, and that fits like a glove with what we're developing. Brian mentioned in his prepared remarks, we expect two more of these sites to really start to come online in the near term. You know, you're adding some of the fixed costs right away, and so you need to build volume. Part of it's not just so much having it from a generator standpoint as customers, but making sure we can get it to these sites and start to process it that way. To me, though, that's just a timing issue. We'll get that done. On a run rate basis, that's why Brian made his comments on margin. On run rate basis, we're gonna get there this year, we're pretty confident, but it's a matter of, well, timing, when are you gonna get there? All right. No, that's helpful because, yeah, that's it would be a pretty significant boost there. Okay. I know you're seeing some upward pressure on used oil costs from higher crude oil prices, but just any comment on IMO 2020, and what impact that's having on the market, and if do you think that's still benefiting you on the used oil cost side now and over the longer term? Yeah, we definitely, and I think we've talked about this on the last couple of calls. We're convinced that we're seeing some benefit from IMO 2020 because the aggregators are not collecting a lot of used motor oil. We've had no issue with receipts at the re-refinery. We've been able to supply volume. That's been good. And if you look at historical trends relative to the price of crude, we are acquiring used motor oil cheaper than we ever have relative to the price of crude. You know, 15%-20% cheaper than historical, maybe even more in certain cases. Definitely have seen some structural changes in the used motor oil market. Matter of fact, Michigan, 30 days ago, talked about banning the burning of used motor oil in asphalt plants. You're seeing because of ESG, the greenhouse gas issue that everybody is focused on, at least in the current administration, and we support it. More and more oil, we think, is gonna be directed to the re-refineries because it's a better use of the molecule, and people see that now. Yeah. It's going beyond IMO 2020 to just an overall, even in some cases beyond regulatory, just an efficient way to use the molecule. It just makes economic sense overall to move that transaction, if you wanna call it that, away from this one-time use and substitute that with other cleaner fuels. We certainly saw some pandemic-related volume decreases in the fourth quarter and a little bit in January, but that's picking back up. I mean, the driving miles are going back up again. We expect the spring to be fine from a used motor oil collection standpoint. All right. Yeah, very helpful. Just lastly, as you noted, you increased the nameplate capacity of the re-refinery to 50 million gal annualized. And you produced, I think you said 50.5 million in 2021. You know, is it safe to just assume kind of a flattish production year-over-year in 2022 in terms of base oil? Yeah. We've squeezed every drop out of that re-refinery without spending additional capital on it. The other tricky thing that we have to do this year is we're gonna be commissioning the flare. We've got some work to do there, but we're still signaling a number close to the $50 million, barring any upset conditions. Knock on wood, we haven't had any as we talked about for three years. In that range, but we've maxed out the capacity of that plant based on our current operations. We certainly as we continue to see structural improvements in the market, and we're convinced that the structural improvements are long term, we're not opposed and welcome the opportunity to look for additional debottlenecking opportunities. We have our engineers, we've got a great team now that are working on debottlenecking opportunities now. We're always gonna look for opportunities to expand. We're not gonna do that unless we're convinced the structural changes are here to stay. All right. Thanks for taking the questions. That's all I had. Yeah, thank you. Our next question is from Gerry Sweeney with Roth Capital. Hi, Gerry. Morning, Gerry. Hey. Hey, Brian, Mark, thanks for taking my call. My question was really around the oil side, and some of it I think was answered just in the last series. I was curious as to the thought process behind, expansion efforts at the refinery. As Brian, as you said, I think you're maxing out capacity, and maybe there's some more debottlenecking opportunities which may add incremental capacity. Obviously, I think we've seen a structural change in the oil market. Yo u underscored that 15% operating margin. What would be the decision-making process maybe for a larger expansion of the oil re-refinery? Yeah. I think we'll have to get through this year, get convinced that the structural changes are here to stay. As we move into next year, certainly, I'm, you know, the board, we just were fresh off of a board meeting and we discussed that exact subject. We're gonna table it for now. We have a lot of work to do at the plant to get the flare commissioned, so we're gonna focus on that. As I've talked about on prior calls, we're adding a wastewater treatment system to the plant, so we can process commercial waters and non-haz waste streams. It's adding to our capabilities. We're gonna do some other work around the ES segment at the re-refinery to promote even more cross-selling. We're gonna focus on getting that done this year, and we'll see how the structural changes play out. We have the guys working on options for the re-refinery debottlenecking projects. They'll present them to me this year, and we'll make decisions around that going into next year. Nothing will happen this year to do any debottlenecking. Y ou can tell by Brian's comments, as you look further, it's really first. Let's say we even got to that point, it's we can do things to get more out of that one site. That will take us, the next leg. It would be a few steps removed from even that decision to reinvest that we'd have to greenfield anything. Got it. That makes sense. I figured that would be the response, so. Then just staying on the sort of theme of maybe expansion, and you talked a little bit about it on the ES side, but in terms of increasing the you know barrel capacity [60,000-100,000]. As you look at the environmental side, how much opportunity is there to internalize waste across the spectrum? Well, we moved 260,000 containers last year and only processed 60,000. 70% of what we take in is non-RCRA regulated, so you could do the math. We have a tremendous amount of opportunities. T he other thing that we have to work on is just the overall logistics around, you know, how we move all of our containers because we're kind of in between models right now. We have the four hubs that you guys are aware of. We have the 90 branches. We're hub and spoking back into the hubs. We're looking at opportunities to move waste directly from the branches into the processing center. We have a lot of work to do over the next year on logistics, but our intention is to move as many of the 70% of the 260,000 drums into our system as we possibly can. We've increased our capacity. We're commissioning two additional sites now. The sites we own, we're just adding capabilities to them. We know how to process waste, so we will get it done, and I think we can hit that 100,000 number by the end of this year and just keep growing it. I think the side benefit that's gonna come from it as we get deeper into this is really working the logistics angle as we move into 2023. It's not something we'll do in 2022. Once we get the drums routed, we'll relook at how we operate the hubs too. Got it. That's helpful. Just sort of. I wanna start optimizing the cost side of our business as we move into this year. W e've been very, very focused on growth, and permit changes, and capital projects, and getting these plants up and running. We've got to get them optimized, this year. Got it. The follow-up would be, and this is just more out of curiosity than anything. As you sort of grow some of your treatment capacity, is there an opportunity to even do that for some outside players to increase leverage or speed up the process? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. We're doing it now. W e've got great partnerships with our third party TSDFs. I would say, and Brian, I'm sure you'd agree, we're just scratching the surface of it. Oh, yeah. We've proven we can do it. It's just a matter of taking our typical sales approach hasn't been geared towards that part of the market. We have great experience in more of that, as Brian would say, kind of retail type space. It's just getting in, by evidence that we're doing it a little bit, we're starting to do that, and there's just a ton of upside. Gotcha. They're great partnerships because we're in turn brokering the haz waste to our third party TSDF partners. They can deliver non-haz. They can pick up haz as they're leaving our plant. I got it. We like the strategy. Look, we're looking at emerging markets too. I mean, we're very tuned into the battery business. I mean, PFAS is a growing opportunity for us that we're looking at very hard. Got it. Perfect. I appreciate your time. Congrats on a great quarter, and thanks again. Yeah, thank you very much. That is our last question for today's speakers. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen- Thanks, everybody. Thank you. You're welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you again for your participation, and have a wonderful day. You may all disconnect.