Okay, good morning, everyone. I'm Jerry Revich from Goldman Sachs, and delighted to have with us from Clean Harbors Eric Dugas, EVP and Chief Financial Officer, and Jim Buckley, SVP of Investor Relations. Eric, Jim, thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks for having us, and thank you for everyone in the crowd for your interest in Clean Harbors, and I hope nobody had to travel through some of the snow that we saw in the Northeast here this morning.
Yeah, well, thankfully those that are here are here. In terms of Eric, Jim, looking back at Clean Harbors, you know, over the past five years in the environmental services line of business, just really outstanding margin performance, you know, margins roughly four points higher, pricing power, contract structure improvement, operating... Can you just talk about what has structurally changed in this cycle in the industry to enable that level of performance both at Clean Harbors and the broader industry?
Sure, Jerry, I'll start, and certainly Jim and I will kind of tag team these answers, but you know, when I think about, you know, the last five years at Clean Harbors and the market, some macro and some Clean Harbors specific, but I'd say the first is just the overall demand in the marketplace for the types of services that we provide. I think if you look at, you know, coming pre-COVID, you kind of had a chemical renaissance, which generates a lot of hazardous waste that gets handled by Clean Harbors. You move through the COVID period, and then coming out of COVID, again, you have high demand for our services, both waste services and some of the more labor-centric things that you do.
When I think about margins, you know, I think the other thing is customers and the market are really seeing the value in what we bring. When you think about the services we provide, they're necessary services, they're hard work, they're hard to do, you need to train people accordingly, you need to have people and retain them, you need to have the specialized equipment, and then you have to have the disposal assets that we have that are very difficult to replicate, very difficult to operate. So you have customers that really appreciate the value of our services and the fact that we're able to deliver them safely, on time, and efficiently, and reduce their liability. But all that comes into pricing that we've seen, right, and been able to generate better pricing because of what we do, how we do it, and because of the demand.
A couple of key things that I would point to is, you know, when you think about margins in our space, certainly in 2017 when we introduced our new incinerator in El Dorado, Arkansas, increased capacity for us, highly margin accretive operation, and you know, I'm happy to say we're going to continue that again here in the near term with our new facility out in Kimball, Nebraska. So that added incineration at good margins was something that was very accretive to us. And then maybe lastly, I'd point to a great arrangement that we got into with 3M coming out of COVID, whereby 3M made the decision to close down their captive incinerator and move some of those waste streams to us.
A lot of those waste streams were complex waste streams, a very good price point, and that's been a trend too we've seen in the marketplace with, you know, production, both chemicals and general manufacturing becoming more complex, and more complex waste streams mean better margins and higher price points.
Really a couple of interesting threads to pull on. I guess maybe I'll start on the incinerator side. So, you know, roughly seven years between new incinerators coming online, next one coming in seven years, how are we thinking about that potential opportunity?
Yeah, I mean, we're really excited to bring Kimball online, and that's the focus right now. I will tell you, you know, when we thought about the new incinerator and where to put it, there were a couple of options. Certainly, I think we do have the ability to, you know, organically invest and do another new incinerator, if you will, in the future if demand, we see the need for that, but really focused on opening up Kimball, really focused on getting it started up, getting it efficient, driving those great margins. But in the future, certainly we're in a position where we could do that if we needed to.
Can you talk about the network benefit that you folks have in terms of the ability to cascade waste to different incinerators depending on the mix of what you're burning? How much more efficient is that versus a captive incinerator that doesn't have that flexibility? In other words, your cost advantage is how significant versus the captives?
Yeah, well, when you think about captives, Jerry, remember the captives, the reason they are captive is that they can only burn the waste that's produced by the company that owns them, right? So if you think about a captive operator, by permit, they can only burn the waste that they generate. When you think about our network, one of the things that we provide to customers, both in the case where maybe a captive owner begins to send volumes to us, is it's really a complexity issue. So sometimes these captive owners, they start developing products that produce waste that's of a complex nature that their captive incinerators can't burn it, and they decide to send those volumes to us.
When I think about the point you were making from a logistical perspective, and you think about our overall network with nine of 13 commercially licensed incinerators across North America, they're strategically placed, right? A lot of them tend to be east of the Mississippi, but with Kimball now, west of the Mississippi, it provides a great advantage to us to be able to send some of those high complex waste streams that the new plant can handle and be more efficient and thus reduce costs for our customers as well as us. So think about waste streams coming from the West Coast. Perhaps today they need to go to Arkansas or Texas where we have incinerators. Now they can remain in our network, but they only need to travel to this site in Kimball, Nebraska.
It does set us apart, having so many footprints across North America, and really allows us to deliver the services to our customers more efficiently.
The reduced transportation costs, are you going to keep that benefit, or do you share that with the customer?
You know, we'll keep most of it. I think it'll be a customer-by-customer basis, but certainly, you know, once it enters our network, our goal is to handle that most efficiently and safely and destroy it in an appropriate way, and that's really the primary goal, but it is, you know, having this new incinerator, we do see benefits from an overall network and logistical perspective.
Can you just educate us on why the incinerator industry is heavier on the East Coast than West Coast?
Yeah, you know, maybe I'll throw it to Jim here, but I think it's just been, you know, where these things were created at the beginning, and you know, to the evolution of how we ended up with these incinerators is actually quite an interesting story. But I really do think it's just where industrial production was kind of as these things were created.
Kind of a coincidence of history as opposed to any different regulations.
No, I don't think so, Jim.
Yeah, no, it's just to level set for folks in the crowd. There's 41 captive incinerators today of varying size and capability and what they put through their waste. And as Eric mentioned, they can only consume what they produce. 16 or so of those are rotary kiln incinerators, which are more traditional, like the types that we have that can handle a wide variety of waste. And the others may be more liquids only or something more simple designed to process what it was that plant or that company is creating. But to go back, say, 30 years, there used to be over a hundred captive incinerators, and so they were dotted sort of all over the country a little bit.
As far as the ones that have closed, they typically close for financial reasons or operating reasons, but there's also the regulatory pressures, which are greater on the East Coast than on the West Coast typically than maybe in the center of the country, and that may be the reason why a lot of the commercial activity is sort of centered in the country, and you see a lot less on the coast, both from a captive and a commercial perspective, and in terms of size, the captive space consumes about equal in size to what the commercial space is, so the 13 commercials are kind of equivalent in size of processing of the 41 captives, so that gives you a sense of the captive incinerators tend to be much smaller operations.
You know, given the margin gains and the pricing, just a natural question is, when do we hit price elasticity for environmental services? How do you folks think about that question at Clean Harbors?
Yeah, I think it's a great question, Jerry. And we get it a lot with some of the incremental capacity that's coming online. I can say, I don't think we're there yet. Don't know if we'll ever get there, just given the valuable nature of our services. You know, if you think about, you know, our pricing journey, and you know, I don't want to dispel folks, you know, when you think about pricing, not only are we driving pricing, but we're also looking at areas of our business to become more efficient to drive margins as well. So it's a two-sided equation there. But when you look at the current demand in our space and where the market is today, very high demand. If you look at our drum count, which is a significant area of volume for us, our drum count is up nearly 15% this year.
So very strong backdrop from a market perspective. But then you look at some of the tailwinds that we see in our business. So whether they be the ability to gain more captive waste, whether they be incremental waste that we see to be coming online here in the future from reshoring, infrastructure investments, the PFAS opportunity, we believe we'll continue to be able to price. And we'll be able to price because of the strong demand and the tailwinds, but also the necessary services, like I said before, that we provide in a safe and efficient way. And really customers are seeing that value, and they're paying for it because, you know, it reduces their liability and it meets their sustainability goals as well. So haven't reached the pricing threshold yet. Don't see that we'll hit it kind of anytime soon.
I think we'll continue to price strategically and price for value to our customers while also kind of looking for ways to get our network to be more and more efficient to drive overall margins to the business.
And in industrial services this past quarter, you know, good top-line performance, but margins contracted because of the mix of work. Can you touch on that? Do you worry that any of that represents some customer focus in terms of what the type of work that they'll do themselves versus what they have Clean Harbors do, or is that a blip on the radar?
No, I don't think it's them choosing to do work themselves. You know, when we talked about when we released our Q3 earnings, we talked about kind of margins in IS and the mix of waste, or excuse me, the mix of services changing a little bit, and I think just given some of the uncertainty in the economy, maybe some uncertainty politically at the time, you know, I think we saw customers in the industrial services space as they moved into the turnaround season kind of cut back on the work that they chose to do. It's a pattern that if you talk to the folks in the business that have been through several cycles, it's a pattern that we've seen before.
You know, the things about these types of services that are often done around turnarounds is, you know, you can only avoid them for a certain period of time. Ultimately, these are, you know, multi-million-dollar plants that need the appropriate maintenance and services performed, and ultimately you need to do it. So, you know, I wouldn't categorize it as a blip per se. I think it's part of an overall cycle that we've seen, and we do expect kind of those services to come back into the future.
Eric, from your vantage point, is this a one-year type industrial cycle, or just give us context for what period of time you're comparing against how long?
We believe that 2025 will be better. I think even if you talk to the business leaders in industrial services as they're talking to their customers here over the last several weeks, you know, I think there's been more discussion on a return to more normal services during turnarounds here in the coming year.
When you think of chemical plants and refineries, big, you know, plant operations that need those types of services, it's typically on a five-year cycle where you're almost like a car. That's the analogy we always use, and that's how the business when I first joined decades ago was explained to me that you're, you know, you've got to change your oil a certain amount of time, your tires get bald, you got to change those. And then there's things that you wait till they break or you can push off for a period of time because you just don't want to put that on your credit card this time in.
The same thing is happening either when the business is going really well, like in 2022, the refiners cut back on turnarounds because they were making so much money given what had happened in Russia and Ukraine, and you had $7 diesel that summer and all that. Those fall turnarounds were pushed into early 2023, and we saw a big benefit there. Similarly, this year the refiners have really struggled for those that follow that space. They've had a very tough year. Crack spreads are really tight. This fall they did the basics and they pushed some of the things out. We'll pick up not all of that. It's not a one-for-one, but we'll pick up some of that in 2025. We're set up to have a little rebound in industrial services, I think, next year.
Turnaround season next year.
Turnaround season next year. Yep.
Got it. And you know, so just putting the pieces together for environmental services line of business. So, you know, when we were here about a year and a half ago, you know, we spoke about with Mike and Jim, you know, margins eventually having runway to the high 20s and low 30s. Eric, do we still feel good about that level of profitability being achievable in this line of business over time?
Yeah, absolutely. You know, when you think about environmental services, I think over the last, you know, five years we've seen more than 400 basis points of margin expansion for a variety of reasons, but mostly the ones I spoke about earlier. You know, we've talked about and we even shared during our investor day about a year and a half back kind of our longer-term aspiration of seeing, you know, 30% margins in that business. So this year, based upon our forecast, you know, we'll be about 25% margins in environmental services. So, a ways to go. It is an aspirational goal.
But when you think about the strides we've made in the last five years, you think about, you know, the current market demand, you think about those tailwinds that I spoke about, you think about our new incinerator, you think about our pricing strategies and the part of our cultural DNA that is constantly looking at ways to become more efficient and cut costs. I can tell you there's some exciting kind of technology plays, some of them involving, you know, AI, some of them involving more automation that we believe can continue to drive margins that are ongoing in the business as well. So there's a lot of positive things, I think, here on the environmental services side where certainly kind of those 30% margins longer term are achievable.
As we get scale, Jerry, we're the 14th largest private motor carrier today. While we profile as an environmental services company and we can take all your hazardous waste and recycle what we can re-recycle, then destroy the rest safely, we're a huge transportation and logistics company. There's really a lot of runway left to introduce things like AI for optimizing burn plans. We think there's a ways to go here in terms of lifting our margins besides just being able to kind of price above inflation due to the scarcity of our assets.
I think the last point, just to add one final point on kind of margin expansion, I think something that's maybe overlooked sometimes is just the ability to, as we drive incremental volumes into the network, you know, those incremental volumes at the highly leverageable network. Each incremental volume, whether that be an incremental drum, it just drops to the bottom line that much more heavily and therefore increasing margins. It's really a fantastic network, as Jim said, very large kind of footprint logistically. We talked about the transportation savings that we'll see from the added Kimball incinerator as well as just the operational functionality. That's another key driver. As volumes increase just from the tailwinds, including kind of maybe captive transitions, you know, we see those driving margins as well.
You know, maybe to put a finer point on logistics savings, is that waste being trucked now for safety reasons? We're not putting it on rail, I'm assuming.
It's a combination. We use both avenues, both trucks and rail. Sometimes it depends upon the nature of the waste as to what route it goes. But certainly, you know, we're looking for ways, again, using some of the technology that I spoke about a minute before to become as efficient as possible across our entire transportation route.
In terms of becoming more efficient from a transportation standpoint, are we talking about Clean Harbors systems or are we using third parties?
Our third-party use is fairly limited. We try to internalize virtually all of our transportation. Quite frankly, I think customers like that, that they're dealing kind of with one company, both for trans and disposal. And quite frankly, we like that as well, knowing that it's our folks that transported the waste to our disposal sites or our TSDFs.
The logistics management systems, are those Clean Harbors specific or are they customized off the shelf?
No, they're homegrown as part of our kind of homegrown operation.
We have a proprietary low-cost routing system, and it all ties into the manifest and the type of the waste. So you have certain ways that have to go to a particular facility, and then you have others that you're just looking for how you can get it there most efficiently, including less empty miles, backhauling, relay networks to, you know, optimize the drivers, all of those things.
When you look at the performance and the room for improvement in terms of efficiency gains, how significant is that opportunity? How much can we reduce backhaul? Can you just give us any context on that AI comment that you spoke to Jim?
Yeah, I mean, Alan's been asked the question for decades. He would always answer it that we're in the middle innings. And I think if you asked him today after doing it for 40 years, he would say the same thing. And that's our founder, Alan McKim. He remains as our Chief Technology Officer, which if you know him, is a perfect fit because these are things that he does so well and invests his time and energy into and gets him out of bed every day and coming to the building. And he sees a lot of opportunity still in both AI process automation and some of those. Hard to put a number on it, but as you think about us incrementally gaining 25-50 basis points of margin, that network efficiency is a part of that.
Some of it is economies of scale, as Eric said, each incremental volume helps. We're looking to do things better and have our folks accomplish more through technology.
Is there a big rollout that's coming up that's expected to drive big improvement in 2027, 2026? Can you just give us a flavor for what's in the pipeline?
Yeah, there's a lot of different projects. I mean, on the industrial services, we've talked about this publicly before. We're working on a platform to sort of optimize there and avoid revenue leakage and make sure you're billing for each thing and getting all the right, you know, rates for your workers and all that because it's a very, when you're doing a turnaround, you've got 200, 300 people on site all doing different things, being asked to do different things. That's changing the scope of the engagement. It's very sophisticated billing to get that properly taken care of. So we're working on a platform that's addressing that that'll make us even more efficient around turnarounds. And so it kind of applies to a bunch of different parts. We have a lab pack business that we're applying AI to that's going to make those folks much more efficient.
So it's not we're going to announce that we've got, you know, some Clean Harbors AI and it's going to save us X dollars every year, but it's incremental goodness in each part of the business.
Yeah, we're looking to use technology. And both Mike and Eric are very keen on this, but looking to use technology to improve the way our people work. So kind of the lab pack idea that Jim just mentioned, really just allowing folks to use kind of a handheld technology to pack things more efficiently so that they can be transported more efficiently and then ultimately disposed of more efficiently. And it allows folks to do more jobs in a given day or in a given week, you know, which will help drive margins and also keep our people safe. That's an important aspect of the use of technology as well.
In terms of just to talk about the transportation part of the opportunity set, anything interesting that you folks are looking into in terms of using more natural gas engines versus EV versus diesel? Anything interesting going on based on your teams?
We're certainly exploring the ideas, Jerry. There's certain. I'm sure the audience is aware. There's certain jurisdictions, certain states that are driving necessity to look at that. We're going to be a little bit cautious on that front. We're a very environmentally friendly company and have sustainability goals. But if you think about the types of things that we're transporting, we want to be careful to ensure that, you know, we can continue on our routes. And so that's another factor that's just in play when you look at, you know, what's in our trucks, you know, that we got to think about as we kind of move to alternative vehicles.
And if we just shift the conversation to M&A, so, you know, really strong performance for you folks. Over the past five years, you know, generally you've added five points to revenue per year on average via acquisitions. And, you know, based on the synergy numbers that you've outlined, it sounds like there's been about a 30% improvement in the core EBITDA. Can you just talk about what have been, you know, aggregating the pieces, what have been the biggest buckets of that EBITDA performance improvement? And can we, when we look at an acquisition for you folks announced, you know, tomorrow, should we be thinking about the same synergy opportunities that you've delivered in the past?
Yeah, I think it could. Each acquisition is a little bit different, but I think the metrics kind of you just put out, Jerry, are spot on. But when I think about kind of the value that Clean Harbors brings to a target, some of the most common areas certainly are internalization of costs. So when you think about a company that's kind of in our swim lane from a waste perspective, you know, we're looking at things and how do we internalize some of their outside waste spend because of the vast assets that we have, you know, whether that be landfills, incinerators, wastewater, other assets, we can internalize a lot of that. So that's value we bring. And those are synergistic things that we see in every model. There's also transportation. We've talked a great deal about that, internalizing transportation.
There's always kind of the typical rooftops and back office labor and SG&A that drives, you know, those synergistic plays and brings more value to an acquisition. So it has been very successful for us over the course of the near 45-year history of the company. Acquisitions have been the growth engine. There's lots of opportunity out in the space to continue to do that right now. We have a very strong balance sheet, you know, less than, we'll finish this year probably less than two levered. So very strong balance sheet that's poised to continue to do acquisitions and grow acquisitions. But we want to do the right ones. You know, we don't want to just do acquisitions for the sake of growing through that avenue. We want to make sure we bring in assets that are complementary in our swim lanes.
We can bring true value through the things that I just talked about and continue to drive the business that way.
In terms of, you know, the downside of your margins improving over time and industry margins improving over time is presumably acquired multiples are moving up as well. You know, last couple of deals, 11x EBITDA pre-synergies, feels like valuations might be even headed higher than that in the market. Can you address on what you're seeing?
Yeah, certainly, you know, certainly with some recent deals that have been announced, those multiples seem to be trending higher. And I think that's a real thing. And we talk about it internally. And, you know, I think that's a real thing. I think it's a good aspect for Clean Harbors in general. Valuations are up. You know, you look at our multiple and it's increased. So, you know, historically, as you said, Jerry, you know, the last couple of deals, you know, about 11x purchase price synergized down from there pretty attractively. You know, maybe the cost of acquisitions is going up. I think the good thing for Clean Harbors, though, and in line with the comments I just made, is that for many of these acquisitions, we can bring more value than maybe some of the other competing companies to these acquisitions.
We can get more synergistic value and be able to kind of compete at multiple prices that we can afford. But ultimately, we're looking for acquisitions where we can bring that value, drive the after synergy multiples down below ours and really continue to drive our business both from a growth perspective as well as a share price perspective.
And Eric, Jim, at the analyst day, you know, you mentioned $4 billion potential M&A opportunities. You've deployed a billion dollars so far. So $3 billion to go in not a long time frame. Do we still feel good about deploying the additional $3 billion?
Yeah, we feel really good from the perspective that, hey, there's lots of opportunities out there. We feel really good from the perspective that we have a strong balance sheet and a great integration team to be able to do it. But again, I mentioned a moment ago, we're going to do acquisitions that make strategic sense, that make operational sense, that make financial sense, that make cultural sense. And so if we get to the end of this five-year horizon of 2027 that we put forth in the model and we haven't spent the full allotment that we put in that model, that's okay as long as we did the right ones. And so it always takes two to tango. You got to have the right deals come into the space that make sense in those manners that I just explained.
I think we've done that in our history and we'll continue to do that.
Yeah, we're not feeling a pressure that that's the number we have to hit. We built a model that was a really robust, well-thought-out model that you pick a leverage point and it sort of spits out a wallet of money. And so we say, well, this is what we would spend to stay at that leverage point. And if we go beyond that spend, or as Eric just said, if we go under that spend, that's why we showed the organic growth model. This is the core of the business and this is what we can bake on top of it and extract a lot of value. But we don't want to do a deal to do a deal. And the other thing I would say is that we turn down a lot of deals. It's something kind of off camera that you folks can't see.
You know, Brian who runs our M&A group, he looks at five deals a week because we're number one or number two in so many of our lines of business. We're just the natural buyer of a lot of companies. And so we pass on a lot of deals, not that we're looking for us to get credit for that, but we're very selective and we have a lot of optionality on the M&A front, which allows us to make better deals like a HEPACO , where we buy at 11 and synergize down to seven. Not a lot of other companies can do that.
In terms of shifting the conversation to Safety-Kleen, you know, last quarter, really strange disconnect between listed base oil prices and what was going on in the market. Can you talk about how that situation has resolved? Has the market gone back to, you know, what we see in the spreads and on Bloomberg matching reality, or is there still a disconnect?
No, I'd say, Jerry, there's still a disconnect out there, I think, between posted base oil pricing and what companies are seeing in the marketplace, and that, I think, has existed for a period of time, which is frustrating both for us and I think the external environment. I think the important thing is what are we doing about it? You know, what are we driving internally to offset the uncertainty in base oil pricing, and I think one of the things that we wanted to emphasize on our call a few weeks back was, you know, we're driving kind of our collection costs and looking to drive our collection costs down for that used motor oil, looking to continue to charge stop fees and charge customers for that collection of, in many cases, a hazardous waste, so that's the thing that the team is working most hard on.
We're the market leader there and we're looking for opportunities to continue to reduce that cost. We're also doing things from a strategic side that we've talked about to continue to grow the business. So whether that be, you know, moving to more production of Group III. So that was an exciting pilot program that we took on earlier this year that went successful at one of our re-refineries. You know, we're moving that into a second re-refinery here in 2025 where we're looking to continue to grow that business aligned with our goals. And then obviously strategic partnerships and, you know, the partnership that we entered into with Castrol. I think that's another really great agreement. I think the teams are working really well together and really excited about BP's more circular offering that we're partnering with them on.
You know, I think that's another area where we're looking to stabilize the business and then grow it.
And I want to talk about Group III in a moment. But just in terms of the market overall, you know, having run these assets for a long time, is there a cycle that the current environment compares to? How long do you think we'll be at this glut of base oil based on what you've seen in the past?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, when I look at the business, it's our most volatile business because it has some commodity exposure. So it's not quite as reliable or consistent as the disposal business. However, it's a terrific business, and we have customers that Safety-Kleen go back 50 years with. They buy the environmental side and we collect their waste oil and collect their oil filters. And as far as the cycle of that business, when I look over the last four years, if you look at 2021, we were coming out of COVID and the prices for lubricants and base oil was rising all year. And we put up, you know, $225 million of EBITDA. Then kind of went hyperbolic in 2022 because of Russia-Ukraine. And so we did over $300 million as it was rising all year and rising, gapping up all year.
Then you had, you know, 2023. You had it kind of gapping down. It was sort of the hangover from that period. So you're under pricing pressure all year. And our profitability dropped down to kind of the 170 range. And now we sit here with our latest guidance saying kind of 150 because it's still drifting down a bit this year, but incrementally down. And so when we look at sort of the margin contraction and expansion when the prices are kind of going up and down, we're managing the business right behind all of that. And so there's always going to be that lag. And I think when you look out over those last four years, you see what a small lag to our benefit looks like, what a large lag looks like, and then kind of the opposite the past two years.
But as far as the business itself, it's very consistent in the operations of the business. We've been picking up from Jerry's Auto Body for maybe 20-30 years. And you know the driver. And so we're managing those relationships and collecting that oil and recycling it. And as Eric said, it's a hazardous waste in a number of states. And it overlaps with there's about 100,000 customers we collect waste oil from. And they're part of the 200,000 plus Safety-Kleen branch customers. So the customer sees us as Safety-Kleen. The customer doesn't see us as the two segments like the way we report to you folks. And so the integrated business is there. And so we're just working our way through the cycle. And we put out a press release recently about being much more aggressive on the front side.
So as Eric likes to say, we're taking some offensive moves or making some defensive moves. We idled our facility in California. And then we're playing out, which will be beneficial over the next several years, both the Group III investment and our relationship with Castrol.
Careful, that's low-quality motor oil that you're picking up from us.
Yeah, Jerry. Give me some credit. That's good stuff.
The 150 million run rate EBITDA, I mean, that's still a pretty healthy margin for trough of the cycle. So, you know, to your point, Jim, that the team is performing well. You know, what we're all trying to understand is, you know, given the oversupply is, you know, outside of Clean Harbors' control, when will we see the eventual upcycle? You know, I think what we've seen in terms of refining spreads, these disconnects, I think can last probably longer than we'd like. I'm wondering if you have a view on how that might play out.
I think we just got aggressive on the front end of the spread. And so we're not. We're anticipating there'll be further weakness as part of doing that. If the markets were to turn and get better, then that'll put us in a much better position. But we're sort of trying to draw the line here that this is the trough and we're taking all the steps to kind of put the business at this level or higher going forward.
The Group III initiative, so you're essentially getting $1-$2 more per gallon as a result. What are the economics of it? You know, how much does the investment cost? And are you displacing anybody in the market with this product?
In terms of the economics, Jerry, it's really a logistical play in making sure that we get kind of the high quality UMO. So maybe the stuff that we're not picking up at Jerry's Auto Body, but getting it to the right site. So it's an accumulation play of making sure you kind of get that high quality, maybe more synthetic backed, you know, the BMW dealerships, the Lexus dealerships, getting oil from there and getting it to the site where we're going to produce Group III . So it's not like it's an incremental capital investment at the refineries. It's really that. So it's not a whole lot of incremental cost. The incremental margin certainly is on the exit price, the sale, because it is a higher quality product. So we're excited about it.
Like I said, we're looking to expand it here in 2025 and, you know, really continue to kind of grow this business that, as you say, even at the trough here, we still see, you know, respectable margins and attractive free cash flow being generated, and it is a complementary business to the Safety-Kleen branch side of the house and the environmental services side of the business where we've seen, you know, double digit EBITDA growth there for the last few years, so a very complementary piece of the business.
Super. Eric, Jim, thank you so much for your time and insights.
Thank you all.
Thank you.
Thanks.