Clean Harbors, Inc. (CLH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

March 6, 2023

New York Stock Exchange US Industrials Commercial Services and Supplies conference_presentation 30 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Patrick Brown

analyst
#1

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 Ray Jay cover environmental services. I do transportation. I also do some of the heavy construction materials. So 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 going to talk about that, Eric Dugas, who's currently the Chief Accounting Officer, will also talk about that because we have some change a foot, Mike. So I don't think we have any slides. Right? So we're just going to kind of 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 kind of make it interactive if questions are out there.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#2

But I want to start, before we give a lay of the land, we have to talk change. People are changing, some things are changing at Clean Harbors. So I'll kind of leave it open ended for you, but we have had some leadership change, and maybe we can talk just a little bit about that start.

Michael Battles

executive
#3

Sure. Thanks, Tyler, and thanks for the team at Ray Jay for having us. Again, my name is Mike Battles. I'm the -- currently the Chief Financial Officer, and I'm here with Eric Dugas, our Chief Accounting Officer, as Tyler said. But the changes happened. So we have an announcement that happened both back in November and then last week. I'm -- as of April 1, I'll be the co-CEO, which I'll talk more about that, and then Eric will be the Chief Financial Officer. And so we're all pretty excited about taking on those new roles. So one question that we've been getting around the co-CEO role is that kind of why, and how, and you kind of have to have one -- maybe one voice to the top versus 2, and is that going to create some confusion. And certainly, I want to explain that to people here so they understand. I think that the -- I think that maybe on the outside, you look and you say, well, that's kind of weird. But if you're on the inside, it's actually pretty normal. Alan has done kind of lesson -- Alan McKim, the current CEO and the founder of the company started the company 43 years ago. He is still very much involved in the day-to-day, but now he's going to be moving on to be more involved in just more in technology. And again, on the inside, it's actually not that big of a change at all. You've certainly seen 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 investor, meeting with customers, presenting to employees, driving direction and strategy. Thinking about it from your shoes, a CEO change creates risk. It creates risk. It's like is this -- is he or she going to turn the ship kind of left or right? In our view, this is kind of the most derisked transaction transition you could have. You're going to have -- 2 people who've been with the company Eric Gerstenberg been here for 34 years. I've been here for 10. We worked well together. We both have our swim lanes we focus on. We're both in the new organization, we're not going to have the whole [ individual ] structure report to kind of both of us. We're going to have -- both of us going to have operations and back-office support. But ultimately, we're responsible for the entire organization. And we both sign the financial statements, we're both responsible for the direction of the company. And 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 want to see from a CEO, and you're going to get more of that. So my view on it is if you kind of like what we're doing and you like the strategy we've been taking, I would assume you're going to see more of that with Eric and I, at the lead.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#4

Perfect. Great lead in. I would like to -- I'm sure everybody wants to talk about base oil, but I actually don't. At least at 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. So first off, and just we have a lot of people obviously in the room, some people maybe new. When I think about the ES business, the Environmental Services business, I think about it as a collection, transportation, and disposal business. So can you talk a little bit about what you do in that business and maybe some of the different lines of business and just kind of -- there's a lot in ES. So if we could just talk a little bit about that to start with.

Michael Battles

executive
#5

Sure. Sure. So environmental services, we have 2 segments. We have an Environmental Service business segment. We have a Safety-Kleen Sustainability Solutions, Safety-Kleen Oil segment, then we have a Corporate segment and that's our overall business. So 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 wants me to speak to first. And so 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 kind of a, let's say, I'm going to call it the tech service business, which is going out and collecting a Dow plant has a tanker car full of waste. We go up 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 tech service. 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 2 weeks for a turnaround, a chemical plant, a refinery, and 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 network. 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 Service business. And so that's an emergency response business or maybe a manhole cleanup, maybe, a lot of utility business, where there'll be a spill on a highway, where they bring in our ER team. That's -- 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, and that's about $400 million or $500 million of revenue in 2022. And the last piece is our Safety-Kleen branch business. So what that is, is that, so think of the Dow plant, those are the large quantity generators like a tanker car full. But then also you've got Tyler's Autobody shop, where he has brake pads and oily rags and things he can't put in the dumpster, small quantity generation, well, we pick that up as well. That's -- we also do what's called a parts washer service, which is he helps a clean brake pads. Well, the brake pad needed to be clean. You can't clean that in a sink. Can't use water to clean. So we have a solvent that we sell, it's a tub and a drum, and they can clean parts with that. And so -- and that -- but that solvent gets dirty, needed to be changed every 6 to 8 weeks. So that is mostly in automotive, but some of it's industrial as well. And so that business is about $800 million, $900 million of revenue. And so -- and that generates small quantity generation waste, 2 or 3 drums at Tyler's Autobody shop that we'll take back and dispose them in our network. And so that's basically -- so 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. But it really is, they're all trying to feed the beast. The business is actually relatively straightforward. Recycle -- what weaken recycle and then get it and leverage our footprint of 9 hazardous waste incinerators, our 9 solid waste landfills, our over 30 TSDFs across North America. So it really is quite a big network of incineration capacity -- of disposal capacity.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#6

Right. So when we think about this spectrum of competition and we think about those incinerators, those landfills, those TSDFs, the wastewater. That is really a very high moat business. And as we move kind of down into the industrial, into the field, I'm curious how competitive those 2 segments are?

Michael Battles

executive
#7

Yes. So on -- just to level set. On the incineration network, we own about 70% of the market. So we own 9 to 13 commercial hazardous incinerators in North America. We own about 30% of the hazardous waste landfills. U.S. Ecology, now [ Republic Services ] owned also about 30%. And then it goes down from there. We own about 30% of the TSDFs in the country and so forth. And so that business, as Tyler is alluding, is a high moat business, scarce assets, hard to replicate, price 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. Come to find out -- and we're 20%, 30% of the industrial service market in North America. That business is -- used to -- is actually really competitive. The idea behind it, though, what's happening, what we see over the past year or 2 is that obviously, our scarce assets, our disposal assets, our highly permanent facilities are a big moat. Come to find out people and trucks are also a big moat as well. They're also pretty scarce. And so we can price those accordingly and we have over the past year, and we're going to talk more about margins, 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 that I think they are.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#8

Yes. So 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 kind of get Field Services or an Emergency Response, maybe it's priced at that point in time. But I am curious because -- and we are going to get into margins, but one of the stories here is your ES margins have done very well, particularly over the past year, but your flexibility on price because I think that was a big question kind of going into this hyperinflation or high inflationary environment, I should say. But if you can give us a little color on how pricing is done in that business.

Michael Battles

executive
#9

Yes. So again, depends on what business it is, back to the business we talked about a minute ago. On Tech Services, it's an annual contract with price increases during the course -- based on GDP and other types of growth. On Field Service, as Tyler said, it's more of an Emergency Response kind of get in there. We have an MOA, a memorandum understanding on a price, we'll go negotiate that, individually. On Industrial Services, there are annual contracts as well as they bid out a turnaround when they closed the plant down. And 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 Brown

analyst
#10

Perfect. Okay. Before we get too much into the margins, I do want to talk about logistics as well, just really quickly because there is -- 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, railcars, et cetera, et cetera. But 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 Battles

executive
#11

Yes. So that speaks a little bit to our -- to the business model that we provide. So we -- so when you think about hazardous waste -- and you open up a can of solvent, you're a hazardous waste generator, whether you know it or not. And so when you think about hazardous waste, that waste needs to be manifested on site. It means we have to tell the government what it is. And as we ship it across state lines, we have to tell each state that, yes, here comes some waste. It's going to roll through your town, roll through your state and on to this -- and disposal wherever that is, whether it be landfill or incinerator or what have you. And so that's why we have to do it ourselves. We tend not -- we tend do want to make sure that we want to test it on the site to make sure we know what it is. We want to make sure when we give to our plant, and want to know -- get put it in the hole or put in incinerator without knowing what it is. So we do a lot of testing either on-site or at both at on-site and when we actually get to end disposal. So because, again, you don't want to -- it's a specialty type of -- you can't just take this stuff down the highway. It needs to be manifested. It needs to be packed it properly. It needs to be specially trained to take this waste. So we tend to do it ourselves. So -- and so to Tyler's point, I think it's a competitive advantage. We have 15,000 pieces of rolling trucks and trailers. We're the 17th largest commercial shipper in North America. We have a huge fleet across -- 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. Needed to be carefully transported. We really want to make sure we're doing it well on trucks that run well and people that are properly trained.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#12

Perfect. So we talked a little bit about I kind of want to keep coming back to this disposal assets. So 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 kind of go away with time?

Michael Battles

executive
#13

Sure. Sure. So we do -- these numbers are rough. We do about 550,000 tons of waste a year. We incinerate 150,000 tons of waste. The market is let's say, 700,000, 750,000 tons of waste a year. But that's only the commercial market today. As Tyler alluded to, there's another market out there called a captive incinerator. So 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. They just incinerate the waste on that site, hence the name captive, right? And so what happens is though, they have the same regulation and compliance that we do. The same capital needs that we do. And so when that -- when those -- and the same environmental issues, they still have audit just like EPA audit just like we do. And so when those things come up to speed, and they get audited. 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. And as such, there's a pressure on them to close those captives which brings more waste into the network. And 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. And that helped us drive pricing up, drive demand up into the network. So what Tyler is 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. And 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 Brown

analyst
#14

But yes, please.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#15

The [ 30 ] incinerators, how many of those are captives or captive...

Michael Battles

executive
#16

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

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#17

How many captives will there be [ rough ]...

Michael Battles

executive
#18

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

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#19

And the 3M is the biggest?

Michael Battles

executive
#20

It was. Yes, it was. It was. And we got all that.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#21

So it's interesting because I think you mentioned 550,000 tons -- you run roughly, I think you run, say, 90% utilization. So in order to support the captives, you made an investment in El Dorado, Arkansas a couple of years ago, that went fairly swimmingly from what I can tell. It sounds like you've got another incinerator. And these aren't new incinerators. I think this is important. These are existing facilities with a new kiln if I'm correct on that.

Michael Battles

executive
#22

Absolutely correct.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#23

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

Michael Battles

executive
#24

Yes. So there's a fair amount of waste in our network today, whether it's a closure of 3M and just more reshoring, onshoring investment in the United States, investment in North America. And that's driving a lot more waste into our network. We're kind of -- we're backed up. We talked about that on our earnings call. We got more waste. The industry has more waste than it knows what to do at the moment. So building an -- I wish the Kimball plant, the Kimball Nebraska plant that Tyler mentioned was ready tomorrow. It's a 70,000-ton incinerator. So it would add about 8% to our existing capacity, it's on an existing site. So we have 2 kilns already there. It's a third site. There hasn't been a new greenfield incinerator permitted in North America in over 20 years. And so the only way this happens is when you take a footprint and add to it. And so we're doing that. It will be ready at the end of 2024. It's about $180 million. Next year, it's about $90 million. We spent the big year for the spend. That's when the actual kiln itself, the rotary kiln that actually gets installed next year, that's a big spend this year, 2023, excuse me. And that ramps up. Again, it goes on waste early 2025. We're really excited about it. It's going to generate a huge amount of cash flow. As 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 is 40%. That's -- and we'll do better than that because these newer kilns run more efficiently. So we had a higher -- probably a higher price per pound than the average of $0.60. You don't need to be a math word to see how profitable this gets really fast once we get it kind of up and running. And 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. It's the same drawing. It's the same guys building this one. So we're hopeful that -- and we're on time and on budget. We meet once a month. I'm really -- 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 if its gets done a little early, I don't know. I wouldn't want to commit to that, but certainly, by early 2025, it should be kind of up and running, burning on waste as they call.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#25

Even Mike, I can do that math. So I appreciate that. Thank you for helping us there. But as we think about -- this is -- these are obviously critical infrastructure assets, right? This waste is going to -- the volatile molecule is a byproduct of chemical process, let's just say. So we're always going to have this waste. It seems like that market is fairly tight and 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 Battles

executive
#26

Yes. We've never gone backwards on price for incineration capacity or landfill capacity. Now maybe in certain years when there's been recession we've slowed down price increases, but we've never -- the trains never stopped. We never hit the reverse button on incinerator pricing.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#27

Okay. Perfect. And so when we think about that business in totality, so if I include all of what you do in ES, I mean, is that a -- is that kind of an industrial production plus type of growth? Or how should we think about that organically?

Michael Battles

executive
#28

Yes. So if you're putting DCF models together, I would say going out the next a 5-year model, a 7-year model, 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 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 there's such a demand -- such an inflect of new regulation of the chips build, infrastructure spend, of reshoring that's driving a fair amount of waste, a fair amount of manufacturing in the U.S. and that generates a fair amount of waste. And don't think it's just chemical and refining. Well, that certainly they generate a fair amount of hazardous waste, no doubt. But it also is basically everything. Everything generates hazardous waste, whether it be pharma or whether it be education, when lab moving 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. And so that type of thing is generating a fair amount of waste. So any manufacturing, any U.S. manufacturing, North American manufacturing is good for Clean Harbor, not kind of what it is.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#29

Perfect. Question?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#30

A quick question. Here into chip set [ something under ] a plant generated a ton of chemical waste. I mean, is that a pretty sizable opportunity over the next several years to build below capacity here?

Michael Battles

executive
#31

Yes. The issue is this, is that they don't turn the plant on and say, okay, now who's going to 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. So we're already working with those large chip manufacturer 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 they get disposed up properly. But certainly, some of our larger customers are chip manufacturers.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#32

Question?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#33

When you took over the 3M business, did you take care of the infrastructure, did you take care of their incinerator or did you put that into your own [ network ] ?

Michael Battles

executive
#34

So that incinerator got closed because it was non-compliant. We're actually working with them now to clean up the site. And so 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. So it's actually a pretty big deal because it's not just, okay, here comes the waste. We're going to take that. Oh no, as I said earlier, we want to test, test that waste on site. So 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. So it's actually turned into a pretty big deal, not just the disposal site itself, but also the transport side, people and transport side.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#35

Back and then front. Couple questions here.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#36

How much hazardous waste goes on rail and produced [indiscernible] or is it your goal long term...

Michael Battles

executive
#37

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. But a majority of it's on trucks.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#38

What are the economics of the opportunity to either operator and/or own the captive incinerators of those captive site...

Michael Battles

executive
#39

I just want to finish one more thought on the question the gentleman in the back asked. Then I'll get to your question in a minute. 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 to that problem. And we're not -- we have a small presence on site right now. It's not a big -- not really hard. We don't have the contact with Norfolk Southern, other company does. But certainly, we view ourselves as a problem solver. And we certainly have talked to the government as it came up in the Q3 -- Q4 earnings call, we talked to the government, we're open for business. We're ready to help whatever needs to be done. But 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.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#40

And just guess, on collections, is that something that's getting better and better, pretty wild guess that would be...

Michael Battles

executive
#41

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 guide.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#42

And you should be able to manage margins over 12 months and not 3 months [indiscernible]

Michael Battles

executive
#43

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

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#44

Yes. I was curious about the opportunity related in terms of captive incinerator, there's an opportunity either operate and/or own those facilities analogous to like an on-site industrial [ gas ]...

Michael Battles

executive
#45

Yes. So we know all those customers because they get shut down and they need -- but the plant still runs. So we take that waste. So we have regular conversations with them. We're kind of open to whatever that is. we tend not to like run someone else's plant. We want to kind of own that plant for safety and compliance reasons. So we'll do that, probably not Plan A, maybe Plan B, but we're open to kind of those types of conversations. But in most cases, we kind of 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 to transfer. We want to take -- we want to do more than that. We're going to take their waste plus more waste. So that's always a bit of a challenge right there.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#46

So Eric, we got to pull you in here, right? Talk a little bit about -- we got to talk about margins. Because so we're going to talk about, so we got -- we only have 5 minutes left, it's moving quick. But I do want to 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 kind of the surface if you think about it, [ CARES ] dilutive impact from M&A. So can you just talk a little bit about how the core margins performed in '22 and maybe what we're thinking as we look to '23.

Eric Dugas

executive
#47

Yes. So as you mentioned, a lot of kind of headwinds on 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. But I think if you look at the core business, you are looking at 280 basis points of growth throughout the year. If you just look at our financial statements, 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. So 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 operational people with the information they need to have good discussions. But there's lots of other things that go on. I think culturally, our business, we look at cost-cutting measures all the time trying to find efficiencies in the business. Maybe just 2 examples there, Tyler. 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? So low-margin routing or low cost low-cost routing, I should say. And then the second thing I would point out is our TSDFs. These are facilities where kind of an 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. But we can also pull out some of the waste streams that we can recycle. So really looking at those projects and constantly driving cost savings in those types of ways.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#48

Couple of minutes here. Let's talk about the balance sheet really quickly. You're 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, all of those things kind of as we think about go forward and what the priorities and use of capital will be.

Eric Dugas

executive
#49

So I'll take it and Mike chime in. 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. So 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, and 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 Brown

analyst
#50

You set it up. Last one. Analyst Day.

Michael Battles

executive
#51

That's right.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#52

What are we going to hear at this Analyst Day that's been 10 years, I think it's been 10...

Michael Battles

executive
#53

Once a decade.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#54

Once a decade.

Michael Battles

executive
#55

And we have an Analyst Day. Yes. So really excited about that at the end of the month, October 29, you can talk to Jim Buckley, who is our IR lead, if you want to attend. We certainly would love to have you. I think there's going to be a great opportunity to hear, just in terms from me, and Eric, and Eric Gerstenberg, the other CEO. But then the deep management team, I think there's a really strong team to get a lot out of that to meet them and spend some time with them. I think we're going to talk a lot about our strategy, which is not terribly dissimilar to what we've already done, but maybe articulate a little differently. Also, we're excited about talking about long-term goals and how we try to achieve those goals and what we're trying to do. And of course, I think the best part about it is, there wouldn't be Clean Harbors if we don't do a show and tell. We're going to take it 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. Would love to have you all there.

Patrick Brown

analyst
#56

Perfect. I don't know if everybody had enough to eat. That was a very lively...

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