Please stand by. We're about to begin. Good day, and welcome to the Quest Resource Holding Corporation Fourth Quarter and Year-end 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Joe Noyons, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Cody, and thank you everyone for joining us on today's call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call may contain predictions, estimates, and other forward-looking statements regarding future events or future performance of Quest. Use of words like anticipate, project, estimate, expect, intend, believe, and other similar expressions are intended to identify those forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on Quest's current expectations, estimates, projections, beliefs, and assumptions and involve significant risks and uncertainties. Actual events of Quest results could differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, which are discussed in greater detail in Quest filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements and to consult our SEC filings for additional risks and uncertainties.
Quest forward-looking statements are presented as of the date made, and we disclaim any duty to update such statements unless required by law to do so. In addition, in this call, we may include industry and market data and other statistical information, as well as Quest observation and views about industry conditions and developments. The data and information are based on Quest estimates, independent public publications, government publications, and reports by market research firms and other sources. Although Quest believes these sources are reliable and the data and other information are accurate, we caution that Quest has not independently verified the reliability of the sources or the accuracy of the information. Certain non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed during this call. These non-GAAP measures are used by management to make strategic decisions, forecast future results, and evaluate the company's current performance.
Management believes the presentation of these non-GAAP financial measures is useful to investors' understanding and assessment of the company's ongoing core operations and prospects for the future. Unless it is otherwise stated, it should be assumed that any financials discussed in this call will be on a non-GAAP basis. Full reconciliations of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures are included in today's earnings release. With all that said, I'll now turn the call over to Ray Hatch, President and CEO. Ray?
Thank you, Joe, and thanks everyone for your interest in Quest. We had a great fourth quarter and a strong finish to the year. For the year, we reached a milestone in profitability for the company. We had an Adjusted EBITDA above $10 million for the first time. During 2021, we also delivered accelerated organic growth. Overall, we grew gross profit dollars by more than 50%. The growth in gross profit and EBITDA was driven by strength across our business from existing customers through new customers and via acquisitions. Our growth was split 60/40 between organic and acquisitions, with organic being the larger of the two drivers. Over the last few years, our strength has been in our client relationships, and we see that as our core strength.
We have continued to grow with our existing clients, adding services, geographies, and also waste streams to help them address their diversion issues. At the end of 2020 and during 2021, we saw a significant incremental contribution from new clients. The step up change in adding new clients is a very positive development for our company and should provide future growth opportunities for us in the years to come as we further penetrate these accounts. We had a lot of activity in the recent quarters, and I'm excited to give you an update on the progress. Before I go into that, I'm going to turn the call over to Laurie Latham, our Chief Financial Officer, to review the financials. Laurie?
Thank you, Ray, and good afternoon to everyone. We had strong top-line performance. Revenue increased 68% for the fourth quarter and increased 58% for the year. As we have said on previous calls, gross profit dollars is a key metric we use to measure the success of our initiatives. For the fourth quarter, gross profit dollars increased 56% to $8.7 million. For the year, gross profit dollars increased 51% to $28.8 million. For both periods, organic growth represented more than half of the increase in gross profit dollars, with contribution from both new and existing customers. The remaining portion of the increase in gross profit dollars came from acquisitions. Gross margin was 18.8% for the fourth quarter and 18.5% for the year.
This was 140 basis points and 80 basis points below the previous year periods, respectively, but within our target range. The year-over-year decrease in gross margin was primarily related to the service mix, which will fluctuate from quarter to quarter and year to year. Gross margin is also affected by the amount of new business in our mix. In many cases, gross margin tends to be temporarily lower as we bring on new business. This will likely continue to be a factor with the growth we anticipate for 2022. As these accounts mature, margins from new business trends do improve over time as we optimize service level.
SG&A expenses were $7.1 million during the fourth quarter, compared to $4.5 million during the same period last year. Of the $2.6 million year-over-year increase, approximately $1.1 million was related to incremental overhead costs from the business operations acquired during the fourth quarter of 2021. Approximately $1 million was related to incremental acquisition, integration, and related costs, and the rest was related to incremental IT related professional fees and increased business activity levels and other costs related to SG&A. For fiscal year 2021, SG&A costs increased by 27% year-over-year, which is about half of the annual rate of revenue and gross profit dollar growth. For the year, SG&A expenses increased to $21.7 million, from $17.1 million in 2020.
The $4.6 million increase primarily relates to approximately $1.1 million related to incremental overhead costs from the business operations acquired during the second half of 2021. The remaining portion of the increase was related to increases in labor and related expenses, which includes an increase in both headcount and wage rates, approximately $1 million of incremental acquisition and integrated related expenses, approximately $650,000 of incremental IT professional fees and software license fees, and an increase in marketing, trade show, travel, and other costs related to SG&A to support increased business activity year-over-year. The acquisitions will add about $1.1 million per month in incremental SG&A expenses during 2022 until we anniversary the acquisition dates. We are also increasing our investments in data and technologies during 2022 to continuously improve the efficiency and scalability of onboarding new customers.
For 2022, we expect to have incremental spending of approximately $0.5 million in this area. This represents staff and overhead. During the fourth quarter, depreciation and amortization increased to $1.1 million versus $346,000 a year ago. For the year 2021, depreciation and amortization increased to $2.5 million versus $1.2 million a year ago. The increase was primarily related to the amortization of acquisition-related intangibles. We expect depreciation and amortization to be approximately $9.1 million for 2022. During the fourth quarter, interest expense increased to $841,000 from $458,000 last year. For the year, interest expense increased to $2.5 million from $701,000 in 2020. The increase is primarily related to the debt financing for acquisitions we've completed in the prior fifteen months.
For 2021, net income attributable to common stockholders was $1.7 million or $0.08 per diluted share versus $830,000 or $0.05 per diluted share last year. We are introducing two new metrics for this report. Adjusted net income and adjusted net income per diluted share, which are both non-GAAP financial measures. Among other items, there are several non-cash and acquisition-related costs in our income statement, which can vary significantly from year to year. We feel excluding these items allow investors to evaluate ongoing financial performance with improved comparability between periods. There is a reconciliation to GAAP in our financial statements. For 2021, adjusted net income increased to $5.6 million or $0.27 per diluted share versus $800,000 or $0.05 per diluted share last year. Moving on to review of the cash flow and balance sheet.
We generated $2.6 million in operating cash flow for 2021. Cash flow reflects our strong net income performance, partially offset by investment in working capital to support the significant growth year-over-year. CapEx was approximately $600,000, and we utilized approximately $16.3 million in cash to finance acquisitions. Our cash balance was $8.4 million at the end of the year, up from $7.5 million at the beginning of the year. At the end of the year, we had $67.9 million in debt versus $18.5 million at the beginning of the year. The increase primarily reflects the financing for acquisitions completed during 2021. At this time, I'll turn the call back to Ray.
Thank you, Laurie. Now I'm gonna walk you through a review of our business strategies. With the work we've done over recent years to transform our business, it's incredibly gratifying to see the significant improvement in financial performance. I wanna thank our team for making that possible. We're starting this year with far greater scale, both in terms of revenue and in profitability. We're well-positioned to continue to deliver strong growth and returns for our shareholders. With this greater scale comes a significant benefit in multiple areas. First, we enhance our value proposition for our customers. With greater scale comes greater buying power. Clearly, we benefit from these cost savings, but we're also able to share some of those savings with our customers and improve our value to them. With greater scale, we also offer clients a broader service offering.
This increases our value proposition in two ways. First, having Quest as a single vendor to manage multiple waste streams simplifies billing, provides more uniform service delivery, allows internal resources to be reallocated to their core competencies, and provides consistent data reporting that can be used to support sustainability reporting. In addition, having a broader service offering also improves our value proposition by expanding our capabilities to divert more waste streams from the landfill and further improving our clients' sustainability. With greater scale, we also increase the stability and the resilience of our business by diversifying our end markets and our customer mix. Regarding end market diversification, several years ago, almost all of our revenue came from two end markets, retail and automotive. Today, we have multiple major end markets, including retail, automotive, grocery, industrial, restaurants, multifamily housing, and commercial property.
We learned firsthand during the pandemic that having a diversified end market mix enabled us to offset weakness in some markets with strength in others. Moving on to a discussion about our growth initiatives, which are working well across the board. I spoke earlier in my opening remarks about the success we had in adding new clients since the end of 2020, and how it's been a major driver for organic growth during 2021. Adding new clients can provide waves of growth over several years. The first wave is simply from having a full year of contribution versus the partial contribution, depending on when we begin implementing our services. Most of our engagements are for three years and tend to last for many years thereafter. Second wave of growth comes from fully implemented programs, which can take from three to 18 months.
The third wave comes from expanding the footprint of or the service offering. We have many clients that have been with us more than five years, and we continue to grow with them every year. Success with adding new clients has been a big change in the past six quarters, and simply, we've become better at targeting and closing the right clients. Our sales and marketing team and their leadership is performing well, and I want to recognize them for a job well done. Other major factors driving new client additions are favorable secular trends, including increased pressure for large companies to improve sustainability and to comply with the ever-increasing regulation.
In addition, increased prices for landfill and tipping fees are shedding more light on the waste spend among larger companies and enabling us to start conversations with prospects about how we can improve sustainability of the waste streams in a cost-effective manner. Clearly, our value proposition is resonating with clients. Our ability to perform a uniform and auditable data set across waste streams for use in sustainability and operational reporting is playing a big role in our selection among new clients. By centralizing all of a client's waste streams with Quest, we're able to improve competencies and maximize value from commodities, which has also played a large role in being selected among new clients. Now I'll give you an update on recent wins with new customers. New customer wins during 2021 continued to ramp during the fourth quarter and are increasingly contributing to our growth this year.
During the fourth quarter, we had a large win with another new industrial client, which we discussed on our last earnings call. We began to onboard this customer this quarter, and we expect to be fully implemented before the end of the year. We expect this client win to generate annual sales in the mid seven-figure range, with opportunities to expand the relationship above eight figures with additional services. Finally, we have many new opportunities in our pipeline, and I feel confident we will have similar success at securing new customers during 2022. The other major driver for our growth has come through acquisitions. We've accelerated our M&A efforts since the end of 2020 and continue to expand our pipeline of potential acquisitions.
I want to emphasize that we will continue to maintain discipline in making acquisitions and will only execute those that fit our criteria. Going forward, there will be years like 2021 when we find several good deals that fit our criteria, but there also may be periods where we don't find any. I want to note that M&A growth is not a growth strategy by itself. M&A will continue to be a driver of growth for our business, but it's only one of three growth drivers, and the other two are penetrating existing customers and, of course, adding new customers. We completed two acquisitions in December, InStream and RWS. These acquisitions expanded our service offering and offer significant opportunities to cross-sell to the combined client base. Both customers will add to our roster of industrial clients.
Having greater scale in this end market will benefit us, our customers, and our vendors. In addition to expanding our presence in the industrial market, RWS gives us a more meaningful position in the commercial property management market. In February, we announced the acquisition of another company that further adds to our presence in that market. The commercial property management end market is very large and includes large national companies that manage office and retail properties. This end market is very well suited for our service offering and our value proposition. The larger clients in this market are under a lot of pressure to increase diversion from landfill, and the large vertically integrated players don't have a competitive service offering in this area. These clients also find our ability to collect and provide uniform reporting data very compelling.
Regarding our outlook, pressure to improve sustainability and increasing cost of landfills are lowering the bar for adoption of our recycling services. We continue to view inflation as a net neutral to our business as our contracts have mechanisms in place to adjust. Contribution from new client wins will continue to provide incremental growth as we onboard these programs. We're investing in personnel, technology, and processes to further grow gross profit dollars and to enhance customer service levels. Acquisition activity is continuing, and we expect it to be an ongoing contributor to our growth. Based on all these factors and the business we have in-hand, we are optimistic we'll continue to expect positive momentum in 2022 and for the next several years. I look forward to keeping you updated on our progress. We would now like the operator to provide instruction on how listeners can queue up for questions.
Operator?
Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure that your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, that is star one if you'd like to ask a question. We'll take our first question from Gerry Sweeney with Roth Capital. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, Ray and Laurie. Thanks for taking my call.
Yes. Hi, Gerard.
Hi, Gerard.
Um-
Gerry.
Sorry. I blame my parents for that one. Ray, you sketched out some of the organic growth you're seeing or some of the reasons, but also I was curious about, maybe some other items. If the sales cycle was picking up or at least lessening in time that it takes to land customers, and also if companies are becoming more and more comfortable with your service as they see more and more clients joining your roster. Then the final aspect, just you've made some changes, internal sales operations over the last couple of years. I'm just curious as to how much that may.
Still there, Gerry?
Yeah. You there?
Okay. Good.
Yep.
Those are all three questions related to the sales process. I'll try to answer them.
Yeah.
The first one. Give me the first one again.
Sorry. I just look at that, you know, sales cycle picking up.
Sales cycle.
Companies are comfortable.
Yeah. Let's start. The sales cycle, Gerry, is, I would say it's tightening a little. Customers move at customer's pace, and a lot of times the larger ones are, well, naturally a little slower. But I will tell you one of the things, and this goes back to some of the other parts of your question, is the targeting. I guess the sophistication level of our sales process as in who we're targeting to go after. You know, the best targeting yields a much higher close rate and probably accelerating the sales cycle as well. If you're talking to the right customer at the right time and you have the right service, they have a tendency to move more smoothly. I wanna credit the sales department for a significant improvement in that area.
As to your question about maybe the acceptance of our business model as a service, I think yes, and you and I have talked about this before. You know, Quest is a bit of a paradigm shift for many of these larger companies. Many of them have decentralized manage on your own processes, and turning it over to somebody like us is not maybe a natural first move. But we've been very successful. We have referenceable customers, and I would say that continues to become less of a barrier over time, and I expect it to continue to or to eventually not be a barrier at all, actually.
Gotcha. That's helpful. You know, from a sales pipeline perspective, is there any way you can give us any quantitative, qualitative view as to how this looks currently versus maybe a year ago in-
I can give you, it's hard to give it a quantitative view in the sense that what are you comparing it to, right?
Yeah.
Because pipelines have got a lot of stuff in it. I've been in situations where we had really huge pipelines that really didn't matter because of the ability to close them. I think I would describe our pipeline. [I think ] would be more descriptive rather than numbers is the fact that I think everything on there is viable, and it continues to move left to right at an ever-increasing pace. I will say this, I think the type of customer that's been targeted and we're bringing on board are maybe larger than some of the ones we had in a pipeline that had more names on it. I think I said this to you or somebody this weekend up at your conference.
I've never felt better about where we are from a customer pipeline standpoint than I do today, Gerry. I mean, there's not a single one on there that I think is questionable. They all look strong.
Got it. It sounded as though maybe some of those opportunities are increasing as well as potential size of some of the opportunities, not trying to-
Yeah.
I won't put words in your mouth, but okay. Got it. Yeah. Then-
No, those are good.
Yep. On the technology side, obviously spending some more money on the software side. You know, where do you see the technology side going in terms of service? What's the spend on this year? This sounds like it's more on the IT side, but in the future.
Yeah.
Technology could obviously be a benefit as well. Just wanted to think about what's happening on that front.
I think current and near future state and then distant state are much further out state, speaking in this context. Current and near future, our technology investment is much more IT related. The reason this is how it manifests itself as far as business practice and what impacts the business. We're getting ahead. This growth that we have is wonderful, and we got to make sure that we continue ahead of that growth to expand our scalability and our capability to, you know, leverage the OpEx with increased technology and automation and all that fun stuff that enables our growth of all types.
Secondly, by collecting better and cleaner, more accurate data in your data warehouse, as you work on that, you're able to give customers cleaner, more timely and accurate data as well. We really feel our current technology differentiator is data. I mean, the market seems to be accepting that. I mean, the customers are looking for it. They're not just looking for it. A lot of our competitors, Gerry, are giving out data, but it's point in time, it's static. It's not a live document, you know, like our stuff is, and I don't think it's as useful. Our goal is to make sure that we're giving customers, our customers, our clients, very useful information because their p-reporting requirements are doing nothing but growing, as you know.
If we're able to give them better data to do that. Long-term technology could involve a lot of things, you know what I mean? Technology and you know, monitoring of you know, waste and dynamic routing and fun things like that. That's all out there in the future. What our clients are looking for right now, I think, is usable, accurate, timely data. That's where we are.
Gotcha. One final question, and I'll jump back in line. Gross margins on acquisitions. You know, you had a filing out on RWS, and it looks as though those gross margins were above the corporate average. Is that a function of just how tight. You know, some of these companies are rather small, and they're running a pretty tight sort of G&A or SG&A program. Or will they be able to maintain some of that gross margin that they have once they're integrated? How do we look at that?
Gerry, the RWS has, we mentioned it already on the call. They're a mixture of the industrial side of the services that we, you know, also typically do, and they also have a big presence in the real estate, particularly retail market. They're gonna be similar to us, I think, in margins. I think they also were going to vary quarter to quarter depending on their mix of services, because they do have that commodity aspect. They do have sort of this steady state, a little bit steadier state with the retail side. The way I could sort of help you think of it is they're gonna be very similar to us, but they will have fluctuations. I think similar in the range that we have here in our core business.
Got it. Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you, Gerry.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Aaron Spychalla with Craig-Hallum.
Hi, Ray. Hi, Laurie. Thanks for taking the questions.
Hi, Aaron.
Mm-hmm.
You know, first on the competitive environment, you know, seeing increasing M&A in the market from majors and then also increasing activity in the mid-market, can you just kind of talk about any impact you're seeing on the business from that?
You're talking about M&A activity, like in our space, how it's affecting our baseline business?
I think maybe the vendor side.
Yep.
of our deliverables.
Okay. Got you. You know, one of the beautiful things about this business is it seems to be bottomless as far as the ability to find good quality companies that are looking to partner with somebody like us to enhance their earnings. We haven't seen those consolidations haven't created us issues. On the waste side, I've gotten a couple questions on those there, and I think you and I may have discussed it. They're consolidated by a company that we already do business with, you know, in many cases. We haven't seen any restriction or limitation from any of the services we perform from anybody through that aspect yet.
All right. Maybe second on kind of new markets, new waste streams. Can you just kind of give us an update there? Maybe talk a little bit about Proganics and just some of the kind of gating factors until we kind of see that maybe start to pick up and just any thoughts on what contribution might look like.
Well, on Proganics, I'll go back to the question Gerry asked earlier about sales cycle. That's one that's a very long sales cycle, but because it involves a lot of change from the customer side, you know, to be able to take advantage of that. There's a lot of interest in it, working on it. What we have now is growing, and we're really got a great pipeline of new customers to bring on. It's just that's a particularly slow sales cycle. Other new waste streams, and we actually acquired a couple from our friends at RWS, waste streams that we weren't handling before, for recycling, types of waste streams. That's nice to add. They've been doing well with that.
Then the other acquisition that we made with InStream actually just enhanced the scale of existing waste streams that we have. It's beneficial on both sides. Yes, we've added a few, and we definitely. You know, as we add waste streams there, and a lot of it's driven by customer need, right? They have a waste stream they're generating, and it's challenging, and they come to us. Quest has always been a kind of solution-based company. Even if we aren't doing it now, we'll find a way to take care of that issue for them. It ultimately ends up yielding itself in a new waste stream for us. As they come up, we'll continue to expand.
Gotcha. Thanks for taking the questions. I'll hop back in the queue.
Thank you, Aaron.
Thank you. We'll hear next from Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Ray, just to, you know, dig into the fourth quarter revenue strength, was this from new clients or was this, you know, contribution from acquisitions? When you jump by almost $10 million sequentially, I'm just wondering, you know, what drove this. You know, going forward, are these the levels we should sort of be thinking of on a quarterly basis, or could this be even stronger given, you know, some of the contributions from the December acquisitions?
Well, Amit, first of all, thanks. Appreciate the questions. I'm really proud to say the three-legged stool, for lack of a better term that I've used as an analogy, in the past, is all contributing to that. But the strongest piece came from clients we already had and clients that we brought on here in the Quest base. I mean, huge contributor, but we also obviously in December we didn't have any, obviously, the benefit of any of that revenue from the acquired companies until December. We really had a great representation of organic growth there. Laurie, you wanna comment to that?
Sure, absolutely. When we were talking about fourth quarter, we had even a betterment over Q3 with our core business, but a substantial piece did come from those acquisitions in December.
Yeah.
I think that jump you saw was driven a lot by the acquisition, but it was also supported by a continued growth quarter over quarter sequentially. Going forward, we will have those acquisitions. They will be contributing towards every quarter, if that answers your question.
Yeah, we'll have those new customers, and we'll have those. One of the nice things, Amit, and we talked about before, when you penetrate an existing customer with new locations, new service lines, those typically are recurring, you know, and you get a chance for that wave of growth benefit as you move through the rest of the year or the next year.
Understood. Thank you for that, guys. From a pricing perspective, Ray, do you have room in your contracts to raise prices? With relation to these acquisitions, are you tied in any way to, you know, contracts that may prevent you from sort of, you know, passing on any inflationary costs in the near term?
I will tell you that in general, Amit, we of course everybody's aware of inflation and our vendors that service are in the same spot as everybody else. We, as a rule, have been very successful as a company in deferring a lot of that and not accepting those increases. Because remember, one of the things we have is a very flexible book of business where we can move volume and tonnage around, which may take the place of some of those other concessions. I wanna take my hat off to our vendor relations sourcing team. They do a great job of that because we really haven't seen nearly the amount of inflationary costs that the market would say that there is.
There is some, of course, and those are gonna happen because we want our suppliers to be profitable. We have arrangements in our customer contracts that allow us to have conversations and, you know, CPI type things and kind of balance that out. It may not balance immediately, but ultimately it will based on the. It is not an immediate thing. Like, once something goes up, service goes up a dollar, the price to the customer goes up a dollar. It goes. It's, there is some lag in there, but we definitely have mechanisms in place to allow us to be relatively neutral through this process.
Okay. Thank you, Ray. That's all I have. Thank you.
You bet, Amit. Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, that is star one if you'd like to ask a question. We'll take our next question from Nelson Obus with Wynnefield Capital.
Yeah. Hey, Ray. I was curious about the onboarding process 'cause it occurs to me that if you go to present to a new customer, you've got that all marked out, what you're gonna do. I think you mentioned that it, if I picked it up right on the call, that it does take a period before y'all onboard. I'm curious what exactly are the steps you need to do to integrate a new customer?
That's a great question, Nelson. I will tell you the standard answer, of course, is it depends. To give you a couple buckets of onboarding examples, you know, not too distant past, we onboarded a large quick QSR quick service restaurant chain. Well, on one day, we didn't have it, the next day we did. It was an entire over 1,000 locations, well over 1,000 that we. The onboarding took 24 hours because of the planning ahead of time. It's the nature of the business. Typically, you move through the organization. It's more. I would say, Nelson, the restriction is it doesn't really have anything to do with Quest so much as it does with the multi-unit, multi-location customer absorbing those changes.
Because we represent a big change, like for a manufacturer example that has, you know, up to 100 waste streams or a lot of complexity. We represent a lot of change to their org at the location because they had multiple vendors, multiple suppliers. We have to train a little bit. There's training that's involved. So that's typically what we're looking at onboarding on these more complex customers. They're very rewarding, tremendous customers, but it is a little more effort to help them get on board with the program.
I got it. Just a different follow-up question. From a cash flow perspective, the integration and acquisition costs that were manifested in Q4, is that a one time? Do you expect those, assuming you don't make any more acquisitions, will that trend down as we go through or be eliminated completely as we go through 2022?
Yes. Nelson, the item that you're talking about, yes, has a trending down. You know, it could be integration costs, such as a consulting fee to a prior owner. It could be legal fees that occurred right at the transaction date. They are sunsetted over a period of time.
Right. By the time we get to, say, Q3 of 2022, it, unless you make another acquisition, probably won't see that on the P&L, right? Fair enough.
Certainly at lower levels. Just any kind of integration costs that we still have ongoing from these December acquisitions.
Got it. Thanks.
Uh-huh.
Thanks, Nelson.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Greg Kitt with Pinnacle Fund.
Hi, Ray and Laurie. Thank you for your hard work and the good quarter.
Thanks, Greg.
We've been a shareholder for several years now. It just feels like you're in the right place at the right time as companies continue to focus on internally mandated, externally regulated ESG goals. You announced the four material new logo wins last year that could add $20 million of revenue annually once they're fully ramped. I think I heard you correctly in saying that more than half of your 2021 gross profit dollar growth was organic, which was exciting to me because that implied that gross profit dollar organic growth was more than 25% last year. This is a little bit of a follow-up on what Gerry was asking. Can you help us understand, or talk to the changes in the sales organization that have been a catalyst to this better qualification of your leads or better conversion of your funnel?
Yeah, happy to. Actually, that's right. Gerry did ask that. I think I may have missed it. It's a multi-phase question. The sales structure is the same as far as, but the people that are staffing it, we've had some changes over the last year and a half, and we've added some strength at the sales side. You know, the sales professional in our space, Greg, needs a deep Rolodex and, frankly, a pretty extensive experience base. And you'll notice some of the success we've had in manufacturing and industrial, that takes an even deeper knowledge base. These folks have it. It goes back to, I don't know if there are more accounts or less accounts on the funnel because I care less about that.
I care a lot more about the quality of those accounts fitting our profile that we've described and having them move to the right and have our closure rate be higher than it was before, and it definitively is. There's a lot more than just hiring smart people to go do that. We have a process in place that's kind of like client mapping, you know, where we just do lots of research and work on knowing this client and understanding the multi-phase approach and get them on board.
Thank you. On the data and reporting, I was excited to see that there was a little bit more disclosure around your data and reporting in the 10-K. Because I've always thought about your data and reporting to customers was really valuable and a differentiator, because you allow your customers to divert FTEs to other tasks, and you provide better visibility into their ESG goals. But I wanted to hear a little bit more. What do your customers say those reports enable them to do?
Well, First of all, I appreciate that recognition. We believe it's a big differentiator as well. This data allows customers to have visibility into their waste streams and be able to meet the obligations they have, not only reporting externally, but the commitments they have internally to diversion and other types of goals that fit into the overall ESG structure. I think the thing that's most appreciated, Greg, is the breadth of services that we track because we perform those. They don't have to have 27 different types of documents from different companies to be able to have visibility into their waste stream performance.
I think the consolidation, the accuracy, and the timeliness are all three differentiators that's helping them, it's helping them in their goals, which thankfully they have those goals that helps us.
Thank you. Two more. So now you're solidly in growth mode, which is great considering where you were when you joined Ray. Can you just talk about the quality and the size of the leadership team today? You know, now that you are in growth mode, you need to be positioned to grow from your current organizational base. How do you feel about that? Just generally, how do you feel about your team today versus a couple of years ago?
I appreciate the opportunity to speak to that because that's my favorite subject. You know, we've got the same top management that you've known since you've been invested with Laurie and Dave. As we've grown, there's only so much these folks can do. We've really added a lot of strength around them in the organization. One of them, we added Will Reynolds, he's our Senior VP of Strategy, and the focus is on systems, scalability, integration, everything Will does, and he has a huge track record of being successful in this. He came on recently, I think, in December, maybe, no, November. He adds a tremendous amount of capacity for our growth, both external and internal with those pieces. We've added, for example, and there's a lot, I'm not going to name them all.
We've added quite a few. We added Jim Medley as our VP of Operations to help sustain that growth. There's a lot of things Dave Mossberg was used to do that now Jim does, and Dave's able to expand what he does. All of it is about expanding what we think is already, what I believe is already a really great core of folks and giving them more and more capacity to do more and more things along with our growth.
Thank you. My last question, the one I always ask about is, you know, I've always liked that 50% of your incremental gross profit dollars can contribute to EBITDA, and then EBITDA converts nicely to free cash flow. Do you foresee any specific investments or changes besides that $500,000 that you want to invest to be able to improve the platform scalability and integration? Is there anything in your business that could materially affect that ability to kind of have that high conversion rate from gross profit dollars to EBITDA?
There are gonna be additional capital expenditures also on the technology side. We have been, you know, our expenditures in that area have been small, so they could be equivalent to another, say, $ 0.5 Million-$1 million, just depends on the timing of the projects. Those would be capitalized type costs, so I just wanna point that out. Those really don't affect your P&L except over a period of time. The other thing, as we are learning more and more about the companies we acquired, some of them have a different operating model than, of course, our Quest core business. Greg, as you're asking about, is there anything that could affect that leverage? We definitely see leverage continuing, but is it through the exact same formula that it was before?
I think there could be some things that are a little different. The business at RWS, that's a real estate business, is a different model than Quest core business. We'll be examining that and making sure we integrate and make the changes as best we can. You know, I can't give you clear direction on exactly the amount of leverage that would go through. It will continue. It will continue at a very healthy pace, so.
Yeah. Thank you very much. I'll cede the floor.
Okay.
Thank you, Greg.
Thank you. We'll hear a follow-up from Nelson Obus with Wynnefield.
Yeah, just a quickie. In a growth mode, I would imagine that your vendor turnover could increase. Is that right, or is that even a metric that you follow?
Vendor turnover meaning, losing them and gaining some, is that what you're saying?
Yeah. I mean, there may be a customer.
Yeah, like employee turnover on the vendor side.
Where a vendor can't accommodate a new customer because the waste streams are too complicated, so you have to reach out to someone else, or vendor doesn't-
Yeah.
I don't need. I mean, I don't know if you track that, but just a little color on that.
Oh, sure. I think I know exactly what you're saying. As we've added new lines and added new customers with greater needs and growth and more geographic expansion, I mean, all those things lead to putting more and more, I guess, pressure, for lack of a better term, on our vendors' ability to perform. Luckily, if you're a vendor for us performing well with your particular waste stream, you'll get to continue to do that. We'll add. We will build around you with new vendors where outside of your capabilities. We've been expanding that roster, you know, for quite a while now, Nelson. We're in a much better position today, I believe, to handle this growth through our vendor base than we were before. We're really not having to turn them over.
They're able to stay. That's one of the great things about our model, right? If we're serving somebody with 100 locations, we can utilize as many vendors as we think is the right amount to get the job done. So we just add rather than turnover. Does that answer your question?
Yeah. You can upgrade a vendor, you know-
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Got it. Thanks.
You bet.
Thank you. We'll take a follow-up question from George Melas with MKH Management.
Thank you. Hi, Ray. Hi, Laurie.
Hi, George.
Hi, George.
Congrats on a fantastic year.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Ray, you talked about, you know, a few years ago, you were primarily retail and auto. Now you're sort of a lot more diversified. Can you talk a little bit about where you see the fastest growth or where you what you have really in your pipeline? It seems like industrial, you didn't really have a lot of references two or three years ago, now you do, and those are fairly large customers. Is that a meaningful part of the growth that you're seeing?
I think it's a very meaningful part, George. There's numerous reasons why. I think first and foremost, what heavy industrial customers need is a complex business relative to their waste streams they generate. Plus, they also have, all of them have big goals relative to sustainability, and they also have a lot of regulatory risk in many cases, right? All those things kind of ring our bell, and our ability to consolidate and give them the data they need across numerous plants, for their reporting and operations, I think is another differentiator.
All that adds up to the fact that I think our team has done great across all of our end markets, but industrial has represented significant growth, and I really think what we're doing today, what the team's able to do for those folks, is gonna continue to feed that growth in the future.
Okay. Just from a competitive perspective, do you see sort of new competitors entering the market, or is it or are you sort of further differentiating yourself from, you know, existing competitors?
I think we're further differentiating ourselves, George. I may have a biased opinion, but I really haven't seen new ones come in. I've seen some try to expand beyond their previous limits as far as what they serve. The good news for Quest is we've never really had any limits as far as what we do. It's what our customers want. I think we are doing a much better job of further differentiating ourself. I will say this, I think we're doing a better job of telling the story of the differentiation we already had. I think that's a part of it, too, George. Team is doing a great job.
Okay. Great. Thank you.
Thanks, George.
Thank you. That does conclude today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Hatch for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you, operator. Thank you very much. I just wanna thank all of you again for your interest in Quest. I've got the best job in the world. I get a chance to represent all the hard work this team does, and I'm very thankful for them. Their ongoing efforts bringing value to our customers and also to you, the shareholders. All of our initiatives are working very well, and we've gained a lot of momentum in recent quarters. I feel we are still in the early stages of our growth efforts, and we have a long road of profitable growth ahead, and that's a great place to be. We look forward to keeping you up to date on all the quarters to come. Once again, thanks for your support of Quest. We appreciate it.
Thank you. That does conclude today's conference. We do thank you all for your participation, and you may now disconnect.