All right, so I'm back. I'm Dan Aldridge again, for those of you who may have just walked in the room, managing partner for Asbury Co. and the Share Series. And we're gonna continue today's session with Rubicon and Phil Rodoni, who is the CEO. A fascinating, yet SaaS company, technology company that has waste implications, circular economy implications. They're gonna be one of the people that helps with all these solutions that you just heard from, from Sempra. And so with that, Phil, I'll turn it over to you.
Well, thanks. It's great to be with you all today. So Rubicon's mission is to eliminate waste in all its forms, and we do that by providing technology solutions that drive better environmental outcomes. So there's a lot in that statement, so how do we unpack that? So we serve the three kind of broad constituent groups within the industry. So you have waste generators, those that are putting the material in the bin themselves. You have fleets and the collectors of the materials, so the haulers and kind of going around. And then you have the waste processors at the end state of the material. So these are the anaerobic digesters, these are the recycling facilities, these are the landfills. Right? And so each one of those constituent groups, we service with our technology, right? And the value proposition for each one is a little bit different.
It's a little bit varied, and we'll go into that. But for a waste generator, primarily what you're going to do is unlock, like, much better economic returns and benefits for them. And how do you go about doing that? So first and foremost, we'll typically kind of go through an exercise to say, we're, you know, working with a Walmart or a Dollar General, and you're going to do what's called the waste characterization, which is really nothing more than a euphemism for professional dumpster diving.
Literally, you will send folks out there, sift through the trash to figure out, is there an opportunity now for us to say, "Hey, instead of that 8-yard container going 5 times a week to a landfill, maybe we now can have a 6-yard container going 3 times a week to the landfill, and maybe now a 2-yard container of Styrofoam or paper goods or cardboard going to a recycling facility," right? And so this optimization that we actually have is actually how you start saving those companies money. And you can do that because you're reducing the amount of money they spend, which is going to the landfill, because that's a cost, and the tipping fees associated with that. And instead, now you can start making money based upon the materials that we're actually recycling.
Okay, so it even can go so far in some of our examples. Dollar General is one of our clients, where you can turn what was a cost stream into a revenue stream, right? Where they used to pay fully for just the trash, right? Through the backhauling that we do from their stores, right, take it to the distribution center, package up and bale the cardboard itself. The revenue they generate from that offsets the cost of their trash, right? So this, all of a sudden, you can really kind of flip the model on its head a little bit, and this is what we do as part of Rubicon. Now, lots of people can do a waste characterization, but really, if you want to think about it, how can you really do that at a meaningful scale?
This is where we've developed technology to say, hey, even if you're a small independent store out there, literally, if you want to take a picture of your trash, we can tell you what's in it, right? And this is really just a way that we can kind of go and using the kind of the latest in computer vision technologies to figure out, is there an opportunity now to have a further kind of conversation with you to say, hey, can we separate the materials out, do some source separation and figure out, can we actually deliver better goods, better materials to the end processors at that time? So we can use a technological approach. We can use kind of a standard process approach.
We can use a data approach as well, since we have volumes of data in terms of what trash flows look like from different types of businesses. So we can do this entirely on our own within that waste generator space. So that's that first one. That's the waste generators. So how do we actually also bring technological value to our haulers and those fleet communities? And this is really by, you know, kind of the... I wouldn't say standard, it's difficult, but nonetheless, it's really the kind of the standard things you would think about route optimization and routing. So think about a hauler, right? They're already driving up and down that street that they're going on their typical route today. What they love about Rubicon, right, is that I'm going to give them new business on that route they're already running, right?
So they're already driving by the Walmart. They're already driving by the Dollar General. They're already driving by the 7-Eleven. So this is really infill for them on their existing routes. And so the marginal cost for them of actually providing that service is really low, right? So they're going to come back and actually get a lot of revenue that they can actually retain on that side. So we are giving them new business opportunities, right? So these are kind of our captive clients that they really kind of, they are very much looking for at that time. On top of that, we're giving them technology. You know, they can pay for the technology that allows them to optimize the routes that they're actually running today. And so we can do tons of work, and we do this.
You know, you'd be surprised, a lot of the haulers out there today, frankly, a lot of them are running off of paper route sheets, right? So starting, to start off with, you start digitizing some of their operations. And even the cities today that are running some of the largest kind of, you know, largest kind of, you know, waste hauling kind of businesses within their cities themselves, a lot of those guys are kind of paper-based as well. So case example, that we work with Kansas City, you know, we optimize their routes. That's $2 million of savings that we actually generate on behalf of, for that city on a given period.
So this is like it's an exciting way of really kind of optimizing, the routes, a really kind of way of driving down the cost and, and improving kind of the operational efficiency for those haulers themselves. And the third leg, that we talk about is like, what do you do with the, kind of the waste processors, and how do we kind of how does the technology help them? And this is really where we actually, we're delivering much higher quality goods, much higher quality recycling material to those waste processors. So what everybody wants is clean cardboard. What everybody wants is a clean Styrofoam. They don't want this contaminated with food waste. They don't want it contaminated with what have you, right?
So when we design those source separation programs, and when we're working with our, our waste generator customers, we're really designing and improving the whole process of delivering clean, purified goods all the way to the end of that, the end destination. On top of which, we can do even some more exciting stuff. So one of the things we do, and, you know, we've piloted this in a number of cities, in the Southeast, is we'll go in and actually we'll install cameras within the waste collecting vehicles themselves, okay? And what you're doing there is trying to identify when contamination enters a waste stream, right? So I know Dan, right? I know he's that guy who puts the batteries in the green waste.... Right?
So instead of actually trying to figure out now, what do I really, you know, is this - the load is now contaminated, so that's bad, so we don't want to deliver that to, to the processing facility. But I can also, now that I have that data, that nobody has to kind of get out of the vehicle to figure this out, I can also send a leaflet to Dan and say, "Hey, man, let's not do that again," right? Or if you wanted to, if you're working with us on the city side, if they wanted to, they can surcharge them. So we integrate back to their back-office systems, and we can actually, you know, really kind of tighten the process on that side. So that's the range of how we actually kind of provide our services to our customers, right?
And again, this is what Rubicon does, each one of those constituents across the main recycling ecosystem, if you will.
Perfect.
Now, what excites us... I think we covered this, right? What excites us really about, I think, the opportunity at Rubicon is really the scale. So if you think about the kind of the trash industry, it's massive, right? And, you know, I'm not- we're not here in a position... I'm not here to just kind of fight with the different haulers and try and steal share and all that type of stuff. That's going to come anyway, right? Because we actually provide solutions that are great. But ultimately, there's a huge market that's out there. It's like the $2 trillion kind of market if you think about the waste and recycling industry. So even a small sliver of that is exciting, right, in terms of kind of the revenue potential that we have, right?
What you want on any kind of, you know, whether it's a brokerage or a marketplace or when we're actually kind of an intermediary in the process, which is what we're doing, right? What you're always looking for is a fragmented market, right, which is what we have. So most people think, you know, the industry is dominated by Waste Management or Republic Services or Waste Connections. In fact, that's actually a very small portion of the entire kind of waste industry. So what that means is you have a highly fragmented base of what's out there. And so, again, if you're going to come in and actually supply, start supplying that industry, right? This is great opportunity for us to kind of, you know, provide additional kind of services within the marketplace itself, right?
So there's plenty of opportunity within the market for us, and this is really, you know, just within the United States market, it's a huge opportunity, and we're actually kind of growing within it as well. So I think for us, the most exciting part about it is it's a massive opportunity. There are massive, you know, things that we can do and solutions that we can actually provide in the industry itself.
Great. Let's go into the business model a little bit.
Yeah.
And so at the high level-
Yep.
Right, you have Connect, and then you have Smart Cities.
Yeah.
Can you talk a little bit about Connect first?
Yep.
Kind of what's the customer use case? You went through a lot of detail, but at a high level-
Sure.
Why does a customer use Rubicon?
Yeah. So a customer is going to use Rubicon to do a couple of things. So if you think of, you know, let's think of a scenario where you are a large national account, and you have, you know, say, 10,000 locations across the United States, right? Do you want to individually procure waste services at each one of those 10,000 locations? You don't. Right? Do you have any insight into what the cost should be in a particular location? You don't. Right? That's why you'll ultimately kind of start off coming to ourselves or somebody like that and saying: Okay, can you, you know, provide us that one-stop shop, that one bill, you know, that consolidates everything and actually give me the data that we actually need to actually see what's kind of going on? So there's two parts to that.
So one is, yes, we can consolidate everything. Yes, we can kind of run the procurement exercises for you, but ultimately, what you really like, and a lot of large national account customers enjoy, is the fact we're the only ones out there providing them that information on the diversion rates, right? So that which doesn't go to landfill. And if you know, you know, in today's world, they don't want that phone call. They don't want that story in the New York Times that actually says, it's like, "Oh, my God, your paper cups that are supposed to be recycled are actually ending up in the landfill." Right? Who's providing the data for that? Right? We can. Right? And we can do that across all of your locations, and we're one of the few providers that actually can do that.
Number one, you're coming to us because we consolidate the information, we can consolidate the billing. That's why somebody starts, initially on the Connect side.
So the other business is Smart Cities.
Sure.
For those who may have been on the site before, we had the EVP of Smart Cities, Conor Riffle, on our virtual platform on Monday, and he went really deep on Smart Cities, so you can go on there and watch that session. Give us a little bit of overview.
Sure. So Smart Cities was kind of born out of the... If you think about the need that we actually had to kind of service all of our kind of national account customers, and all of our individual customers that are out there, we needed some kind of tracking ability within the fleets themselves, right? And so we started by building the technology really to kind of give data back to us so we can better serve our customers. Then we realized there was like, "Hey, this actually has quite a few legs there." Because the trade-off was to get the hauling community to use the technology, we need to kind of give them some bells and whistles associated with that. So give them a better routing engine, you give them better insight into their operational practices.
We found that that had a lot of success within the hauling community, and we started saying: Well, we can sell that kind of directly into the cities that are out there. And today, we've had great success with it, and we're in with, I think, 9 of the top, you know, kind of 20 kind of, you know, cities within the United States. We've just signed, you know, kind of, you know, Austin, I think, was the last one we publicly announced. So, you know, these cities really kind of enjoy the product. And again, what they're really kind of driving towards is taxpayer savings.
So if you're a mayor, or if you're a council person, or if you're a, you know, fleet supervisor, what you're ultimately trying to do is kind of drive down the cost of your operation and deliver those cost savings back to the constituents, which are, in this case, taxpayers, right? We can do that. So again, mention the, the example that we have in Kansas City, you know, $2 million, $2 million of savings. That's huge for an operating kind of group within the city, and they can publish that, and they love the fact that we did it.
The exciting part for us is that not only are we doing it on the, we started on the trash side, because that's obviously where, you know, we had quite a bit of experience, but now they came back and said: We loved it so much, like, can you help us out with our other fleets? Right. Can you help us out on snow, and can you help us out on our street sweepers? And so that's really where you're seeing a lot of kind of growth today. So where we started on this trash side, now we're into kind of what we call these alternative fleets as well, right? So again, the product kind of really grows. It's the same kind of,
If you think about it technologically, any kind of high-density kind of routing kind of opportunity, this is exactly what the software is kind of geared towards. So, you know, landscaping, you know, service delivery, postal delivery, kind of bus stop service, whatever you want to do, right? This is what the technology is really kind of geared towards providing, and cities are enjoying it so much they want to consolidate all their fleet operations on one platform.
Let's talk about competition a little bit.
Sure.
Obviously, you guys, again, like some of the other companies, are very unique with what you do.
Sure.
For the audience, like, who would you compare yourself to? How are you different from them?
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, again, so not to be that way about it, but if I'm going to say, like, we're a category of one, like everyone says.
Yeah.
No, you have different competitors in different elements of the marketplace, right? And again, so if you're talking about within the pure kind of waste provisioning or the recycling kind of market. Again, the big players there are the Waste Management, the Republic Services, the Waste Connections of the world. We only compete, but realistically, only on national account basis, right? There's very few folks that really do a nationwide kind of, you know, service kind of plan. There's only a few people who can actually provide that service. So it's not as great as you think in terms of I'm not competing with the individual hauler that's out there. I'm not competing with, you know, Joe's trash service. I'm not competing with those guys; they are our vendor network. We love using those folks, right?
The only ones we're really kind of competing with are the large national players, of which there's probably only two or three that are really on that side. Now, on the fleet side, all right, there are a number of, I would say, competitors that, you know, pure play, you know, asset tracking, pure play, kind of GPS tracking kind of abilities. But there's nobody that understands, you know, kind of fleet hauling, fleet operations, you know, fleet optimization quite like we do. So I think the distinction here, a lot of people think, well, there's a lot of companies out there that do route optimization. Yeah, sure. Lots of people can tell you, if I have 100, you know, locations, how best to run 100, you know, stops on that locations. But lots, lots of people can do that.
What we do is we do fleet optimization, meaning a city will come to us and say, "I have 300,000 you know, residents or locations that I need to service, right? I have 60 trucks. What do I do?" Right? It's a fundamentally different proposition, right? And that's what the technology is geared towards, and that is actually proprietary technology that we, that we have and we've deployed in these situations, which ultimately leads to kind of driving down those kind of the savings and the, and delivers those taxpayer benefits.
Before coming into your role as CEO-
Yeah.
you were a CTO.
Right.
Can you explain a little bit about that transition?
Sure.
How that background has really helped you with what the company is going through right now?
Sure. Yeah. And so I always think of it, for me, it's a marriage of two things, right? It's the art of the possible. So as a product person, that's what you're always trained to do, is like, how can you think about, you know, the how might we questions? Like, how can we resolve a particular problem that we're doing? And you want to marry that with the art of the profitable, right? That's what you're doing as a CEO. So it's really the two things together, right? And I think the advantage that we, you know, I have as a former CTO, well, current CTO, I consider myself both, you know, current CTO. The reason why I think that's so, so powerful is like now we can say, is like, how might we really kind of drive down the cost of our own service, right?
How might we deploy technological solutions, whether you're looking at AI solutions? We do a lot of AI for our customers. How can we use those same AI capabilities, focused internally, to drive down the cost of service, right? And really kind of start saying, okay, now we can actually deliver the EBITDA, you know, targets that we're actually, you know, that, that are out there. How can we deliver on increased margin? We can do that because we're actually using technology in a fundamentally different way to really enhance our back office platforms, to really make sure that we're as lean and mean as possible.
Let's backtrack a little bit.
Sure.
And so we talked about smart cities, and we mentioned it was very similar to a SaaS business.
Yeah.
So for the audience, again-
Yeah
... in the room, online, what are the advantages of that? Obviously, you don't break out that segment today.
Right.
You know, obviously, those businesses have high rates of recurring revenue.
Yeah.
Can you talk about at least your retention?
Yeah. And, you know, again, everybody wants to say you have super high retention rates, and we do. You would never kind of claim, you know, 100%, even though that is true in our case. You know, but I think, you know, the retention rates are good. And then on top of that, our conversion rate from pilot to paid is exceptionally high. So, so think about those things. So number one, when we get a client, we keep them, right? Number two, when a customer trials or pilots our software, they buy it, right? So this is when we know we have very good kind of product market fit in the marketplace.
And again, our, you know, we're north of 80% on a pilot to paid conversion basis, right? So again, they like the software, we get it in their hands. This is what we do. So our focus now as a, as a business is to say: How can we kind of get it into as many hands as possible? How can we actually make sure that we, you know, get the trials and the demos and everything out there? And we're actually really expanding on that team now to really, you know, increase and accelerate kind of the growth in the smart city product.
So what are the road bumps? Like, what keeps you from expanding that even quicker and being in all top 1,000 cities?
For sure. It really, if you think about it, it really is just your ability to kind of do. It's a mass flow of just outflow, so it's really the engagement side. We've increased the size of the team. You have to get folks in. It's, I mean, it's the, it's that funnel that you're always looking at. How many calls lead to how many demos, lead to how many kind of engagements, to how many pilots, lead to how many conversions, right? That's what you're doing. It's really making sure that we can expand the top of the funnel as much as possible. I'm not worried about the funnel ultimately ending up in the sale. We're going to get there. It's really about how quickly and how much can we, you know, how much can we expand the top of the funnel?
So really going to shift gears here.
Sure.
I think the really other interesting thing about Rubicon, especially in contrast to some of the other companies here, is you've only been public for about a year.
Sure.
And so if you could talk a little bit about that journey, like some of the pain, right?
Yeah.
And all the work that's gone in-
Yeah
to getting you to the precipice of where you are today.
For sure. So yeah, so last year, we came out in the August timeframe as a public company. It wasn't done, I would say, like kind of the best kind of possible scenarios. I think we all know kind of those SPAC lands and where they were at that point in time. So ultimately, we kind of came out with, you know, less capital than we'd expected. So we embarked on a kind of a path to profitability plan right away, right? And so there was kind of three primary things that we wanted to improve last year. One is our liquidity position, which we were able to accomplish quite quickly. So we, we got our, you know, we got our $75 million term loan.
We raised roughly about $35 million of additional kind of equity capital. And this was all about making sure that we're adequately capitalized kind of go forward, to the point in which we actually become profitable, which is, you know, we're really at that precipice as we stand right now. The second leg of that was to kind of cut down expenses and kind of, really kind of live within your means, if you will. And this is where we kind of saved roughly around 50, on an annualized basis, about $55 million, that we kind of pulled out from a cost basis. And the third leg of it, you know, really is doing all the kind of margin expansion opportunities that we're actually looking at now.
So again, so really kind of making sure that we kind of grow into kind of where we expect to be. And again, I'm happy and very proud to say that we, you know, got to our double-digit kind of margin targets, and we got there in the second quarter of this year. So we set out to do a very few set, a number of things, and we accomplished them all within the year.
I want to pause there. Again, open up for questions to the audience, if anybody has any. Chris, do you have the mic?
... Somebody, they can pass it so they can hear it online. Yep, thanks a lot. Yep, right there.
Yep. Hi, I'm Taylor, and I work at IBM. So I'm just curious, customers come to you wanting a one-stop shop with access to their data. You do this, you provide them with a shop that's full of AI and analytics. Do you ever encounter a technology skills shortage? And if so, how do you combat that?
Sure. I think, look, I think all of us within the technology industry are looking for, you know, kind of the next kind of best resource that we can actually kind of employ. Fortunately, you know, Rubicon has been very successful in terms of how we, you know, how we kind of source our, our IT talent, right? Part of it kind of came from companies that, I don't know, like, three companies ago, that are folks that I've worked with, so we've all kind of, kind of collectively kind of stayed together over the course of time. We also use kind of offshore resources as appropriate, and a little different in the offshoring model. It's not just kind of going to kind of where, you know, the best body shop is.
I have a long-standing engagement with folks in Romania that we've had, and so I pretty much kind of pick of the litter in that country in terms of who we want to kind of bring into the company. And we're also kind of growing kind of the talent base here within the United States. So it is always difficult to find talent, but I think we've been. You know, the fortunate thing is we've been adequately resourced to the task where we need to kind of accomplish on our product roadmaps today.
Other questions? I think I saw another hand over here, far right. Whoever has the mic.
Hello.
Hi.
My question is about, like, your customer base. So I know you mentioned, you know, the Walmarts and Dollar Trees of the world, but I live in New York, and I see all the trash-
Yeah.
- out and about.
On the corner. Drive you crazy.
Who is it?
Amazing treasures.
Yeah.
You have professional dumpster divers.
Sure. Exactly.
Would you ever consider broadening your market to, like, institutions like NYU or partnering with apartment buildings and things like that?
Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah.
It's a massive market, and it's super important-
No, for sure.
and help them figure out a better way forward.
Yeah.
Just curious about that.
Yeah, 100%, and thank you for the question. So, in terms of kind of if you think about the segments that we actually serve, right? So on the national account basis, those are the big ones we've all, we all talk about, and so that it makes a lot of sense in terms of consolidating their, you know, their bills, giving them a bill presentation, and all that type of stuff. We do have an SMB business, a small and medium-sized kind of business, as well. That one, you know, I would say it's, it's, you know, it's almost always kind of organically grown, right? So, you know, folks that kind of know us, they come on board, and we can actually service that, that base. I think the need on the SMB side is always a little bit different, right?
So it's certainly the kind of like regularly scheduled trash. And in an SMB market, a lot of the times, it's actually serviced by the, surprisingly, serviced by the city themselves, right? So most people think cities just do kind of residential kind of collection. Actually, a lot of the cities do residential collection and commercial collection within the boundaries of their area, right? And so when we start working with the cities, that's exactly what we're doing. So ultimately, kind of by default, we're actually kind of already kind of picking up those SMBs today. And then we expand into them kind of territorially where it makes sense, right, on that side. I also think the real opportunity kind of lies in the more kind of think of it as the kind of the transient or temporary needs on, you know, for customers.
So if you're out there and you're doing a refit or you're doing a remodel, that's when you need that dumpster, that's when you need that extra service, that extra pickup, and that we also do provide in certain targeted areas, and that is part of our growth plan as well. That's a great question. In cities like New York, where it's kind of zone-based, you know, we do actually actively work with the city, and we're, you know, you participate to say, "Can you bid on a particular zone?" Right, and say... And we would love to, you know, if that process, if you haven't been watching the paper, that process is ongoing with New York. And so yes, we have to have bid on zones within New York as well. So maybe we'll see how that turns out.
Just maybe we'll actually do kind of specific collection within New York, the bounds of New York City as well.
Any other questions online? Okay, so... Oh, okay.
Thank you. Sorry, just on the topic of customers, can you speak to the, your penetration as far as those three haulers, the big three-
Yeah.
And then the non-big three as well, how you service them?
Right. So, yeah, the little-known story within the industry. So when you have what's called franchise markets, right? So franchise markets is where a, in this case, the city, who's not hauling for themselves, says: I'm going to, you know, give the franchise for this area to a particular hauler, right? And that, those large cases will be a Waste Management or a Republic Services. So in those areas, so I have we service, you know, 75% of all Walmart locations, okay? Those locations may be in a franchise zone, right? So you're required to use the hauler in that particular area. So we actually do work with Waste Management quite a lot. We do work with Waste Connections quite a lot. We do work with Republic Services quite a lot. And we enjoy those relationships, and we have very good relationships with them.
So they're just another hauler in the network at that point in time. So when I look at penetration, the nuance, if I can switch it around for you, for me, penetration really means, like, how many of the material types that are needing to be handled by said customer do we handle, right? So we handle 167, 168 different material types a day, right? So that's a lot. So it's like if you think about, you know, cardboard, you know, and that's just one. The common ones are, you know, single-stream recycling, cardboard, and trash. There's, like, 164 other types of materials out there that people need service for, and I want all of them, right? Ultimately, right?
And so when we're dealing with a Walmart, I want to know that, am I handling your pallets or a Best Buy? Can I handle your pallets and your styrofoam? Can I handle, you know, Walmart's shrink wrap? So we look at it as more like, you know, the penetration rate is like, how much of that book of business do I have within the existing kind of client base, right? How much of their trash do we have overall? I'm happy to say a great case example, when we embark on zero-waste journeys, right, with some of our clients, we provide that advisory service to them. If you look at a Wegmans grocery store, you know, they're upwards of 90-odd% diverted from landfill.... Right?
And that's because we've orchestrated all these programs for them to take the material out of the waste stream and find a better location, but, and find a better end destination for that material, right? And we work them on that. And so that's a great case example of us really embedding ourselves within a specific client to get as much as possible of that, of that share, share of... I don't know what you want to call it, share of bin or share of trash, ultimately, is what we're actually talking about.
Any others from the audience? All right. So backing up a little bit, you've talked a lot about, you know, some specifics of the company, you know, a lot of the work that's gone in over the last 12 months. And so you mentioned you are on the precipice of being profitable, right, today. So what does the next 12 months look like? You know, what are your three top things that are going to help you get there?
Yeah. Great, and thank you for the question. So, when I look out for, you know, in 2024, I looked at 2023 really as, you know, we really wanted to kind of get lean. We really wanted to get mean. We really wanted to kind of get, kind of deliver within our, kind of, our bounds of our existing kind of, you know, capabilities, get the capital structure worked out appropriately, making sure that, you know, there are no kind of liquidity issues. And that's really what we had to do in 2023. When I look at 2024, I look at it as more kind of, you know, reorienting ourselves towards growth, right? So already we've done the investments in, you know, practically tripling the size of the smart city kind of sales team, right?
Already, we're actually making the investments to sell in a much more nuanced fashion when we talk about our national accounts on the Connect business. So whereas in the past, we always kind of led in through you know through just the waste itself or the trash, the trash service. Now, if you think about how the customers are engaging us more directly, they're coming with very specific solution needs. So they're gonna come to us and say, "Hey, can you do something on specific on metal recycling? Hey, can you help me out? I have water filters that I don't know what to do anything with, and I don't even know if these are recyclable or not. Can we do something here?" Those types of engagements we find very fruitful because they're coming to us.
We're working with them directly to figure out, is there an opportunity now to actually develop a new type of recycling program, which is what we all want. We want to divert waste from landfill. And the nice thing about it, if you think about where the margins lie within the waste and recycling industry, you make a heck of a lot more margin on recycling, right, than you do on just core waste, right? Core waste, maybe a 5%-10% kind of margin business, whereas when you're talking about some of these specialty kind of recycling, you're talking 25, 35, you know, % kind of margins on that side.
So what you're seeing us do, I think, in the next year, is we're going to be much more aggressive about going after just the commodity markets, just the recycling markets, as opposed to kind of going in always full tilt on just the waste first and then expanding. We're gonna turn it around a little bit, and it's like, we'll expand, we'll land the deal on the commodity side, on the recycling side, and then kind of branch out from there.
Any other questions or closing thoughts? All right. Well, Phil, thank you very much for the time. I'll turn it back over to you if you have any closing thoughts.
Yeah. Really appreciate it.
Good conversation.
Thank you. And I appreciate the time today. And I think, again, if there's a takeaway I want you to kind of walking away with today is, like, Rubicon is a technology company in the waste and recycling industry, right? And we're expanding beyond that every day, right? So again, we talk about not just the commodity side. So commodities can be much more, you know, expansive than just on the waste, you know, side. And we're talking on the fleet side, it's not just waste. Already, we're in snow plows, we're already in the street sweeper business, and there are a lot of other fleets that are out there. Any high-density type of fleet activity you talk about is actually what Rubicon services today. So you'll see us expanding into those categories of business.
There's more and better to come for Rubicon.
Awesome. Thank you very much.
All right.