Clean Harbors, Inc. (CLH)
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Raymond James Institutional Investors Conference

Mar 6, 2023

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Let's go ahead and get started with the next presentation. First off, thank you guys, everybody, for coming right after lunch. It's kind of a tough spot, but we have a great crowd here. But for those who don't know me, I'm Tyler Brown, senior analyst here at Rayjay. I cover environmental services. I do transportation. I also do some of the heavy construction materials. We have a lot of companies. Very excited to have Clean Harbors with us this afternoon.

Presenting today is Mike Battles, the current CFO. We're gonna talk about that. Eric Dugas, who's the currently the chief accounting officer. We'll also talk about that 'cause we have some change afoot, Mike. I don't think we have any slides, right? We're just gonna kinda go through a fireside chat here. This is interactive.

If you would like to ask questions, I will not be offended if you interrupt me, so we can kinda, you know, make it interactive if questions are out there. I wanna start. Before we give a lay of the land, we have to talk change. People are changing. Some things are changing at Clean Harbors. I'll kinda leave it open-ended for you, but we have had some leadership change, and maybe we can talk just a little bit about that to start.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Sure. Thanks. Thanks, Tyler, and thanks to the team at Rayjay for having us. Again, my name is Mike Battles. I'm currently the Chief Financial Officer, and I'm here with Eric Dugas, our Chief Accounting Officer, as Tyler said. The change has happened. We have an announcement that happened both back in November and then last week. As of April first, I'll be the Co-CEO, which we'll talk more about that, and then Eric will be the Chief Financial Officer. We're all pretty excited about taking on those new roles.

You know, one question that we've been getting around the co-CEO role is that, you know, kinda why and how and, you know, just, you kinda have to have one, maybe one voice at the top versus two, and is that gonna create some confusion? Certainly I wanna explain that to people here, so they understand. I think that the, maybe on the outside, you look in, you say, "Well, that's kinda weird," but if you're on the inside, it's actually pretty normal. Alan McKim, the current CEO and the founder of the company, started the company 43 years ago.

You know, he is still very much involved in the day-to-day, but now he's gonna be moving on to be more involved in just more in technology. On the inside, it's actually not that big of a change at all. You're certainly seen, you know, Alan doing less and less, and us, Eric Gerstenberg and myself, the other Co-CEO, who is the Chief Operating Officer, doing more and more, whether it be meeting with investors, meeting with customers, presenting to employees, you know, deriving direction and strategy. Thinking about it from, from your shoes, you know, a CEO change creates risk. It creates risk. It's like, is he or she gonna turn the ship kinda left or right?

In our view, this is kind of the most de-risked transaction transition you could have. You're gonna have, you know, two people who've been with the company. Eric Gerstenberg's been here for 34 years. I've been here for 10. You know, we've worked well together. We both have our swim lanes we focus on. We both, in the new organization, we're not gonna have the whole leadership structure report to kind of both of us. We're gonna have, you know, both of us are gonna have operations and back office support, but ultimately, we're responsible for the entire organization. We're both signing the financial statements. We're both responsible for the direction of the company. Frankly, we've been doing it now for a number of years.

Us with Alan and Eric Dugas as well, been driving the organization from a strategic direction, M&A, capital improvement, organizational design, structure, all the things you'd wanna see from a CEO, and you're gonna get more of that. My, my view on it is if you kinda like what we're doing and you like kinda the strategy we've been taking, I would assume you're gonna see more of that with Eric and I at the lead.

Eric J. Dugas
EVP and CFO, Clean Harbors

Perfect. great lead in. I would like to. I'm sure everybody wants to talk about base oil. I actually don't, at least in the beginning here. I would just like to talk a little bit about the core business, because I think this is really where the story is at Clean Harbors. First off, and just we have a lot of people, obviously, in the room, some people may be new. When I think about the ES business, Environmental Services business, I think about it as a collection, transportation, and disposal business. Can you talk a little bit about what you do in that business and maybe some of the different lines of business and just kinda There's a lot in ES, so if we could just talk a little bit about that to start with.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Sure. Sure. Environmental Services, we have two segments. We have an Environmental Services business segment. We have a Safety-Kleen Sustainability Solutions, Safety-Kleen Oil segment. We have a Corporate segment, and that's our overall business. Of the $5 billion, $5.1 billion of revenue, about $4.1 billion of it or $4 billion of it came from the Environmental Services segment that Tyler wanted me to speak to first. As Tyler said, we collect and dispose of hazardous waste, but it's more than that. Hazardous waste comes in many different places. It can be, you know, kind of a, let's say, I'm gonna call it the Technical Services business, which is going out and collecting, you know, a Dow plant has a tanker car full of waste.

We go out there once a week, once every 10 days, pick up that tanker and dispose of that in our network of incinerators, landfills, wastewater treatment facilities, solvent recycling, and so forth. That's our Technical Services. That's about $1.5 billion of the $4 billion. The other part we do is we do an Industrial Services business. Similar type of thing, picking up hazardous waste, but that's more like a plant goes down for two weeks for a turnaround, a chemical plant, a refinery. We bring in our specialized equipment and people to clean out the pipes, to get it set up to run again efficiently. We take all that waste and dispose of that in our networks. That's about $1.3 billion of the $4 billion, which is all in our footnotes of our financial statements.

The other part of the business is a Field Services business, that's an emergency response business or maybe a manhole cleanup, maybe in a lot of utility business, where there'll be a spill on a highway, well, they bring in our ER team. We do about 6,000 emergency responses a year. I don't know where they are, but I know there's been about 6,000 a year in North America, that's about, you know, $400 million-$500 million of revenue in 2022. The last piece is our Safety-Kleen branch business. What that is, think of the Dow plants. Those are the large quantity generators, like a tanker car full.

You've got Tyler's Auto Body Shop, where he has, you know, brake pads and oily rags and things he can't put in the dumpster, small quantity generation. We pick that up as well. We also do what's called a parts washer service, which is, you know, he has to clean brake pads. The brake pads need to be cleaned. You can't clean that in a sink. You can't use water to clean that. We have a solvent that we sell in a tub and a drum, and they can clean parts with that. That solvent gets dirty and needs to be changed every 6-8 weeks. That is mostly in automotive, but some of it's industrial as well.

That business is about $800 million-$900 million of revenue. That generates small quantity generation waste, two or three drums at Tyler's Auto Body Shop that we'll take back and dispose of in our network. That's basically. Think of it. It's all actually pretty simple, and we'll get into this in our investor day, which is later this month. We'll talk more about that as well. It really is. They're all trying to feed the beast.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Yeah.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

The business is actually really relatively straightforward. Recycle what we can recycle and then get it and leverage our footprint, our footprint of nine hazardous waste incinerators, our nine solid waste landfills, our over 30 TSDFs across North America. It really is quite a big network of incineration capacity, of disposal capacity.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Right. When we think about this spectrum of competition, and we think about those incinerators, those landfills, those TSDFs, the wastewater.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Yes.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

that is really a very high moat business. As we move kinda down into the industrial, into the Field, I'm curious how competitive those two segments are.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Just to level set, on the incineration network, we own about 70% of the market. We own 9-13 commercial hazard incinerators in North America. We own about 30% of the hazardous waste landfills. U.S. Ecology now Republic Services owns also about 30%. Then it goes down from there. We own about 30% of the TSDFs in the country and so forth. That business, as Tyler's alluding, is a high moat business. Scarce assets, hard to replicate, priced accordingly as a scarce asset. We also, as I mentioned earlier, do a lot of work around Industrial Services or Field Services, and that's people and trucks. You know, come to find out over the

We're, you know, 20%, 30% of the Industrial Services market in North America. That business is, you know, actually fairly competitive. The idea behind it, though, what's happening, what we see over the past year or two, is that obviously our scarce assets, our disposal assets, our highly permitted facilities are a big moat. Come to find out, people and trucks are also a big moat as well. They're also pretty scarce. So we can price those accordingly, and we have over the past year, and we're gonna talk more about margin, but that's really been a big driver of our margins over the past couple of years of pricing our people and our trucks as scarce as they are, the plants I think they are.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

I think it's pretty straightforward on the incinerator and landfill pricing. I'm curious just as an external consumer of the story, how do those large industrial contracts or I kinda get Field Services or an emergency response, maybe it's priced at that point in time. I am curious because we are gonna get into margins, but one of the stories here is your ES margins have done very well, particularly over the past year. Your flexibility on price, 'cause I think that was a big question kinda going into this hyperinflationary or high inflationary environment, I should say. If you can give us a little color on how pricing is done in that business.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Yeah. Again, it depends on what business it is. Back to the business we talked about a minute ago. On Technical Services, it's an annual contract with price increases based on GDP and other types of growth. On Field Services, as Tyler said, it's more of an emergency response, you know, kind of get in there. We have an MOA, a memorandum of understanding on a price. We'll go and negotiate that individually. On Industrial Services, there are annual contracts as well as they bid out a turnaround when they close the plant down. On the SK branch business, it's more of a subscription business.

It's more on an annual subscription basis where we go out and do a parts washer, and then the drums are usually based on a price per drum type of contract.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Perfect. Okay. Before we get too much into the margins, I do wanna talk about logistics as well, just really quickly.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Yeah.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

It feels to me to be a pretty big competitive advantage here. You're a large consumer of transportation. You obviously have a large fleet of trucks, rail cars, et cetera, et cetera.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Yes.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Can you just talk a little bit about that as a competitive advantage in driving, again, kind of this concept of more moat in the business?

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Yeah. That speaks a little bit to our to the business model that we provide. When you think about hazardous waste, and there's a, You open up a can of solvent, you are a hazardous waste generator, whether you know it or not. When you think about hazardous waste, you know, that waste needs to be manifested on-site. It means we have to tell the government what it is. As we ship it across state lines, we have to tell each state that, "Yeah, here comes some waste that's gonna roll through your town, roll through your state, and onto this end disposal," wherever that is, whether it be a landfill, incinerator, or what have you. So that's why we have to do it ourselves.

We tend to wanna make sure that we wanna test it on the site to make sure we know what it is. We wanna make sure when it gets to our plant, we wanna know we can't put it in the hole or put it in an incinerator without knowing what. We do a lot of testing either on-site or both at on-site and when we actually get to end disposal. Because, again, you don't wanna. It's a specialty type of an. You can't just take this stuff down the highway. It needs to be manifested, it needs to be placarded properly, it needs to be specially trained to take this waste. We tend to do it ourselves. To Tyler's point, I think it's a competitive advantage.

We have 15,000 pieces of rolling stock trucks and trailers. We're the 17th largest commercial shipper in North America. We have, you know, a huge fleet across the We have our own repair shops, our own truck manufacturing facilities. We do a lot of it ourselves with the idea being that, A, it's a competitive advantage from a margin standpoint. We can price it accordingly. B, it's a safety and compliance element because, again, what we're doing is, it's hazardous waste. It needs to be manifested, it needs to be carefully transported. We really wanna make sure we're doing it well on trucks that run well and people that are properly trained.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Perfect. We talked a little bit about I kinda wanna keep coming back to these disposal assets. In the incinerator business in particular, it is possible that waste generators can have their own incinerators. It could be known as a captive incinerator. I'm curious about what you've seen in that market over the last few years. Have you seen a propensity for those to kind of, let's say, shutter or kinda go away?

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Sure.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

with time?

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Sure. These numbers are rough. We do about 550,000 tons of waste a year. We incinerate 550,000 tons of waste a year. The market is, let's say, 700,000-750,000 tons of waste a year. That's only the commercial market today. As Tyler alluded to, there's another market out there called a captive incinerator. Think of it, I'll pick on Dow. The end of a Dow plant, they have an incinerator, it's 5,000 tons, 10,000 tons, that just incinerate the waste on that site, hence the name captive, right? What happens is, though, they have the same regulation and compliance that we do, the same capital needs that we do. When those

The same environmental issues, they still have auditors like our EPA auditors like we do. When those things come up to speed, and they get audited, and that's a ding on their ESG score, that makes it harder for them to be compliant. Costs are going up just like they are for us. As such, there's a pressure on them to close those captives, which brings more waste into the network. That's what happened in 2021, the largest captive in North America, 3M in Minnesota closed, 40,000 tons of waste came into the network. We got it all. That helped us, you know, drive pricing up, drive demand up into the network.

What Tyler's getting after is that we have a certain pile of waste that is what's manufactured in the U.S. from a chemical standpoint. Hazardous waste is manufactured in the United States. There's also this captive environment that could close over time. It has closed over time, which brings more waste into the commercial market.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Yes, please.

Speaker 4

The 13 incinerators, how many of those are captive or are captive not in that 13 number?

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

13 is not in that number. Those are all commercial hazardous incinerators. None of them are captives.

Speaker 4

How many captives would there be outside of?

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

There's like 40- 45, captive incinerators, some are really small, like 5,000, 10,000 tons. Some wouldn't fit in our incinerator network based on kinda what they do. Let's say there's 10- 15 that are incremental capacity that come on the network. Whether we get that waste or someone else gets that waste, it helps the whole population, right? 'Cause there's just more waste, let's say, in the network, if you will.

Speaker 4

Would 3M have been the biggest?

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

It was. Yes, it was. It was. We got all that.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

It's interesting because I think you mentioned 550,000 tons. You run, roughly, I think you run, say, 90% utilization. In order to support the captives, you made an investment in El Dorado, Arkansas a couple years ago that went fairly swimmingly, from what I can tell. It sounds like you've got another incinerator. These aren't new incinerators. I think this is important.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Mm.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

These are existing facilities with a new kiln if I am correct on that?

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Absolutely.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

If you could talk a little bit about your Kimball investment and how your El Dorado investment again, why do you make those investments for the incremental capacity to handle what seems like more waste coming your way?

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Yeah. You know, there's a fair amount of waste in our network today, whether it's the closure of 3M and just more reshoring, onshoring, you know, investment in the United States, investment in North America, and that's driving a lot more waste into our network. We're backed up, and we talked about that on our earnings call. We got more waste than The industry has more waste than it knows what to do with at the moment. I wish the Kimball plant, the Kimball Nebraska plant that Tyler mentioned, was ready tomorrow. It's a 70,000 ton incinerator, so it'd add about 8% to our existing capacity. It is, it's, as I said, it's on an existing site, so we have two kilns already there. It's a third site.

There hasn't been a new greenfield incinerator permitted in North America in over 20 years. The only way this happens is when you're taking a footprint and add to it. We're doing that. It'll be ready at the end of 2024. It's about $180 million. Next year is about $90 million to spend, the big year for the spend. That's when the actual kiln itself, the rotary kiln, that actually gets going. That's what gets installed next year. That's a big spend. This year, 2023, excuse me. Then it ramps up. Again, it goes on waste early in early 2025. We're really excited about it. It's gonna generate a huge amount of cash flows.

You think about 70,000 tons, you think about 90% of that, you think about, okay, 2,000 pounds per ton. Average price per pound, $0.60. Margin's 40%. It You know, that's We'll do better than that 'cause these newer kilns run more efficiently, so we're at a higher, probably a higher price per pound than the average of $0.60. You don't need to be a math whiz to see how profitable this gets really fast once we get it kinda up and running. We've seen that. Some of the results we're seeing today in 2022 are a direct result of the incinerator we built in Arkansas back in 2017. It's the same team.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Mm.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

It's the same drawing. It's the same guys building this one. We're hopeful that. We're on time and on budget. We meet once a month. Of all the risks I have out there, that's not one of them. They're on top of this. They're managing it really well, and I'm excited about that kiln and hope it gets done a little early. I don't know. I wouldn't wanna commit to that.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Yeah.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

certainly by early 2025, it should be kinda up and running, burning on waste, as they call it.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Even, Mike, I can do that math. I appreciate that. Thank you for helping us there. As we think about, these are obviously critical infrastructure assets, right? This waste is going to It's That The volatile molecule is a byproduct of a chemical process, let's just say.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Yes.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

We're always going to have this waste. It seems like that market is fairly tight, maybe tightening if the captive incinerators go down more. I mean, it seems like the outlook for price should be pretty good, at least consistent and durable. Maybe that's a good way to put it as opposed to putting a number on it, but it should be a pretty consistent.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Yeah. We've never gone backwards on price.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Yeah.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

For incineration capacity or landfill capacity. Now, maybe in certain years when there's been, you know, recessions, we've slowed down price increases, but we've never. The train's never stopped. We never hit the reverse button on incinerator pricing.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Okay, perfect. When we think about that business in totality, so if I include all of what you do in ES, I mean, is that kind of an industrial production plus type of growth, or how should we think about that organically?

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

If you're putting DCF models together, you know, I would say going out the next, you know, a five-year model, a seven-year model, you know, it's IP plus 100, 200 basis points. Why do I say that? Because of captives closing and new regulation and reshoring. Like, there's a, there's an IP plus some number there in the outer years. In the next few years, in ES, I think it grows faster than that. I think that there's such a demand, such an influx of new regulation of the Chips bill, infrastructure spend, of reshoring that's driving a fair amount of waste, fair amount of manufacturing in the US, and that generates a fair amount of waste. Don't think it's just chemical and refining. Well, they generate a fair amount of hazardous waste, no doubt.

It also is basically everything. Everything generates hazardous waste, whether it be pharma or whether it be education with lab movement around, or whether it be in the retail environment. Retail environment went from 0% to 3% of our business because people can't put fertilizer in a dumpster. That type of thing is generating, you know, a fair amount of waste. Any manufacturing, any U.S. manufacturing, North American manufacturing is good for Clean Harbors, no matter kind of what it is.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Perfect. Question.

Speaker 4

Quick question. You mentioned the chip side. I mean, something under a bachelor and a ton of chemical waste. I mean, is that a pretty sizable opportunity over the next several years to build out capacity here?

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Yes. The issue is this, is that, you know, they don't turn the plant on and say, "Okay, now who's gonna take this waste?" We're already working with those large chip manufacturers today to make sure that we have the capacity in our network to handle that type of waste when it comes online, because obviously that can stop a plant. If we can't handle the waste that comes out of the manufacturing process, well, then that's a problem for us. We're already working with those large chip manufacturers to ensure that it's not all just incineration either. We can do a lot of things with it and be creative with it to make sure it gets disposed of properly. Certainly, some of our larger customers are chip manufacturers.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Question?

Speaker 4

When you took over the 3M business, did you take over the infrastructure? Did you take over their incinerator, or did you put that into your own?

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

That incinerator got closed because it was non-compliant. We're actually working with them now to clean up the site. Not only do we take the waste from the actual kiln, we actually take all the waste at the customers, at the sites across the 3M plants today. It's actually a pretty big deal because it's not just, okay, here comes the waste, we're gonna take that. Oh, no. As I said earlier, we wanna test that waste on-site. We have people, and we go out to the 3M in Linden, New Jersey, and the 3M in Maryland, and we go pick that waste up, just like we would for any other customer. It's actually turned into a pretty big deal.

Not just the disposal side itself, but also the transport side, people and transport side.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

back and then front.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Couple of questions here.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Yeah.

Speaker 4

Mike, how much hazardous waste goes on rail, and are there skills that happen that are very efficient for you or is the majority of yours roll on trucks?

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

You know, a majority is, when it comes to hazardous waste, is on trucks. We do take a fair amount of oil. We'll talk about the SK oil business in a minute. That's on rail. A majority of it's on trucks.

Speaker 4

What are the economics of the opportunity to to either operate and/or own the captive incinerators of those captive players?

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

I just wanna finish one more thought on the question the gentleman in the back asked. I'll get to your question in a minute. You know, we do have, though, something we're really proud of is an industry-leading safety record and an industry-leading compliance record. We are the solution for what happened in Ohio. We are the solve for that. We're not the creator of that. We are the solution of that, to that problem. We have a small presence on site right now. We don't have the contract with Norfolk Southern. Another company does. Certainly, you know, we view ourselves as a problem solver, and we certainly have talked to the government.

As it came up in the Q4 earnings call, we talked to the government. We're open for business. We're ready to help wherever, whatever needs to be done. Again, we're proud of what we do as far as solving the waste. We didn't generate the waste. We're solving the problem for our customers.

Speaker 4

SKSS margins on collection, is that something that's getting better and better for you, for your client, SKSS?

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

You know, margins are tough to measure on that business because we're selling a base oil at the end, and that the oil price moves up or down. Absolute dollars, we're really happy about the profitability of our SKSS business, but it's tough to measure margins per se. Margins in 2023 were dynamite. 2022, they come down a little bit in our, in our guide.

Speaker 4

You should be able to manage those margins over 12 months and not 3 months if you're gonna manage the input and the output on that side.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

I totally agree. What happens is that let's say oil prices come down. Instead of paying for that oil, we charge for that oil. In that case, that becomes revenue for us. It does make your margins look a little weird when those things type of happen. When I speak about the SKSS business, I'd rather talk about absolute dollars and the margins over some time horizon. We're hopeful that they're +20%, but it's hard to kinda put a finger on it. Like, last year, they were over 30%. This year, we're hopeful, you know, it comes down a little bit. I'm sorry, can you repeat your question?

Speaker 4

Yeah. I was curious about the opportunity related to the captive incinerator.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Yes.

Speaker 4

There's an opportunity to either operate and/or.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Yes. We know all those customers 'cause they get shut down and they need waste. The plant still runs, so we take that waste. We have regular conversations with them. We're kind of open to whatever that it is. We tend not to, like, run someone else's plant. We wanna kinda own that plant for safety and compliance reasons. We'll do that. Probably not plan A, maybe plan B, but we're open to kinda those types of conversations. In most cases, we kinda like the 3M way. Close that plant down, put the waste into our network, or maybe even transfer the permit to us. The problem is they're captive. They tend not to. We wanna do more than that.

We wanna take their waste plus more waste, so that's always a bit of a challenge right there.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Eric, we gotta pull you in here, right? We gotta talk about margins 'cause that's what we're gonna talk about. We only have five minutes left.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Yeah.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Let's move them quick. I do wanna talk about margins because I think ES margins were up 100 basis points this year, which is fantastic, but there was a lot moving underneath, you know, kind of the surface if you think about it, CARES, dilutive impact from M&A. Can you just talk a little bit about how the core margins performed?

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Yeah.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

In 2022, and maybe what we're thinking as we look to 2023?

Eric J. Dugas
EVP and CFO, Clean Harbors

Yeah. As you mentioned, you know, a lot of kinda headwinds in the margin front. We had a lot of decon work from COVID that was in 2021 that we lost in 2022. We had some CARES monies. We also had the large HydroChem acquisition. When you look at our Industrial Services business, probably a different lower margin profile than the core business, as Tyler just referred to. You know, I think if you look at the core business, you know, you're looking at, you know, 280 basis points of growth throughout the year.

If you just look at our financial statements, you know, for the whole year, we had about 100 basis points in ES of growth, but we exited the year at about over 300 basis points of growth in that margin. You know, what drove that? Obviously, with inflation in the background, our pricing strategies that we alluded to, really getting granular, looking at customers, rolling out pricing strategies, equipping our salespeople and our operationals people with the information they need to have good discussions. But there's lots of other things that go on. You know, I think culturally, in our business, we look at cost-cutting measures all the time, trying to find efficiencies in the business. Maybe just two examples there, Tyler, you know. If you think about transportation, that's a big piece of our business.

How do we move the waste around? How do we move it around efficiently, right? low margin routing or low cost routing, I should say. The second thing I would point out is our TSDFs. These are facilities where kind of a intermediate step between collecting the waste at the customer sites and bringing it to the final place of disposal. Those sites, we can get the waste together, we can repack it safely and efficiently, so that we're bringing a full barrel of waste or a full tank of waste to the end site and destroy it properly there. We can also pull out some of the waste streams that we can recycle. Really looking at those projects and constantly driving cost savings in those types of ways.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Couple minutes here. Let's talk about the balance sheet really quickly. You're a very cash-generative business to start with, even with the burdening of the Kimball Incinerator. Can you talk about free cash flow? Can we talk about capital allocation priorities? Can you talk about where the leverage is?

Eric J. Dugas
EVP and CFO, Clean Harbors

Yeah.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

All of those things kind of as we think about go forward and what the priorities and use of capital will be.

Eric J. Dugas
EVP and CFO, Clean Harbors

Yeah. I'll take it and Mike chime in, you know.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Sure.

Eric J. Dugas
EVP and CFO, Clean Harbors

When I think about free cash flow, if you look at our guidance that we gave out last week, obviously Kimball is a large spend this year. We'll spend about $90 million of free cash flow on that new asset. If I were to add that cash flow back to our guidance, we'd be just over $400 million of free cash flow for 2023 is what we're expecting. Once Kimball gets up and running in a few years, we really see this business as continuing to grow from a free cash flow perspective. Balance sheet is strong, as you mentioned, Tyler. We'll continue to look to grow the business through acquisitions as well as internal projects.

Maybe not all the size and scope of a Kimball, but constantly looking to drive our network.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

You set it up. Last one.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Ha.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Analyst Day.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

That's right.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

What are we gonna hear at this Analyst Day that's been 10 years, you know, I think it's been 10 years?

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

Once a decade.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Once a decade.

Michael L. Battles
Co-CEO, Clean Harbors

We have an Analyst Day. We're really excited about that. At the end of the month, 29th October you can talk to Jim Buckley, who is our IR lead, if you wanna attend. We certainly would love to have you. I think it's gonna be a great opportunity to hear, you know, not just from me and Eric, and Eric Gerstenberg, the other CEO, but then the deep management team. I think there's a really strong team. You'll get a lot out of that, to meet them and spend some time with them. I think we're gonna talk a lot about our strategy, which is not terribly dissimilar to what we've already done, but maybe articulate it a little differently.

Also, we're excited about, you know, talking about long-term goals and how we try to achieve those goals and what we're trying to do. Of course, I think the best part about it is it wouldn't be Clean Harbors if we don't do a show and tell. We're gonna take you to our re-refinery, which is in East Chicago. It's about an hour away. It's in Indiana. It's the largest re-refinery in the world. You'll see how our oil business takes dirty motor oil and makes base oil out of it, which is 75% of all motor oil is base oil. We're really excited about it. We'd love to have you all there.

Patrick Tyler Brown
Senior Analyst, Raymond James

Perfect.

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