Heritage-Crystal Clean, Inc (NASDAQ:HCCI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Brian Recatto: And over the course of this year, we’ll move back to our primary third-party disposal vendors versus having to use some secondary outlets, which are a bit more expensive.

James Ricchiuti: Got it. Thank you. And just on the PFAS opportunity. As we think about the ramp in that business over the course of the year and your expectations looking out to 2024, is there a way to think about where we’re going to see this equipment? Is this geographically? Talk to us a little bit about how you see this playing out just in light of the fact that there’s still a lot of confusion around the regulatory situation, right?

Brian Recatto: Yes. That’s a good question. What’s driving the demand currently is, you have a lot of municipal wastewater treatment plants, which are taking, for example, leachate from a municipal landfill that maybe located near the POTW. They are beginning to become reluctant to take leachate that’s contaminated with PFAS contamination. So that’s creating the drive for the market opportunity. So the way we’re approaching it is we’re sticking the equipment at the landfill location to do the concentration steps. And if for some reason the landfill is close to one of our wastewater treatment plants, we can put the equipment in our wastewater treatment plant. But the way the model is going to work over the long-haul is we’ll put the reduction equipment at the generating source, whether that be a landfill or an industrial application.

And I think it’s going to be driven by the states that are being aggressive. States like Michigan, Maine, they’re the ones that are pushing the hardest. We’ve done a couple of small projects in Florida, we’re seeing a little bit of activity, at least call in activity from California, some of the more progressive states. That’s where we’ll see the early geographic opportunities. And our approach to the market is to take the treatment system to the generating location, concentrate the waste, use our Vac trucks to pick it up, bring it back to one of our wastewater treatment plants for the ultimate destruction component of our complete turnkey package is to eliminate PFAS contaminated waste.

Mark DeVita: And Jim, if I can add, I know it wasn’t part of your question just to add clarity if it wasn’t clear enough. So our strategy that Brian outlined, the reduction, the destruction technology, a lot of that, sometimes it would be on site at a very high volume generator, but a lot of times it’s going to be at our plant. So those results from a reporting standpoint will be manifest themselves or be included in the industrial and field services segment that the new one we talked about.

James Ricchiuti: Got it. That’s helpful, Mark. Appreciate that. Is there €“ I know its early days with this, but is there a way to, for us to get our arms around the profitability metrics that this business could show?

Brian Recatto: Yes. We’re not expecting it to be much different than our current margin percentage in ES. Early returns are positive, so mid-20s is our expectation.

James Ricchiuti: Got it. Thank you.

Brian Recatto: You’re welcome.

Mark DeVita: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Steinke from Barrington Research. Your line is open.

Kevin Steinke: Hey, good morning.

Mark DeVita: Good morning, Kevin.

Kevin Steinke: I wanted to ask about the new segment structure and just maybe more of the reasoning or rationale behind that in terms of what you’d like to highlight to investors with that new alignment. And also, does that better €“ how the business is currently operating or is there some change going on and the operating structure that also is driving that new segment reporting?