Clean Harbors, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Clean Harbors first quarter 2025 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jim Buckley, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations for Clean Harbors. Mr. Buckley, please go ahead.

Thank you, Melissa, and good morning, everyone. With me on today's call are our co-chief executive officers, Eric Gersenberg and Mike Battles, and our EVP and chief financial officer, Eric Dugas. Slides for today's call are posted on our investor relations website, and we invite you to follow along. Matters we are discussing today that are not historical facts are considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Participants are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these statements, which reflect management's opinions only as of today, April 30, 2025. Information on potential factors and risks that could affect our results is included in our SEC filings. The company undertakes no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to the statements made today, other than through filings made concerning this reporting period. Today's discussion includes references to non-gap measures. Clean Harbors believes such information provides an additional measurement and consistent historical comparison of its performance. Reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable gap measures are available in today's news release, on our IR website, and in the appendix of today's presentation. Let me turn the call over to Eric Ersberg to start.

Thanks, Jim. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. To start, I want to highlight our safety results for Q1. They are not a financial metric, but as we often say, they are our most important metric. Our total recordable incident rate, or TRIR, was an outstanding 0.46 in the quarter. That represents hats off to our entire team for the energy and effort they put into having our safety programs, for fostering a strong safety culture, and for protecting themselves and each other. Turning to our financial performance on slide three, our overall Q1 results finished ahead of expectations. Our ES segment began the year with an encouraging first quarter that included a strong contribution in March after a period of unfavorable weather in January. Our SKSN that Mike will discuss. Overall, company revenue was up 4% in Q1. Demand trends for our disposal and recycling assets were positive. We entered the quarter with momentum in most of our ES segment businesses and are optimistic about SKSS's ability to achieve its annual target. Our adjusted free cash flow and corporate segment results were also in line with expectations we provided in February. All in all, a solid start to 2025 for the company. Turning to our segment review, beginning on slide four with ES, adjusted EBITDA increased 4% with a 3% increase in revenue, resulting in a 10 basis point margin improvement. Our top line growth increased due to the 2024 acquisition of HEPCO, as well as growth from pricing and higher incineration utilization, which offset a year-over-year decline in industrial services driven by the refinery sector. Looking at our revenue by segment components, field services grew 32%, driven mostly by HEPCO, supported by organic growth in our legacy business. In total, we responded to more than 5,000 emergency response events in Q1, in line with recent quarters. In technical services, higher incineration volumes and pricing drove a 5% revenue increase. Incineration price rose more than 5% in Q1 on a mix-adjusted basis. Incineration utilization was an impressive 88% versus 79% in Q1-24. For comparison purposes, this corridor's utilization number excludes the new kiln and kiln mill as we ramp up. As we have stated publicly, our goal for the new kiln this year is to process 28,000 more tons or more, with growth in 2026 as we complete our shakedown process. In Q1, the new incinerator processed 5,000 tons, running well despite challenging weather conditions in January. Overall incineration demand was high all quarter long and shows no signs of slowing as reshoring and other market dynamics play out. We are continuing to realize the benefits of investments we have made in our disposal and recycling network to enable more efficient processing and movement of waste. Safety Clean Environmental Services continued its consistent and steady performance, notching another quarter of profitable growth by increasing revenues by 5% from a year ago. We performed 245,000 parts wash services in the quarter, down slightly from a year ago, reflecting the service interruptions from bad weather. Our pricing initiatives, record containerized waste services, and new products, including some innovative aqueous parts washers, drove the growth in this business. We faced some challenges in Q1 with our industrial services business, where revenue was down 10% from a year ago, as we continue to see some refinery customers delay spending and to defer maintenance in the current environment. Lastly, I'm sure some of you will ask questions about tariffs. While we suspect that a tariff and trade uncertainty may be behind some of the industrial services we've missed this quarter, refinery customers have been under pressure for some time due to local crack spreads. We haven't seen a material impact from tariff uncertainty on our waste volumes in TS or an SK branch or on the number of ERs we've conducted in field services. The stated goal of the current administration is to generate more U.S. manufacturing and industrial production, which should ultimately benefit Clean Harvest. We do not expect any of the core environmental regulations that have been the foundation of our business and have protected human health and the environment across the U.S. for decades to change under the current administration. As it relates to tariffs and our supply chain, That said, we have recently enacted a nominal price increase to offset the higher costs we expect for our vehicle fleet, the chemicals we use, and other supplies. To protect our margins, we remain committed to further adjusting our pricing and reducing our cost structure to offset any additional inflation that may come as a result of tariffs. With that, let me turn things over to Mike to discuss SKSS and capital allocation. Mike?