Good morning once again, everyone. I'm Jerry Revich at Goldman Sachs. Really delighted to have with me the senior management team from Clean Harbors. Immediately to my left is Mike Battles, Co-Chief Executive Officer, and Eric Dugas, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Also, we have Jim Buckley, Head of Investor Relations. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us.
Yeah, thanks for having us, and thanks to the Goldman Sachs team for for having us at your conference.
Thank you, Mike. Fresh out of your Analyst Day, you know, what really stood out to me is, you know, out of the outperformance for the stock that you folks laid out at the Analyst Day, what we've seen specifically over the past four years in particular.
Mm-hmm.
It feels like we've hit an inflection, across your businesses over that timeframe. I'm wondering if we just, to frame the conversation, just talk about you know, what's really clicked in the business over that timeframe to drive the margin expansion, M&A accretion, and how do you see the operating momentum from here?
Again, thanks for having us, Jerry. I appreciate the opportunity to tell the Clean Harbors story. You know, it's a good question. I think we kind of say it's about four or five different things about why the... You know, if you look at the ES business over the first, you know, four or five years ago and kind of where it's happening now, I think you can lay it into, like, four or five things. The first of all, I think that going back a few years, I think the vision was, "Hey, we need to grow. We need to fill the plants, and we need to grow, and we need to get waste." I think that mindset has changed because the answer now, we need to grow profitably.
What does that mean? You know, in the technical services business, which is where our incinerators and our landfills primarily reside, it's, like, less dirt jobs, less fuel jobs, less med waste, more direct burn and drum volume, which are a higher mix, higher price point. You know, these plants that we built can handle that, and we needed to stop, you know, just taking whatever was down the pike and focus our energy on the higher margin waste stream. If you look at what's happened over the past few years, there's certainly a mix shift up the curve to get a kind of higher priced waste streams. On the industrial services and on the field service business, one's about $1.2 billion, the other one's about $400 million or $500 million.
I'm not sure that number's perfect, but it's in our financial statements. The, you know, we've come to find out there is that, hey, guess what? Just like disposal assets are hard to replicate and hard to maintain, you know, qualified people and specialty equipment is also hard to get. We really have been focused on, hey, look it, we need to get a price that covers ourselves for our emergency response work. We need a price that covers our stuff for the dangerous work that we're doing at an industrial turnaround. We've been able to. Oh, by the way, since we are a market leader in these spaces we play in, and it's a big enough job, it's hard to replicate that.
We've been able to separate ourselves from our competition and drive a better price. Those types of things have on the IS side, industrial services, field services, and tech services. On the SK branch, also small quantity generation, you know, that's been able. Since we are such a dominant player, we've been able to drive price there as well. A lot of the drums we get are incineration drums, so that's also been able to drive price there. The other thing I think that's happening over the past four or five years, to answer your question, is I do think the pie is getting bigger. I do believe that. You know, obviously, you read about reshoring and onshoring, kind of a cool, fun thing to say. What we really see it in our, with our customers.
We do operating reviews every month. We get involved in. It's a two-day event. We get involved in all the details. We go business by business. I'm using Dow as an example, but it's not particular to Dow, is that, you know, Dow went from 3 loads a week to 4 loads a week. We asked the question, "Well, why is it going from 3 loads?" The answer is, well, they added an extra shift. They added. They're paying a little overtime. Well, why are they doing that? The business is doing well, but they may. I suspect that they're slowing down their German plant and their Chinese plant and moving more here to the US and producing a little bit more here.
I think that that shoring phenomenon, not reshoring, the shoring phenomenon is really happening, and we certainly see it in our financials. I think that the pie is getting bigger in that regard, which allows us to drive price, to be more selective and really drive those margins up.
Really interesting, Mike. Lots of to unpack there that's going well. The higher margin, higher priced waste streams, can we start there? How are you folks transitioning what goes into the post-collection system? How are you driving such a big shift?
I think what's happening there, Jerry, is that, you know, we've done a much better job of looking at contract pricing on making sure that we're getting the proper margin and stack ranking customers, getting better access to data. It's actually not terribly dissimilar to what Stericycle's doing, they're focusing on focusing on revenue generation opportunities that are at a higher price point. I think that we're doing the same for us, and we've been doing it for a long time. That allows us to be like, "Hey, who is the lowest customer that we get a fluorinated waste stream from? Let's talk about a price increase for those guys." Because there's so much demand, because we thought about the shoring phenomena, well, we can tell them we can't take it.
I kind of spoke to this in the Investor Day presentation, is that, you know, when someone opens up a can of solvent, you're creating hazardous waste. In many cases, that has to come to us. Like the solid waste guys, there aren't a lot of choices for you out there for what you do with this thing. We've always been... Going back a few, we were hesitant to raise prices. We want to get a full share of wallet. That's changed. That's changed.
We got to get the appropriate margin on every product.
That's it. That's right.
If Dow wants to give us a product.
If they want to shut us off for industrial services, so be it. We got to get margin on the businesses that we can on everything.
Very interesting. In terms of, on the post-collection side, how far are we into this repricing journey?
You know, I think that when I think about pricing in our environmental service business, you know, people will tell us we hit the wall on pricing with their feet, and they haven't yet. More pricing coming.
Mm.
How about that?
Sounds good. In terms of, on the industrial service side, so that's a really interesting dynamic because, you know, even in an economic slowdown, the employment rate or the unemployment rate, I should say, hasn't risen much. Is that what's happening, so you folks are able to charge for the talent that you folks have in that line of business? Is that what's happening?
I think it has to do with the fact that we've been able to do a good job of retaining our people and offering them a career path. I mean, we bought these companies from private equity and we're making investments in benefits, in vacation days, in holidays. Like, they weren't doing that. We're trying to develop... I think that's really lowered our turnover rate and helped with our retention, which again has a kind of a virtuous cycle. You know, you get more talent, they're safer, they can do more work, they look for more selling opportunities. It really has been that along with when there's a problem, when there's an unplanned turnaround and you need 30 people tomorrow, there aren't that many companies that can do that.
We're in every single city and town in North America, while we may not have them in the Baton Rouge office, we can bring them in from New Orleans. We can bring them in, and we bring the people in to service our customers. Again, that's a differentiator in my mind from, let's say, a regional player that we talked about at Investor Day.
Mike, what's interesting about this type of example that we're talking about, you know, unplanned downtime, it can drive volatility in the business year to year. We've seen actually, you know, pretty steady results from you folks. Can you talk about how have you been able to mitigate the impact of, well, we didn't have this major event in region X this year versus last year? It hasn't come up on any-.
No
... earnings call. Talk to us.
You know.
how you've been able to smooth that out.
We have a lot of different lines of business, and if one's slowing down or has a big project and the next year it doesn't, well, it kind of, you know, when you think about the field service business, there's 6,000 emergency responses a year. They're all pretty small. I mean, they're not like the avian flu or the decon project or the BP oil spill, but there's a lot of small ones there. We have a lot of those types of projects. The funny part is that when you stretch it out over a period of time, it really is. It looks pretty smooth. It looks pretty smooth. It really does create. You know, on the rounds, it creates some noise there.
Overall, I mean, from what you see from a, you know, $4 billion on the $5 billion, it gets lost in the wash.
Sounds like we have good opportunity to continue to push pricing. Where do you think margins should be for the Environmental Services line of business?
You know, I brought this got asked a question in the Investor Day, and I firmly believe it. You ended the year, I forget the exact number, 21%, 22% EBITDA margins, as we define it. When you look at the solid waste companies like a Waste Connections or a Casella or a Waste Management, you know, they're high eighty, high twenties, even low thirties in some cases. I don't know why we can't get there as well. I mean, I feel like if you look at a company like Republic who just bought US Ecology, which is a hazardous waste landfill company, I mean, they're gonna try to drive... That's good for everybody. That's good for the industry.
I feel like that should be an opportunity for us. And when you think about when we put together the five-year model, the Vision 2027, you know, we talked about the fact it'd be, you know, 40, 50 basis points a year, which is not inconsistent with what we've done for the past 5 years.
Right.
We're not like trying to do a hard left turn here. It's just more the same, I think.
Did you send the Republic folks a Christmas card?
You know, it's good to have. You know, we wanted that business. We thought the US Ecology business might fit well with Clean Harbors. We looked at that business. If we weren't gonna get it, I'm pretty happy that Republic got it, to be quite candid.
Regulatory wise, it would have been tough, but.
It would have been tough, but we thought we saw a path to make it work.
Did you-
you know, we wouldn't have been able to keep all the landfills. We would've kept most of the landfills. At the end of the day, you know, if it wasn't us, I'm happy it went to a disciplined competitor like Republic Services.
You know, part of the journey over the past five years has been profitable M&A. You know, you folks have done acquisitions equivalent to 5% of sales per year on average. Can you talk about just the major sources of cost reductions and revenue synergies that you've identified that have driven, you know, I think on average, you folks have improved core EBITDA by 30% on assets that you've acquired?
Mm.
Can we just unpack the path?
Yeah. Thanks, Jerry. I'll take that one. Certainly acquisitions has been a success for us, I think, throughout the company's, you know, 43-year history. You know, we see it as a large stepping stone to future growth. You know, to answer your question, you know, anytime, you know, we have a really in-depth process, not just from a diligence perspective, but also from an integration perspective. You know, aside from kind of the normal leadership trimming that happens in many acquisitions, there's several areas, you know, where we can bring value and extract synergies. You know, some of the big ones, at Investor Day, we kinda shared our footprint, some geographical maps. You can see that we're located all over the country across several of our business lines.
No matter kinda where we do an acquisition, we can consolidate rooftops, bring them into the fold. Certainly, you know, if we look at transportation, being such a large transportation network, we can internalize a lot of the transportation where some of our targets use external trans because of our capabilities there. When you think cross-selling and opportunities, you know, Mike mentioned 51 lines of business, right? You know, we can cross-sell and bring. For example, you know, with the HydroChemPSC acquisition, bringing industrial services firms into the fold, but also being able to bring them a portfolio of services, whether that be a Safety-Kleen branch legacy services or TS services. All sorts of areas there where, you know, we've really extracted value by bringing them onto our platform.
I mentioned platform lastly because I do think, you know, our proprietary software system and operating system that we use, our WIN platform, you know, from day one, virtually all of the acquisitions we do, we bring them onto our IT platform. We're running on one system. We really do believe that that platform brings value to all the acquisitions and extracts synergies as well.
Very interesting. Eric, at the Analyst Day, you sized the addressable market as $50 billion. Can you talk about which parts of the market you're most optimistic from a consolidation opportunity standpoint?
Sure. Well, I mean, we're open to deals in any of our markets, either segment. Obviously with the ES part of our business being roughly 80% of our consolidated, I think you're probably gonna see acquisitive dollars just naturally kinda go in that direction just because of the pure scope and size of the two segments. You know, what we're really looking for is, you know, investments that not only make sense, you know, from an operational perspective, but also a cultural perspective, and, you know, a financial perspective. All those things. You know, I think we're looking for acquisitions that are gonna continue to drive waste into our network. I think that's where we can bring the most value to another party.
We'll continue to kind of look in that space predominantly. You know, again, opportunities arrive to continue to grow out our SKSS network, as we have with a few tuck-ins. We'll continue to do that as well.
You know, we haven't spoken about it yet. Safety-Kleen, you've also really improved your margins, cycle over cycle, even in this year, a down year, you're gonna have very good margin performance. I'm wondering now that we've seen a full cycle in used motor oil prices post IMO 2020, can you talk about how the motor oils prices for what you're picking up have performed in this cycle given the lack of demand from a shipping standpoint?
I'll maybe take those in 2 pieces. Certainly, when we look at our SKSS business that you alluded to last year, you know, phenomenal year for a lot of different reasons. Great margins. You know, I think last year we continued to see price increases for a lot of different reasons, whether it be the Russia-Ukraine conflict that kind of reduced base oil availability or other supply chain challenges. The first quarter of this year, we've seen prices kind of going the other way. I think what we've been able to accomplish as a management team, really since IMO and since we kind of broke that SKSS business out, is better management around the front end of that spread.
When I think about collection costs for that used motor oil feedstock, that we bring in re-refined, you know, we have a team that's been devoted to that part of the business now for a few years. They get better intel on our competitor pricing on that part of the spread. They've, they've driven it down to regional levels, so we know exactly, you know, where the used motor oil in a region goes to, what people are paying and what people are charging, and we're able to kinda flip pricing as we have, over the last, couple of months in that business. You know, we alluded to publicly on our call, last week, you know, we exited kinda Q1, paying about, you know, a quarter for, the used motor oil.
As we sit here today, we're down, you know, close to zero. Even in charge for oil position across the whole population. I think we've been able to do that because the investments we've made in the part of the business that I was just discussing. It doesn't fix the spread immediately. There is still a lag, as prices either go up, benefiting us, or prices come down that we need to recalibrate to. Really kinda the investments in that side of the business, as you said, are gonna continue to make this business profitable.
Did you... Eric, just to make sure I heard you right. You're, you were paying $0.25 per gallon.
Across the entire collection base, right? We collect, you know, roughly 250 million gallons a year. If I look at the entire population, kind of in the first quarter, that's what we were paying on average.
you know, the paying essentially net zero, have you ever been at that point in the past?
Yeah. I mean, if you go back, certainly to, you know, kind of the mid, you know, 2015, 2016, I think in during that period of time, we were as high as $1. certainly kinda when COVID first hit, we were able to swing quickly. Where it ultimately goes, it's gonna depend on base oil pricing and demand and all those types of things. certainly have been in a period where we had a high charge for oil price.
Yeah. It is, it is a challenge to go from customer to vendor, right? When you're going from pay for oil, like I'm giving, you know, Jerry's Auto Body Shop, you know, $50, $100, $200, versus having to charge them, it's a tough conversation, 'cause now you have to actually get a check out of them, and that transition's always painful. We've done it before, and that's going back to 2014 and 2015. We had the systems and processes to kind of make it happen.
Well, it's interesting, right? 2015 was a very different oil price environment than today after that correction. Essentially, we're at a higher oil price...
That's right.
... where, you know...
We're still charging.
Where you're charging.
I think it's, it speaks to Eric's point that he mentioned, is that that's because we have a much more thoughtful business. I think the IMO has something to do with that. The days of us going back down to some low number, kind of pre-IMO and pre the breakout, I think is kind of seems challenging. I don't see that happening. I think we're gonna stay in that 200-250 range, in the 250 range for, you know, for a long time.
How much have you charged when the oil price was at historic lows? What's the most you've ever charged for pickup?
I think it's a buck. I think it was a buck a gallon was the, was the price, but I'm not positive to that end.
When was that, Mike?
2013, 14 time period, I believe.
Okay. And so if we, if we do see, refining runs ramping up and base oil prices declining, do you see-
Absolutely
... moving towards that?
We can't control the back of the spread. We control the front of the spread. We're getting better at it. We're getting more efficient at it. As Eric said, went from a quarter to charge oil in a month. I thought that was pretty good.
Yeah. It sounds like we're gonna have to continue to be on that, on that path.
That's right. That's why, you know, one of the reasons we kind of broke out that organization-
Yeah
is so we could be more devoted to managing that front end of the spread. We've done that.
We're hopeful that price will stabilize. I think that. You know, when prices go down, that's a bit of a hurt to us 'cause of, you know, oil gets stuck in the pipe, and prices go up, it's the opposite effect, so.
Got it. Yeah.
I'm relatively agnostic to the price of oil, only if it moves up or down dramatically.
Yeah. Got it. We're essentially monitoring refining runs and, base oil prices.
That's right.
Okay. Very good. You know, can we go back to the hazardous landfill part of the conversation?
Sure.
You know, interesting at, you know, US Ecology, they were posting, you know, I think 35% margins at the hazardous waste landfill compared to 50% margins at a lot less complex municipal landfill. How much has that gap closed for the industry? You know, I guess at which point do you think pricing can max out here?
I mean, I think that, there's First of all, I think there's plenty of opportunity to continue to drive price in our scarce assets like our incinerators and our landfills. You certainly see it in the solid waste players, and I do think there's still plenty of opportunity for us and for the industry to continue to drive price, and maybe I can't speak to what Republic's doing, but to kind of close their gap. I think that there's I think our margins on the landfills are pretty robust today, but I still think there's more to go.
Are you approaching the 50% level at your hazardous waste landfills, Mike?
It's hard for me to put a finger on that because when we build that work out, is we go to the customer site, it's our trucks, it's our people to bring it all together. You need to kind of look at it in a consolidated level.
Yeah.
It's hard to say like, "Well, how much margin are we getting on the disposal?" We, when we build that out, we build that out in total. The answer is that our margins are, you know, that, if not more than that, based on.
Very interesting. What does that assume for the collection part of the job? What level of profitability?
I mean, it's go the trucks and the people.
Yeah
... in the, in the mid-20s, in the low 20s, I'd say. Depends. I think that what's happened is that that price has come up a bit because, again, it's hard to find people, it's hard to find trucks. It's hard to get that full package done. I think the prices have gone up across the board, not just in disposal.
You know, what's interesting on the incinerator part of your business, just to transition there, you know, you've got this dynamic of you folks bringing capacity online at the same time that there's a shuttering of capacity. Just can you talk about what's driving that transition from captives to the vendors?
Sure. Go ahead.
Yeah. I think that it's as we've talked about in Investor Day, there are 40 captives out there, which are captive incinerator for people who don't know what that is that, you know, in a, in a plant, a manufacturing process, at the end of that process, there is a, their own little incinerator that burns the waste that's generated on that site. They don't take waste from the outside, they're permitted, just like we're permitted, to handle hazardous waste in that incinerator. What happened over the past few years is that, you know, regulations have gotten harder. It's harder to be compliant. They get EPA, you know, investigations and fines just like everybody else's.
It gets harder and harder to be compliant, and that pushes more waste into the marketplace. A company like 3M, which we did 2 years ago, they actually closed their incinerator and gave us all their waste. There's, as I said, there's about 40 out there. There's probably 10 to 15 that are rotary kiln of size that could be coming onto the market. You know, we work with those customers all the time because when they do a turnaround, well, that waste comes to us. We know what kind of waste they have. We know, you know, kind of how it's destroyed. We constantly having conversations with our customers to say, "Hey, do you really wanna keep that incinerator open?
Do you wanna close that? Especially with the new incinerator, our new Kimball incinerator, it's a new 70,000-ton incinerator coming online in early 2025. This is an opportunity for them to kind of rethink about their strategy, maybe close their own incinerator and give us that waste, which brings more waste into the marketplace, which helps everybody.
Mike, can you expand on that? The older incinerators that are closing, is it that, they're, have much higher operating costs, or what's driving that decision to shut down?
Jerry, it is a pure financial. We talk about people talk about bit of a bit of my get on my soapbox just for a second. People talk about ESG and sustainability and how important that is, and it certainly is. I'm not trying to belittle that. When these customers close their incinerator, it is a financial decision. Period. It is how much does it cost to run that plant versus how much it would cost for us to dispose of that waste. For examples like 3M, that was the mass conversation that we had to have. Obviously, they wanted to close it because they were getting fined by the local EPA and the federal EPA, and they wanted to talk about sustainability initiatives they're trying to achieve. All good stuff. The math's gotta work.
We showed them, and we're showing other customers that because we have this network of assets, you know, us taking that waste and disposing it versus them burning it on-site was a cheaper, more economical answer to them.
The process behind it, is it just you're able to separate the waste streams or?
Because we can do it more efficiently than they can, so that's from a Scope 2, Scope 3 level, it's probably a little better for them.
Really?
Plus, you know, in a local jurisdiction, you know, they like that not being incinerated on their site. It's better for them from a compliance standpoint, from an ESG standpoint, it's a bit of a winner for them.
You know, that's an interesting dynamic that, you know, there's less Scope 2, Scope 3 emissions, so, yeah, so because you folks are essentially operate the network, you know how to do it more efficiently.
Burn it more efficiently. Burn it, burn it, burn it, you know, with a, you know, kind of with our own waste streams that we can burn that has fuels in it, so they don't have to use as much natural gas. I mean, it's a winner for them.
Very interesting.
Yeah. I think that that's gonna. Again, though, Jerry, I gotta caution people. It's like, yeah, that's important and people that's valuable, but I do think it's a math exercise from a cost standpoint. That's where it really kind of that's where the discussion kind of began and ended.
How does it work when you have a customer making that type of decision, you know, from a multi-year pricing standpoint, how committed are you?
You know, it's a risk for them, right? Because if you think about it for a minute, two things happen. A. They're beholden to us forever, right? Because once you give up a permit like that, well, you can't get it back. It's really hard. That triggers a closure cost, where you actually have to close the incinerator and remediate the site, which these sites can be a little messy and dirty, right? Hence, the need for closing it. That is a decision that they have to make. That's a struggle for them because it does create a bunch of closure costs associated with that.
In the context of the hazardous waste discussion, Mike, we're talking about driving towards higher value mix. Is that a dynamic here within incinerators?
Depends what's in there. I mean, I think that more waste into the network is a good thing no matter who gets it, because the pie gets bigger. I think that helps us from a price standpoint, no matter what they're producing.
You know, your mix, within incinerators has been a tailwind for a number of quarters here. What sort of industrial economy mix is driving that? Is the level of mix that we're seeing sustainable run rate?
Yeah, you know, we are, you know, we are a little sold out in certain waste streams, Jerry, for quite a period of time, you know, all through the summer, certain types of streams. You know, if there were a new like our Kimball Incinerator, if that was online tomorrow, we could fill that. I'm not. People talk about, well, if there's a recession and demand comes down, I certainly haven't seen it, and we haven't seen it for a number of years. I'm of the view that, you know, I wish we had more capacity tomorrow because I think we can fill it.
And you alluded to it earlier in terms of seeing some benefit of reshoring in your line of business. What about for incinerators specifically, are you seeing out of the chemicals end market a more activity levels? Can you talk about is there any sort of shift in terms of regulations that might drive more incineration volumes for products that were not required to be incinerated in the past?
I mean, you know, I think that at the end of the day, there's more waste in the network. I don't. I'm not sure. Compliance is good for us, right? More compliance and more enforcement of compliance. You think about the retail waste, picking up, you know, going to the Walmarts and the Amazon distributor centers and picking up fertilizer and things. That was done from compliance, from enforcement of regulation. You can't put fertilizer in a dumpster. You have to have. It's. You can't put, you know, kind of oils in a dumpster. That retail waste has been a growing business all built on enforcement and regulation. I think that as we as a, as a society continue to enforce regulations in the U.S. and North America, that's a winner for Clean Harbors.
Hmm. Yeah. If we talk about PFAS for a moment.
Sure.
You know, obviously, we've been waiting for a while to see what the rules of the road are gonna be. Any sense on timelines for when we could see meaningful remediation, or how are you thinking about the key signposts to, you know, potentially that becoming an opportunity for you folks?
You know, I think that there's more, there's certainly more regulations around water and water quality, and that, and that was pretty stringent, which I thought was good. There isn't anything yet on soils. We don't do a lot with water. Obviously, we take the carbon filters that if they get full of PFAS, we'll take that. That's a small piece of the puzzle. You know, we, the soil is where we really play, and we don't really deal with drinking water just because of the regulations around that and the potential litigation associated with that. We, we kinda stay away from that. Soils is where we wanna play, and I think that's next.
I think that, you know, we've talked about whether you heard it in the WasteExpo and other areas, you know, that's coming in the back half of the year. I've said that last year, I said that the year before, so take that with a grain of salt. I do think that is, I do think PFAS is coming. Certainly, it's a known carcinogen. We know that. We know it's kind of everywhere. We know there need to be a solution for it, and we think our incineration can handle it. We know that for a fact.
Yeah. Presumably, it would be at a price accretive point considering the competition.
Well, that's right. The way it works is that people's asked us this question, you know, yesterday and in the past, is that, geez, if you're already at 85%, 90%, well, what are you gonna do with all that dirt? The answer is that the dirt can go right on top. It's actually a calming agent to the incinerator. It actually can run pretty efficiently, and actually probably a helper to kinda keep the kilns running smoothly. We can take actually a fair amount of dirt and not... and still without having to open up a new incinerator, you know, beyond Kimball, and that would be price accretive because it'd be just on top.
even if the price point was lower for a ton than, let's say, you know, a highly fluorinated or highly chlorinated waste stream, it's still something we could take.
It sounds like you could actually pay to use it. I'm just kidding. In terms of the absolute pricing point, so it would clearly be margin accretive. It sounds like the pricing point might not be accretive versus-
Well, that's right. At the end of the day, though, if it's, you know, my Co-CEO says it's a stocking stuffer.
Right.
It's right on top, and it'd just be gravy for us. Although the price may be a little, may danger the price point, but when the EBITDA dollars are there, well, the EBITDA dollars are there.
You know, if, in terms of, hopefully back half of this year, or if not, we'll see over what timeframe, but how big of an addressable market?
Mm.
-will it be? What soil is gonna be impacted?
Yeah. That's the big question, Jerry, because the real question you ask yourself is, how clean is clean? What level of compliance do we need to get to.
Yeah.
In order for them to say that the soil is clean? If it's part per trillion, well, then that's a problem. That's gonna be a big, that's gonna be a lot of soil. If it's something part per million, then maybe it's less so. It's really hard for us to size the prize when we don't know what the regulation says yet. That's hard for me to speculate. The answer is that what we know and what we can speak to, what we can control, is that we know our incinerators can clean that PFAS soil to a very, very compliant level. We're ready to take it.
No matter what the regulations say, whether it's you can burn it, you can put it in a landfill, you can treat it, we have all the technology. All our landfills are closed-loop landfills. What that means is that the soil goes into, say it's soil, PFAS soil, goes into the landfill, and the leachate that comes out when it rains, well, we burn that leachate, or we destroy that leachate safely. We have a closed-loop landfill. All our landfills are like that. In my mind, no matter what the solution is, and the EPA, when they come out with regulation, they'll talk about kinda what you do with it, but we're ready for them.
Any questions?
What would you recommend?
I mean, we think incineration is the safest way to do it. In my mind, my personal view is that moving it from one hole to another hole doesn't do much for us, right? What does that really solve other than getting it out of someone's neighborhood and putting it in a big hole? Which again, if you're doing it in a solid waste environment, well, that leachate can get back into the environment. I'm of the view that incineration's the answer. We can do it safely. We can do it fast. I mean, if you read the paper on some of our competitors, a lot of different ideas on how to deal with it. We already know we can do it through incineration.
The whole idea about, well, you know, it's firefighting foam, so why put it under fire is nonsense. I mean, this is not a pizza oven. It's 1,800 degrees, and it can destroy it pretty well. We've tested that. We had a third party substantiate that. We had a third party review that third party substantiation to prove that it's valid.
Okay. Yeah, can we go back towards industrial and field services part of the conversation?
Sure.
It, you know, in terms of pricing for the value that you folks are generating, talk to me about making that transition and, you know, how much momentum do you have? Because, you know, it's not overnight that you train people to make sure they're billing all of their billable hours.
That's right.
where are we in that journey, Mike?
It's twofold. First of all, we have to have thoughtful conversations with our customers around price points. This is some of the most dangerous work. Confined space entry, going onto a refinery and doing clean outs, that's pretty dangerous work, and we need to get paid for that risk that we're taking so we can do it safely and compliantly. The good, what the change is that I think we've been much more thoughtful about, we're gonna take our equipment and our people and do something else and be okay with that from a compensation standpoint. What I mean by that is the salesman saying, "Well, I'm not gonna tell them that. I mean, this is a $2 million job for me.
If we don't get that, if we lose it, my bonus is, my commission's gone." We've made people whole on the commission side saying, "Hey, if we're making that decision strategically to push price and we lose it, well then you're gonna be made whole." In some cases that's happened, but more importantly, what's happened more often than not is that we kinda push them, they give us what we need to get our prices up. Frankly, in my mind, I've said this on Investor Day, is that when you think about incineration and disposal assets, they're scarce assets. Our people and trucks are also scarce assets, and I feel like we gotta... we're making some real progress in getting paid for that.
Mike, what's your churn rate on those types of discussions?
You know, we haven't lost anything yet. There you go. Again, as I said earlier, when our prices get too high, we'll melt. We're not there yet.
All right. Super. On that note, please join me in thanking Mike, Eric, and Jim for joining us. Gentlemen, thank you.
Yeah. Thank you.