Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Badger Infrastructure Solutions Ltd. 2022 fourth quarter results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star, one, one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star, one, one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Trevor Carson, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Development.
Thank you, Josh. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to our fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. On the call with me this morning are Badger's President and CEO, Rob Blackadar, and Pramod Bhatia, Badger's VP Finance and Interim CFO. Badger's 2022 fourth quarter earnings release, MD&A, and financial statements were released after close yesterday and are available on the investor section of our website as well as on SEDAR. We are required to note that some of the statements made today may contain forward-looking information. In fact, all statements made today, which are not statements of historical fact, are considered to be forward-looking statements. We make these forward-looking statements based on certain assumptions that we consider to be reasonable.
Forward-looking statements are always subject to certain risks and uncertainties and undue reliance should not be placed on them as actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. For more information about material assumptions, risks, and uncertainties that may be relevant to such forward-looking statements, please refer to Badger's 2022 MD&A along with our 2022 AIF. Such statements speak only as of today's date, and Badger does not undertake to update any such forward-looking information. I will now turn the call over to Rob.
Thanks, Trevor, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our 4th quarter earnings call. As always, we would like to start the call with a health and safety update. We have managed through some extraordinary operating conditions over the past several years, but under all conditions, our operating practices have remained the same, focused on Badger's objective of putting our employees and customer safety first. It is our mission to be the industry's most efficient, safe, and reliable non-destructive excavation service provider. We have introduced many new safety measures and programs over the past year, as well as made significant investments in AI enhanced tools to help our operators out of harm's way, tools such as Lynx. We look forward to sharing more about these exciting initiatives in our ESG report that we posted to our website and to SEDAR yesterday. Now on to the company's performance.
We are pleased with our fourt h quarter and annual results for 2022. We ended the year with strong utilization and operational performance across our businesses, which reflects the resiliency of our business model. Our focus on pricing and fuel recovery, coupled with our operating and cost management efforts, resulted in meaningful year-over-year improvements in our operating leverage and margins. All of our operating regions contributed to year-over-year annual revenue growth of 26%. This resulted in better operating leverage, as highlighted in our year-over-year EBITDA margins. Let's talk more about our revenue trends. Revenue for the quarter and full year were up 23% and 26% respectively from 2021. This gives us confidence that our sales strategy implemented in early 2022 is building momentum.
While we are pleased with our fourth quarter revenue contribution, it is important to note that revenue was negatively impacted during the last 2 weeks of December due to winter storms that shut down a significant portion of our operation. Most of these jobs were pushed forward to January, which has contributed to a solid start for 2023. During Investor Day, we shared our strategy to raise the shoulders in our most seasonal quarters. Early indications suggest the strategy is working. All operating regions experienced strong EBITDA growth or strong revenue growth due to improved pricing and utilization, which resulted in adjusted EBITDA margins for the quarter and the year improving to 18.8% and 17.5% respectively, compared with 11.1% and 12.8% last year.
As a reminder, in 2022, we established a focused sales and marketing function, including a national accounts team. The objective of this function is to leverage Badger's broad operating footprint, business scale, and customer relationships to facilitate growth and add operating leverage. This focused commercial strategy helps the company target the significant market opportunity that we see for non-destructive excavation and related services. Our investment in our sales and marketing teams have helped us to drive more consistent volume over the course of the full year with the intention of improving margins and shoring up our operator retention and turnover headwinds that we typically see in the colder months in Q4 and Q1. We continue to be excited about our asset utilization improvements. Annual revenue per truck per month or RPT was just shy of CAD 40,000, which was up 22% versus last year.
RPT in Q4 was approximately CAD 42,000 or up 25% compared to last year, highlighting our continued asset utilization improvements. We added trucks and markets that demonstrate strong revenue growth and high return on invested capital. Our ability to manage our available fleet in real time is a significant competitive advantage. As we position the fleet strategically, we can drive utilization and higher pricing where we have good opportunity. As we have said in the past, improving our utilization has a material impact on how we manage retirements, how we think about the number of units needed to achieve our growth targets, and the appropriate level of invested capital.
Speaking about our fleet size, we ended the year with 1,387 non-destructive excavation units, compared with 1,371 at the end of 2021, reflecting a net increase of 16 units. We manufactured 115 non-destructive excavation units in 2022 versus 32 in 2021. For 2023, we are forecasting to build between 200 and 230 units and retire between 80 and 100 units. Our manufacturing team has positioned the plant well for higher production levels and volume efficiencies. We are also well positioned for supply chain components. We built up our inventory stock in 2022, and remain comfortable with chassis and key component availability, and do not expect to be impacted materially by supply chain disruptions.
This positioning is a plus for Badger's ability to place new equipment into service versus competitive manufacturers as truck chassis are still in tight supply. Market indications are that equipment will be difficult to source in the short term, which makes Badger's manufacturing and vertical integration that much more valuable. Additionally, we are implementing proactive programs that we expect will enable us to extend the useful life of our existing assets. We believe these incremental investments will yield positive contributions to ROIC as we continue to optimize our capital investments. As I've shared previously, our units spend the majority of the time digging on customer sites as opposed to racking up significant mileage. Conversely, we run at high RPMs to perform our excavation services.
With this in mind, we may choose to selectively replace critical components, namely the engines, transmissions, transfer cases or blowers, to extend the life of a well-maintained chassis. Unless there are geopolitical or macroeconomic disruptions, we see conditions to be favorable for continued progress in growing the business, improving our operating leverage, and returning to historical margins as the recovery continues and we execute on our commercial strategy. I will now turn the call over to Pramod to discuss our financial results.
Thanks, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Our revenue for the quarter was CAD 149 million, and for the year, CAD 571 million, up 23% and 26% respectively. Gross margins were 25% and 24% in the fourth quarter and full year respectively in 2022. During the year, we continued to invest in our sales and marketing capabilities to support future growth. As a reminder, sales costs are included in direct costs. As reported, Adjusted EBITDA was approximately CAD 28 million and CAD 100 million for the quarter and full year respectively. Adjusted EBITDA margins improved to 18.8% for the quarter and 17.5% for the year, compared with 11.1% and 12.8% respectively in 2021. On to the balance sheet.
Badger maintains a focus on ensuring the strength of its balance sheet and financial flexibility. We have continued to make meaningful progress in accounts receivable management, particularly the collection of long-age receivables. At the end of Q4, 71% of our receivable portfolio is aged less than 30 days, suggesting a stronger portfolio position than the DSO of the calculated approximately 83 days. We believe there is still room to improve our DSO, which we continue to work towards. We continue to maintain our Canadian CAD 400 million in committed credit facilities, which provides us ample liquidity and financial flexibility to fund both near-term and long-term growth and complementary capital allocation decisions.
Finally, the board has approved an increase to the quarterly cash dividend to CAD 0.1725 per share for the first fiscal quarter of 2023, with payments to be made on or above April 15, 2023 to all shareholders of record at the close of business on March 31, 2023. This represents an annual dividend of CAD 0.69 or approximately a 5% increase from CAD 0.66 in 2022. I would like to turn things back over to Rob for some final comments. Rob?
Thanks, Pramod. Before we open it up for questions, I'd like to share a few last thoughts. In 2022, we continued to improve our margins by tightening up our operating discipline and managing expense levels to anticipated revenues. We remain focused on our end markets and customers while ensuring that we have trucks available for their projects. Our view of the significant U.S. and Canadian long-term opportunity for non-destructive excavation services and Badger's long-term growth prospects is unchanged. The required focus on infrastructure in North America supports demand for non-destructive excavation. Badger stands ready to help strengthen and maintain that infrastructure.
Just before we open it up for questions, as you all may have seen in our news release recently that went out a couple of weeks ago, we're pleased to welcome our new CFO, Rob Dawson, who will be joining the team on April tenth. Rob brings over 25 years of finance experience, and we are thrilled to have him join the team. I would like to thank Pramod for his service as interim CFO and Trevor on the investor relations side, who have both stepped up and helped and supported the company during this transition period and look forward to their continued contributions to Badger in the future. With those comments, Josh, let's turn it back over to you to field the questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star, one, one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star, one, one again. Our first question comes from Daryl Young with TD Securities. You may proceed.
Hey, good morning, everyone. First question is just around financial guidance for this year. Truck build is obviously a healthy improvement, and it sounds like the end market demand is very, very strong. I was just wondering if you could give us some goalposts around maybe where you think RPT could fall out this year and as well, the cadence of maybe a recovery in margins.
Hey, Daryl, this is Pramod. You know, at this point I would say maybe a couple of things. One, you know, we are obviously really pleased with where our utilization and RPT is landing in 2022, good improvements for us. As you well know, RPT is driven by a couple different factors, both on the pricing side as well as the utilization side, and we will continue to press those levers in 2023. From a quote, unquote "guidance point of view," I would still point you back to our conversations in at the Investor Day late last year. You know, we feel pretty confident that the 15% revenue CAGR that we talked about in the Investor Day is still something that is achievable over the near term.
You know, from a margin perspective, the range that we provided on direct costs, as you know, 65%-75%, I feel that we are well within those that we are gonna hit as evidenced in the Q4 and the full year numbers too. The final piece I'll say is, you know, G&A, which for 2022 we were about CAD 39 million. You know, the range of CAD 30 million-CAD 40 million that we provided, I think we will be well within that. I probably will not wanna go any further than that. Remain confident that with the upward trajectory that you're seeing, we feel pretty confident about.
Okay, thanks. With respect to the national accounts and the sales strategy, is there an intention to continue? It's obviously going very well and utilization is strong, but is there an intention to keep adding bodies and personnel this year?
Darryl, we were having some technical difficulties here. I could hear, I think you were asking, are we gonna continue to add salespeople or bodies to our national accounts program? The answer is, we may bring in an additional one or two, but right now we are just now in April will be at the one-year mark of when we launched national accounts. We don't believe that we need to continue adding, but rather we need to continue to develop the accounts we have. We may bring in one or two for the remainder of the year. Right now, we still have a lot of runway with the existing team we have and actually going wider and deeper again, because we're just at the one-year mark here in April.
We feel comfortable with where we are, and we still believe that we're gonna see a lot of growth out of the national accounts team.
Okay, great. In terms of the 200 basis point drag that you called out last quarter, is that what you would expect to see across this year as well?
No. Darryl, Pramod again. You know, as we continue to flex the top line, and Rob indicated that too, you know, I would, I would say think about the operating leverage that's generating. No, that would not be a continued drag in 2023.
Okay, great. I'll hop back in the queue with another couple of questions. Thanks.
Thank you, Darryl.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Doumet with Scotiabank. You may proceed.
Hey, good morning, guys. On this quarter, helpful guidance for the 2023 on the G&A and the revenue. I wanted to dig in a little bit more on the gross margin. You know, I think we talked about this in Q3, you know, versus the comparable quarter 2019, we were 500 basis points below. In Q4, we're now about 400 basis below the comparable quarter. We're seeing a nice improvement. I'm just thinking as we think about 2023, you know, if you think about kind of that 400 basis points gap to start with, and then maybe just talk on top of that, you know, where you think you're getting confidence to close the gap further, whether it's price, utilization or cost.
Maybe, again, just if you can help us get a sense for how much too, that'd be helpful.
Sure. I'll start, and then I'll let Pramod pick up wherever I leave off here. Regarding the gross margin, and especially as you relate to kind of our historical years of 2019, we've seen continued improvement in our gross margin, and we'll continue to as we grow the business. If, if we did nothing, we were pretty well positioned from support levels to grow the business. Since that time during COVID and even a little bit the first half of 2022, from COVID to the first half of 2022, we continued to say: What can we do to keep our costs either flat or in certain areas actually take cost out of the business or become more efficient?
As we grow the revenues, obviously, we're gonna grow the gross margin and drive the business. The biggest opportunity for the company, though, and we continue to believe it, and the biggest opportunity for 2023 and beyond is our focus on pricing. We've shown as a company we can drive utilization. You can see that through the RPT and the RPT growth. When we get our focus, and we continue to hone and improve on our pricing, that's where you're gonna see the gross margins really start to accelerate. Pramod, if you wanna add something to that.
Yeah. No, of course. That was great, Rob. You know, a couple things there maybe just to point out. You know, 2022, obviously a lot of investment in that went to in our, both our sales and marketing commercial capabilities. 2023, we don't really think that it's gonna be a lot more. You know, back to my operating leverage comment. As the revenue top line continues to grow, that should be a lot of flow through into gross margins and adjusted EBITDA. Second point I'll say is, you know, our RPT levels that I think are last similar questions. The guidance you gave is greater than CAD 38,000. You know, we remain pretty confident we'll continue to maintain that. That's the point, I think Rob was talking about with the utilization improvements.
I would say dramatic utilization improvements in 2022. Pricing continues to remain a lever that we'll continue to focus on. All of that to say, you know, improvements in gross margin and adjusted EBITDA margin. We are confident about 2023.
That's really helpful. Thank you. Maybe just switching over to the trucks. You know, the pace of retirement this year implies that you're planning effectively to stretch the life of the truck, and you've commented on that. You've talked about maybe some of the investments that, you know, will help you do that. I guess at a bigger picture, you know, should we reconsider that 10-year timeframe for a truck just in terms of the economic life? Maybe just if you can expand on, you know, what the incremental costs would be and even quantify them for us.
Sure. I'll share some thoughts along the truck strategy that Trevor and I recently shared, I think in January, at a conference in Vancouver, north of Vancouver. That as we started to look at the assets, and we're getting more and more robust data coming out of our system and our fleet management team, we're starting to realize that the trucks themselves, the chassis themselves, are not heavily used even though they are heavy spec, or and heavy built Peterbilt chassis. Where we're really running hard are the engines, the transmissions, the P cases, transfer cases, and then the blowers on the unit.
We started looking at, okay, as we ramp up the plant and we become more efficient in the plant, and we are, and the plant continues to perform and perform at a solid level, and then our commercial strategy is creating more and more demand for our trucks, we're starting to realize that if we continue to do a one in, one out, at the 10-year mark, we are gonna continue to have lumpiness in our replacement cycle. Because, as several folks know on the call that we have large years where we manufacture, and then we have years where it slows down a bit. We really want to steady out that manufacturing capacity and the plant output.
The way we've thought about it, we've modeled it out, is instead of just retiring right at the 10-year mark, we're selectively identifying trucks that either were not used with a lot of hours during COVID or were not in harsh conditions and, for example, harsh conditions being in the, in the far north. Our northern environments, a lot of salt, sand, things that can really wreak havoc on a frame. We have a lot of trucks that don't have those issues. We've said, if you look at an engine, transmission, P case, and blower for anywhere from CAD 100,000-CAD 125,000, we can actually put in new or refurb componentry with a warranty and extend that truck life for approximately 3-5 years.
That also starts to improve even greater the company's ROIC. We're pretty excited about moving toward this strategy. As you look at it and you say, "Okay, do we need to change the 10-year life cycle to 12 years, 13 years?" It's still early days as we're doing this. I would not recommend changing that. We're still targeting 10 years. But as the solid demand for this year and next, we believe, we're going to take advantage of it and instead of retiring as many units, just actually try to extend the life a little bit. Hopefully that makes sense.
I wouldn't recommend changing that model because we're at this point today, we may advise at a later quarter or early next year that we're getting a lot more life out of it. At this point, we're extending the life just a little bit. Again, for a little bit of investment, we believe we can get 3 to 5 years additional. It's pretty exciting. We're not doing that on every single asset. It's on a selective basis.
That makes a ton of sense. Thanks.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Krista Friesen with CIBC. You may proceed.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question and congrats on a good quarter. I was just wondering if you could provide just a bit more detail on the national accounts program. It sounds like you're pretty much fully staffed up there. What are the next steps as you kind of progress there? What inning would you say you're in terms of rolling out the program and maybe versus kind of what inning you're in terms of seeing the full extent of the program kind of take effect?
Yeah. Thanks for asking, Krista. We're looking at, I'd say on rolling out the program, we're probably in the sixth or seventh inning. As far as getting, you know, the value and everything out of the program and it functioning and being on full eight cylinders and giving us, you know, full performance out of it, we're probably only in the, I'd say, the third inning. The interesting thing that's interesting with this program is no one else in the hydrovac industry really has the footprint that Badger has, as well as the capability or the experience level and the team we put together with this national account strategy background to do what we're doing.
We're just like I shared with an earlier question, we're just now coming up on our one-year mark in April. We're very pleased with what we've seen coming out of the first nine months, eight, nine months of last year and then what we're seeing in Q1 so far on the national account side. It's still early days. We believe that there's a handful of things that will start to get us to further into the inning, so we could be in the sixth or eighth inning. Those things are this: actually getting all the different subsidiaries of the national accounts using us and utilizing Badger as a first call or sole source or primary provider or supplier.
The second aspect of it, and this is where it really starts to look good for the company, is our ability to actually go wider and deeper and broaden out our number of national accounts we have. An earlier question was, are you gonna continue to add heads? While we could, we don't wanna outpace our ability to service our customers. We also are trying to do it in a very orderly way, 'cause just again, 11 months ago, coming up on 12 months ago, we didn't even have a national accounts program. Now that this has helped us to drive our utilization in the business, we're starting to realize, you know what?
Let's really continue to hone the account base that we've currently been supporting, and let's go wider and deeper within that account base. The next level, and we believe we're gonna be able to start really doing this Q4 and Q1 of next year, is start to actually add some additional accounts. We've actually limited the number of national accounts we have just due to the sheer amount of or sheer ability for us to be able to supply and support it, support those accounts, because we wanna grow in a nice, orderly, incremental way rather than, you know, having where we peak and valley constantly. We want nice incremental growth when we've been initiating the new program. Hopefully that gives you a little bit of insight there.
Yeah, that's great. That makes a lot of sense. I was also just wondering on the, on the demand side of things, I know you gave your outlook for 2023, but can you give us any more granular comments on maybe what areas you're seeing the most strength in when it comes to either industry or geography? Any areas that are maybe a bit weaker than you expected?
Sure. We're seeing in most of our end markets a pretty good demand, and we see in some of our larger accounts and our larger projects, some of them are having record backlogs, and especially some of our largest national accounts. They have record backlogs that they've ever had in the history of their companies right now for the next two-three years. That is very, very encouraging for us, and especially having this new program that no one else in the industry has.
From purely a national account program, we're enjoying seeing that. We're also seeing a lot of demand from areas that are like data centers and anything that's infrastructure related, including the grid, supporting the grid and supporting any kind of power, any kind of infrastructure improvements and refurbishments, and especially in the United States specifically, there's just a lot of demand because the government has really said they're gonna put a lot of money in infrastructure, and it's starting to flow. Regarding certain areas of the company and what we're seeing specifically geographical, most areas of the company have solid demand. There's not one pocket that you would say, you know, the Southwest or the Southeast or the Northwest. Across the board, there's been solid demand.
What's been very interesting for us is, as we've seen some of the demand across Canada, in the wintertime here. Normally, some projects that we think that would not be hot happening, in February and March are happening now, it's pretty exciting. We believe some of those projects were actually pulled in a little earlier, to launch, that's helping to drive some of the business improvement as well. Our Canadian operations, just recently, definitely have seen good demand. Anything you wanna add on that?
Not really. I think you've covered really good. Maybe, Kris, the only thing I'll say is, you know, this isn't just one end user market that's driving. You know, that's probably for me, the most pleasing part. It's pretty broad-based. We are of course, focused a lot with our sales and marketing and focusing on a lot of our key markets and sort of going deeper into there too, but both within those geographical markets and then other end use markets. pretty broad-based demand over there this time is what I would say.
Perfect. Thank you so much. I will jump back to you.
Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Our next question comes from Daryl Young with TD Securities. You may proceed.
Hey, thanks for the follow-up. just in terms of the labor environment, have you seen any improvement in recent months, and how you're feeling about the ramp up for next year? 'Cause it does seem like the commercial construction activity is just exceedingly strong for next year, so probably lots of demand on labor.
Yeah. We are definitely seeing, you know, labor continues to be kind of our area of opportunity for us to continue to improve on how we recruit and how we retain our operators. So far, because of the concept of lifting and raising the shoulders in the seasonal months, our operators have gotten a lot more hours, and so obviously our turnover and retention has improved in the right way. We haven't had to go as much out to the market as we would have in previous years. We still are actively growing the business, and, you know, you can look at our truck count and our build, and we're gonna need additional operators across the organization.
One of our opportunities that we found that's starting to work pretty well is some of the people that are exiting, some veterans that are exiting the military and ending their military service. We will continue to be excited about recruiting former Canadian and U.S. military veterans and really enjoy having those those folks join our team. The other aspect that we're seeing regarding being able to recruit is some of the over-the-road long haul and freight carriers, some of those companies, especially the more local and regional, their business has slowed down, and because of that, we've been able to find more local CDL operators and drivers within our markets.
It takes a unique person to come and work with Badger and on a Badger truck because it's just a different business model and a different job than just driving long haul or over the road. It's just a lot different because they're actually, you know, in the dirt. You get dirty, you work hard, but it's very rewarding, and you never do the same thing twice. From that perspective, it's very interesting, fulfilling work, but it's totally different than if someone's working long haul. So far, again, we're seeing, you know, I think we've been able to fill most of our roles. We're not seeing as much pressure as we have had in previous quarters for being able to recruit.
That's great color. One last Just in terms of executing on the replacement of engines and blowers to keep the trucks on the road longer, would you see that happening at the Red Deer facility, or would you be looking to outsource that to third parties across the U.S. to complete that work?
Yeah. Actually, we have identified some shops that are a couple in the U.S.. Our fleet leader has identified two, one very centrally located in the U.S. and one more on the West Coast, and then we have one in Canada today. None of them are going back to Red Deer, nor do we want them going back to Red Deer. The reason being is the Red Deer plant is operating efficiently and putting out really high quality Gen 5 new trucks, and we want to keep the focus on that. We don't wanna distract and, you know, have the Red Deer facility start to think more about replacing engines and transmissions.
We want to just keep them focused on the manufacturing because we believe we're gonna need to keep the pressure on the manufacturing here for the foreseeable future. We found outside shops to do it. It's not really the highest and best use of our own employees, to be replacing engines and transmissions, especially when we can do it through third-party services.
Got it, o kay. That's it. That's it. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Trevor Reynolds with Acumen Capital. You may proceed.
Hey, guys. Just a couple quick questions. Just on the pricing, maybe you can just walk us through how the customers are accepting of price increases in the current environment?
You wanna.
Sure.
Why don't you start and then I'll, you know, clarify? Take it, Trevor.
I think Adit touched on some of that in his comments. You know, with the inflation in 2022, you know, our focus obviously is on pricing and making sure we are recovering that too. You know, one instance of that maybe I could share is on a few of the public fee surcharge program as well, which I would say were pretty well received and went through absolutely fine. Which was, which is a good indication. On the pricing side, again, I would say at this point, you know, there is not one simple answer over there because it is our customers are spread across different geographies, different industries. Almost a bit of, sort of answer around those geographies, you know, competitive nature in some markets versus the other. That's, that's my.
I'm sorry for the vaguer answer. That's kind of what the truthful answer is. The reality is it's a big focus for us. We will continue to push that. Obviously, everyone is conscious of inflation. We have seen cost increases, all of us have. So have our customers. We remain focused on it, just a little easier in some markets versus the others.
Right. I think to get probably a little bit more granular on the customer level, just like every one of our customers, you know, Badger has seen inflation in some of our own costs, basically, you know, our wages and cost of labor, some of our suppliers for actually building the trucks and keeping the trucks running and everything else. Just we're not immune to inflation, and our customers understand that. The advice and the coaching and training that we've given our sales teams and our managers are, you know, just be mindful of how you would wanna receive the message. And it's actually working as long as we're reasonable in our request and how we deliver the request for additional pricing.
So far, again, I'm not saying it's been well received, like everyone loves a price increase. There's not one person on the phone call who likes that. It's just real. That's the world we're in today. In our inflationary environment, we need to make sure that we're not going backwards with our pricing. While we realized a solid pricing improvement for 2022, we're gonna continue to focus on that for 2023 because we believe that alongside of the utilization is what will make the company healthier. We're very happy to focus on that.
Got it. Just to follow up on the national account side of things, is that, is that built into contracts pricing increases, or is that something you have to wait to apply price increases on that side of things?
Typically our national accounts customers will have annual or two or three-year pricing. The interesting thing about us kind of launching the national account program from scratch is we had a lot of large accounts, some with, you know, these two or three-year pricing agreements. Some of them have escalators in them for pricing, and some of them have where they peg to CPI or they'll peg to other various metrics to have price increases come out, go along throughout the contract period. The interesting thing that we've noticed though is because we are starting this from scratch with both existing customers and some new customers, there's not one period where we're launching all these agreements all at the same time.
It's throughout every month of the year, there's a pricing or rather a customer contract that is sunsetting and another one that is starting up or a renewal period. On our go forward, we're not really setting up any of our national account customers with flat fixed pricing beyond one-year period just because we don't know what's gonna happen within the inflationary markets. The customers, again, most of our customers really appreciate our services, we teach our salespeople this, but as long as we're giving them good value, and our new national account program gives great value because it's super simple for someone to work all across North America, we make it very, very easy.
A term that I was sharing with a colleague is we're making our business, we're trying to make it more and more frictionless, where it's very easy to work with Badger and there's great value in that. Our customers, again, while they no one loves a price increase, as long as we're keeping it reasonable, and that's what we're trying to do, they've been accepting of that so far.
Great. Thanks for taking my question.
Thanks, Trevor.
Thank you. This concludes the Q&A session. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Rob Blackadar for any closing remarks.
Thank you, Josh. Thank you everyone for the good questions and happy to report the quarter and we'll be doing it again here in May. On behalf of all of us here at Badger, thanks to our customers, our employees, our suppliers and shareholders for your ongoing support that helps to drive Badger's success. Josh, you may now end the call.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.