Montrose Environmental Group, Inc.

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Montrose Environmental Group third quarter of 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator's assistance during the conference, please press start and zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Rodney Nassier of Investor Relations. Rodney Nassier Thank you.

Welcome to our third quarter 2022 earnings call. Joining me are Vijay Manthri Purgata, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Alan Dix, Chief Financial Officer. During our discussion today, we will be referring to our earnings presentation, which is available on the investors section of our website. Our earnings release is also available on the website. Moving to slide two, I would like to remind everyone that today's call will include forward-looking statements that are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ in a material way due to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that should be considered in evaluating our operating performance and financial outlook. We refer you to our recent SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31st, 2021, which identify the principal risks and uncertainties that could affect any forward-looking statements as well as future performance. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. In addition, we will be discussing or providing certain non-GAAP financial measures today including consolidated adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income, and adjusted net income per share. We provide these non-GAAP results for informational purposes, and they should not be considered in isolation from the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Please see the appendix to the earnings presentation or our earnings release for a discussion of why we believe these non-GAAP measures are useful to investors, certain limitations of using these measures, and a reconciliation thereof to their most directly comparable GAAP measure. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Vijay, beginning on slide four.

Thank you, Rodney. Welcome to all of you joining us today. I will provide a few business highlights and hand it over to Alan Dix for our financial review, and we will then open it up to Q&A. I will speak generally to pages four through eight of the presentation shared on our website. And before I begin, I would like to reiterate two themes that we've highlighted before. The first is that demand for our environmental services does not follow fiscal quarter patterns and is best evaluated on an annual basis. The second theme is that these results belong to our colleagues around the world who have managed through a pandemic, macroeconomic shocks, and geopolitical turbulence. I am proud of all of our team members whose dedication helped us produce another quarter of great results. With that, let me now take a moment to recap several key themes that are relevant to our third quarter 2022 results. First, as it has all year, our business continues to benefit from growing demand across most of our service lines, and in particular, in the areas of PFAS water treatment, greenhouse gas measurement and mitigation, and renewable energy. The quarter also saw strong performance across our air and lab services, and recent acquisitions, which are recurring and are driven primarily by regulations. Our third quarter performance continues to validate the demand tailwinds and regulatory themes we've outlined since our IPO over two years ago. Our stellar organic growth excluding CTEH reflects the continued demand for our integrated service model and differentiated solutions. Second, in addition to strong organic revenue growth excluding CTEH, We are pleased with our overall sequential margin improvement. As noted last quarter, we were able to respond with pricing and other initiatives given some of the unexpected inflationary pressures we saw on select costs such as travel. The impact of those efforts, along with business mix and other factors, allowed us to get back on track with EBITDA margins. Third and finally, We are also happy with the strength of our balance sheet and strong cash generation. Our acquisitions to date have been funded through cash flow from operations and our balance sheet provides us with ample flexibility to continue consolidating our industry and investing in cutting edge environmental innovation. As it relates to acquisitions, our strategy and outlook remain unchanged. We continue to consolidate our highly fragmented industry completing four deals this year. Our acquisitions are usually immediately accretive, and they add great talent and service capabilities to our Montrose team. This year, given the rate of increase in our organic growth excluding CTEH, we tempered our pace of acquisitions as we focused on supporting the surge in organic revenue growth. For example, helping with hiring, training, and quality management programs across multiple geographies. The number of potential acquisitions and average multiples haven't moved, so our pipeline and opportunity to create value remains as strong as ever. Despite our choice to move at a relatively slower cadence of acquisitions in 2022, we were thrilled to welcome the Triad and Air Kinetics teams to Montrose during the third quarter. The addition of Triad's consulting team and focus in the southeastern United States, and the addition of air kinetics, air testing team, and capabilities in the southwestern United States are all very strategically additive to Montrose. We expect our 2023 cadence of acquisitions will accelerate back to where we have historically trended. Next, let me take a few minutes to walk through some recent developments and catalysts that we see for our business moving forward. As it relates to regulatory industry opportunities, we see tailwinds across our business lines as corporate ESG initiatives, environmental regulation and enforcement, and better environmental stewardship remain at the forefront of private sector and government policies. We believe Montrose is exceptionally well positioned to capitalize on these tailwinds, and that fundamental belief underpins the favorable long-term outlook for our business. In terms of select and specific regulatory developments that will have or continue to have the potential to impact Montrose, in September 2022, the EPA proposed to designate PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability, or CERCLA, Act. This action will cause PFOA and PFOS to be eligible for cleanup under the recently refunded Superfund program. This designation also triggers a requirement for companies to report any spills to the environment, like when putting out a fire, that could trigger additional contamination investigations as well as remedial actions. Furthermore, the EPA recently announced the addition of certain PFAS chemicals to the toxic release inventory, which likely impacts current and future demand for consulting and advisory services in particular. Outside of direct actions by the EPA, We also saw additional momentum with PFAS regulations at the state level in the United States, and in October, a formal request for continued monitoring of PFAS from 49 members of Congress. We expect all these developments will continue to create tailwinds across our three segments. With regards to methane emissions, late last year, the EPA proposed performance standards for new sources of methane emissions. The proposal expands and strengthens emission reduction requirements and would require states to reduce methane emissions from hundreds of thousands of existing sources nationwide for the first time. We are also aware that the EPA is seeking information about community monitoring opportunities and technologies to support community monitoring programs. Should these regulations be adopted, we would expect to see increased demand for our emissions measuring, monitoring, and assessment services primarily impacting our measurement analysis segment. Regarding our environmental consulting services, in April, the EPA made further changes to the NEPA process. Regulators will now have to account for how government actions may increase greenhouse gas emissions, may fragment wildlife habitats, and may impose new burdens on communities, particularly disadvantaged neighborhoods. Notably, the EPA has also created a new division to oversee the implementation and delivery of the $3 billion climate and environmental justice block grant program created by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. While this is a new development that has yet to be fully implemented, we believe that in aggregate, this is a positive update for Montrose given our expertise with environmental advisory, testing, and remediation services. This is all to say that momentum for environmental protection continues to grow. We believe Montrose is exceptionally well positioned to help our clients navigate rapidly evolving priorities and mandates regarding environmental stewardship as it continues to become more and more central to corporate and governmental policies. I would next like to discuss our third quarter business performance by segment. Within our assessment, permitting, and response segment, despite the anticipated deceleration in CTEH COVID-19 revenues, Our CTEH team continues to perform above run rate levels and is doing an exceptional job for our clients with business continuity services. Support following environmental incidents caused by fires and hurricanes in particular have picked up compared to last year. Excluding CTEH, we were pleased to see positive contributions from our acquisitions. Our acquisitions supporting West Coast utilities managing fire risk, for example, are performing well along with attractive growth in select areas such as our greenhouse gas advisory services. Margins in the segment were primarily impacted by the shift in CTH margins and the lower margins of our recent acquisitions. Within our measurement and analysis segment, demand for our testing services remains very strong and drove solid organic growth during the third quarter. Given the regulatory momentum I just discussed, we expect further opportunities in this segment given our position as a market leader. Our margins in this segment continue to normalize in the high teens to 20% range as we've previously discussed. And finally, within our remediation and reuse segment, our organic growth outperformance in the third quarter was once again driven by demand for our PFAS water treatment and renewable biogas services. As we've reiterated on prior calls, margins remain below what we would consider normalized levels, given our ongoing investments into this business. For example, the establishment of our European infrastructure, investments that we believe will enable us to capitalize on the outsized growth opportunity over the next three to five years. That said, we did see sequential margin improvement in this segment, which is in line with our expectations. In summary, and before I turn it over to Alan, I would like to thank all of our team members around the world for their tremendous efforts so far this year. To those of you that are listening, thank you for all the hard work you've put in through these uncertain times. I am incredibly grateful for you. To our investors, thank you for your continued support and for giving us the opportunity to continue creating value while leaving the world a better place. Our third quarter results reflect positive momentum in our business, and based on our current trajectory, our outlook for 2022 remains firm. Alan is going to expand upon that in a moment. We look forward to closing out a strong 2022 and to a great 2023. Thank you. Alan?

Thank you, Vijay. The strong organic growth in our core business continued in the third quarter, reflecting our expanding customer relationships, and ongoing cross-selling success. We also continue to execute our M&A strategy with the recent closing of our fourth acquisition in 2022. Moving to our revenue performance on slide 10, we saw organic growth across most of our business lines. Our third quarter revenues were $130.3 million compared to $132.6 million in the prior year quarter. This decrease in revenues was driven by significantly lower COVID-19 revenue from CTEH, whose COVID-19 revenue dropped by 31.1 million, and the exiting of certain wastewater treatment and biogas O&M contracts. The revenue decrease was partially offset by organic growth in our measurement and analysis and remediation and reuse segments, as well as the positive contributions from acquisitions, which added 7.5 million to the quarter. Year-to-date, revenues were up 0.6% versus the prior year period to $404.9 million. The primary driver of revenue growth in the year-to-date period was organic growth in our measurement and analysis and remediation and reuse segments, as well as the positive contributions from acquisitions, which added $19.9 million to year-to-date revenue. These year-to-date benefits to revenue helped us to more than overcome the significantly lower COVID-19 related services provided by CTEH, whose COVID-19 revenues were down 103.4 million year over year, as well as our planned exit from legacy O&M contracts. Looking at our consolidated adjusted EBITDA performance on slide 11. Third quarter consolidated adjusted EBITDA was 17.1 million, or 13.1% of revenue. compared to consolidated adjusted EBITDA of 20.3 million, or 15.3% of revenue in the prior year quarter. Year to date, consolidated adjusted EBITDA was 48.4 million, or 12% of revenue, compared to consolidated adjusted EBITDA of 56 million, or 13.9% of revenue in the prior year period. The year-over-year change in consolidated adjusted EBITDA dollars and as a percentage of revenue for both periods was driven by business mix, the cyber attack in June, which temporarily disrupted certain of our labs' ability to operate in both June and July, our continued investments in operating infrastructure in our biogas and water businesses, and higher variable costs impacting travel, field and lab supplies, and other direct costs. Here to date in 2022, we have seen strong traction with our pricing initiatives and have been pleased to see the resulting sequential improvement in quarterly margins, which we expect will continue into the fourth quarter. I'll re-emphasize that Montrose's performance needs to be assessed annually. This is consistent with how we evaluate the business due to the stronger predictability of our performance on an annual basis. This is consistent with how we hire staff allocate resources, and manage the company. Turning to our business segments on slide 12. In our assessment, permitting, and response segment, revenue and operating segment adjusted EBITDA decreased to 46.4 million and 9.8 million, respectively. The year-over-year decreases in both revenue and adjusted EBITDA in this segment was driven by significantly lower revenue from COVID-19 related services provided by CTH. partially offset by revenue from companies acquired subsequent to the end of the third quarter of 2021. As we've reiterated on recent calls, the normalization of our CTH revenues was expected as the demand for our pandemic-related services has waned following the reduction of COVID-19 testing and prevention requirements in the U.S. Operating segment adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue was 21.2%, which was lower than the prior year quarter as a result of the acquisitions of environmental standards earlier this year and environmental intelligence and horizon in 2021, all of which run at lower margins than our other businesses in this segment. In our measurement and analysis segment, revenue increased 12.9% to $43.8 million, primarily attributable to organic growth. as well as acquisitions completed in and after the end of the third quarter of 2021. Measurement and analysis adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue decreased to 19.4% as a result of business mix, the timing of projects in some of our specialty labs, and to a lesser degree, the impact of the cyber attract, which temporarily disrupted some of our labs' ability to operate. And finally, in our remediation and reuse segment, Revenues increased 32% year-over-year to $40.1 million, reflecting a significant increase in demand for our PFAS water treatment services and organic growth in our biogas business, partially offset by the exiting of discontinued O&M contracts. The slight decrease in remediation and reuse adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue to 17.5% was primarily a result of business mix and our continued investments in the operating infrastructure of our biogas and water treatment technology businesses, which temporarily impact margins. Moving to our capital structure on slide 13. Year-to-date cash flow from operating activities was $8.2 million compared to cash flow from operating activities of $13.7 million in the prior year period. Cash from operations includes the payment of acquisition-related consideration, of $19.5 million in the current year and $15.5 million in the prior year, respectively. Excluding acquisition-related payments, cash from operating activities was $27.7 million in the first nine months of 2022, compared to cash from operating activities of $29.2 million in the first nine months of 2021. This change was primarily due to lower earnings before non-cash items of $6 million. partially offset by an increase in working capital of $13.4 million in the current year period compared to an increase in working capital of $17.6 million in the prior year period. Cash from operating activities before acquisition-related payments as a percentage of adjusted EBITDA improved to 57% in the current year from 52% in the prior year. Our strong cash flows reflect our ongoing focus on balancing the generation of cash with investments in technology R&D, and corporate infrastructure to ensure continued scalability. Given our performance year to date, we expect to report another strong year of operating cash flow in 2022, excluding acquisition related payments. Our liquidity position remains strong with cash on hand as of September 30, 2022 of 93.6 million and an additional 125 million of availability on our revolving credit facility. We have almost no exposure to rising interest rates as a result of the interest rate swap we put in place in January of this year and the cash we have on the balance sheet. In addition, effective September 1st, 2022, the company received an interest rate reduction of five basis points under the 2021 credit facility based on the company's achievement of certain sustainability and environmental, social, and government-related objectives as provided for in the 2021 credit facility. Our leverage ratios as of September 30, 2022, which includes the impact of acquisition-related contingent earn-out obligations payable in cash, was at 1.2 times. A Series A2 preferred stock has no maturity date, and we have the option, but not the obligation, to redeem the preferred shares at any time for cash, subject to a make-or-payment if prepaid prior to April 2023. We view this preferred equity instrument as favorable to the value creation potential in the business, given its flexible dynamics and the fixed nature of the dividend in a rising interest rate environment. If you include the $182 million balance on the Series A2 equity in our market cap, our total equity capitalization stands at approximately $1.5 billion. Looking at a review of our business trajectory on slide 15. As we've discussed over the past few quarters, we anticipate an average annual revenue run rate of $75 to $95 million for our CTEH business. Although CTEH revenue continues to normalize, CTEH revenues remain elevated compared to our expected average revenue run rate for this business as a result of continued demand for COVID-19 related services, which are expected to be transitory in nature. When excluding the above trend revenue from CTEH, the remainder of our revenue is what we refer to as our base business, which includes the normalized revenues we would expect to see from CTEH, in addition to all of our other business lines. Our base business continues to grow at a solid trajectory, reflecting the organic tailwinds we've discussed on this call. Moving to our full year outlook on slide 16. Based on our updated visibility through year end and our resilient performance thus far in 2022, we now expect full year 2022 revenue to be in the range of $535 million to $555 million. This revenue range is narrowed from our prior full-year guidance of $520 million to $570 million in revenue. On this growth, we reiterate our expectation for consolidated adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $68 million to $73 million for the full year 2022. Our full-year outlook remains anchored on our expectations for double-digit organic growth, excluding CTH, plus the contribution of completed acquisitions. As always, the timing of sales and the mix of business may influence adjusted EBITDA in any quarter. This is due to the timing of large projects and the emergency response nature of CTH's business. Earlier in the year, there was time to make up for quarter-to-quarter variability, but we are mindful of some projects towards the end of year getting pulled up or pushed back between 2022 and 2023. In summary, Our third quarter and year-to-date results reflect the resiliency of our business model and focused execution across all levels of our operations. We are also very proud of our ability to more than replace the year-over-year reduction in CTH COVID-19 revenues of over 100 million year-to-date. We remain optimistic about the momentum in our business and would like to thank our dedicated team again for their focused efforts in helping us produce another quarter of robust results. Thank you all for joining us today and for your continued interest in Montrose. We look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter. Operator, we are ready to open the lines to questions.

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting a questionnaire of the session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation turn will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 to leave the question queue. For participants making use of speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question comes from Tim Mulroney of William Blair.

Vijay, Alan, good morning. Good morning, Tim. How are you? Pretty good. Some quick questions, just two quick ones for me, numbers-related questions. So the revenue of $130 million for the third quarter, that came in below consensus expectations, which you guys don't guide to quarters, you guide to full years. And you maintained your guidance or narrowed it for the full year, keeping the midpoint. So my question is, was third quarter revenue in line with your internal expectations, or did some stuff get pushed out in the fourth quarter?

Hey, Tim. I'll take that conceptually. Our outlook is exactly the same, and the reason we don't guide supporters is there is, by virtue of some of the projects that we do on the testing side, on our water side, on the renewable energy side, for example, they will ebb and flow. And so, by virtue of us not changing our annual outlook, the midpoint, as you alluded to, you can see that we have a lot of conviction in what the trajectory looks like through the through the back half of Q3 and, sorry, the back half of Q4 and into next year. So yes, it was very much in line with expectations and our annual expectations. We have a lot of confidence in that as well.

Got it. So consensus got too aggressive, but no change in business as far as you're concerned.

The second question. Sorry, Tim, implicit in that is that consensus for Q3 If the annual doesn't change, it's too aggressive, then consensus for Q4 may not be aggressive enough, right, if you were just to take those two quarters in isolation. So we don't guide the quarters precisely for everything.

Yep, yep, 10-4. Okay. On the EBITDA margins for the fourth quarter now, you know, the midpoint of your guidance, Vijay, I mean, it implies pretty strong EBITDA margin expansion in the fourth quarter. following several quarters where EBITDA margins have declined year over year. So can you just kind of walk us through the puts and takes on why you expect that margins would inflect into such a positive expansion territory in the fourth quarter? Thank you.

So I'll take that conceptually, Tim. We don't look at the business on a quarterly basis. And so, again, it's influenced by revenue mix. and various initiatives that we would implement over the course of the year. This year, part of the reason for this consequential improvement was because of the cyber attack that we talked about in Q2 as an example of kind of anomalous impacts that we had earlier in the year. And then because of the inflationary pressures in Q2 that we then tried to redeem over the course of three and four, and we've had a lot of success doing that, we've seen really positive momentum on the margin side. And so we're expecting sequential margin improvement as a function of those efforts. But again, as you look over the course of the year, Tim, our outlook is very consistent with where it was even at the beginning of the year.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question comes from Andrew Urban of Bank of America.

Hi, guys. Good morning. Hey, Andrew. Hey, how are you guys? Just a question, just more of a sort of bigger picture question. As you're getting bigger, you know, what are the sort of system challenges have you run into in sort of trying to manage the company? And, you know, what have been any actions that you have taken to sort of change your approach to how you manage the systems, how you manage complexity as you continue to make acquisitions, or does the current setup continue to work?

Yeah, let me try that, Andrew. As you know, shortly after IPO in late 2020, we replaced our ERP precisely in anticipation of the continued growth we were expecting. and in particular, some of the business mix that we were seeing that was more project-oriented and needed a system that could handle more complex projects. So that system has now been in place for two years and is operating really well. The training, the SOPs, the KPIs around those systems are now well implemented, and incentive plans have been built around those. At the same time, we implemented our new CRM, as we've talked about. So between those two systems, we are operating as well as we've ever been and operating through those single systems. We don't operate multiple systems. And also, as we've discussed, when we acquire companies, we integrate those company systems and our systems pretty quickly. So we feel really well set from a system perspective.

Yeah, and Andrew, I would take, I totally agree with Alan. I would perhaps highlight a couple of other considerations. So you're right. We are more than double the size we were at IPO, but we have stronger organic growth, higher margins, better cash flow generation, and lower leverage. And so hopefully by virtue of our results, you can see that even though we are a larger, more complex business, by any objective measure, it's a much stronger business. The variables we're considering now as we enter this new phase of our growth are more related to some of the externalities that we face, all of which you guys obviously are very close to. We have gotten a lot more disciplined with pricing. As Tim alluded to, you're already seeing the benefits of those efforts, right, of our sequential margin expansion. We've gotten a lot more disciplined system-wise and infrastructure-wise with our cash management. And our sales and marketing efforts which were non-existent in a coordinated sense, right, as IPO and all of which we talked about in a formal way, have resulted in us seeing materially higher cross-up activity, right? So over 18% of the revenue last year and increasing is coming from clients purchasing multiple services. And so we're largely harvesting our clients and working more closely with them as opposed to trying to acquire new clients. And so those are all examples of us operating in a more complex environment, but with a series of new capabilities, which are largely a function of the infrastructure and systems we put in place, some of which Alan alluded to. And so as we think about getting from, you know, $500 to $600 million of revenue to a billion, a lot of what we talked about in terms of the corporate investments we made this year, right, which were a function of our accelerated growth, we think we'll position as well in a similar way over the next couple of years.

Gotcha. And just to follow up, you know, can you just provide more color on price cost and specifically, you know, how does the equation on sort of labor availability and labor skill and wage inflation work against your ability to go to your customers and continue to raise price in the fact what appears to be a tight labor market? Maybe not, you know, if you could provide color there. Thank you.

No, it's a very tight labor market. I mean, we – We are very sensitive to it. It's something we've spent a lot of time on. And through our ESG report, you see us, we disclose all of our retention rates. And I think we said this on earlier calls, Andrew, we feel really good about the efforts we've made and the quality and strength of our team, particularly at the senior level as the ones interacting with our clients regularly. Our retention is strong. They're heavily advertised and continue to be heavily engaged as is the management team. Where we are more sensitive and really need to do a better job, candidly, is at the more junior level, the entry-level staff, the hourly staff. And we need to continue focusing there. So we have a series of efforts and initiatives through our human resources team and all of our operating leaders to engage more, be more flexible with the work environment, and think about creative ways to compensate and incentivize. So that's a huge focus. Last year, with that preamble, our – labor costs, which aren't just salaries, including benefits, went up 5% as opposed to our historical cadence of around 3%. And so our pricing this year reflected that. And then we had to take pricing up again in Q2, Q3 because of some of the variable costs we alluded to earlier. But because it's primarily a services business, as long as we are really disciplined with translating that labor cost increase to our pricing algorithms, we'll be able to offset that increase. But this is something that we are spending a ton of time on in ways that we weren't four, five, six years ago.

Gotcha. Yeah, but ultimately, you know, the pricing pressure is still there on labor, but you feel comfortable being able to keep up or stay ahead of it? We feel comfortable being able to keep up or stay ahead, yes. Thanks so much.

The next question comes from Stephanie Yee of JP Morgan.

Hey, good morning.

Hey, Stephanie.

I wanted to ask, I appreciate that you highlighted a lot of the business is tied to regulations and even kind of in this environment of uncertainty still see very robust growth for the business. Have you seen any projects or customers kind of pulling back, just shifts maybe in timing, just any color in terms of maybe some hesitancy in terms of client demand because of the environment?

We haven't, Stephanie, no. You know, as we talked about, the only time we really saw that was in 2020 when we The government effectively shut down the ability to move either within state cities or between states. And then some of those projects got pushed as we talked about with you and others into other quarters. But no, this year we haven't really seen much of that. I mean, there is the natural scheduling variances that occur all the time, which is why we talk about ours not being a quarterly business or a project. that may be scheduled for late Q2, may move into early Q3 or something like that, which happens all the time. But no, in aggregate, we haven't really seen much movement of projects in or out.

Okay. Okay, that's awesome. And in terms of the comment about some of the acquisitions being lower margin than the company's business impacting kind of the assessment segment, I guess over time, do you expect some of these acquisitions, the margins, to come up to the company level as you integrate them, as you derive more synergies for them? Or is it, you know, is it they're structurally, I guess, lower margin than the company, but the acquisitions are created from a strategic standpoint?

Yes, great question. So we – What we were alluding to, and perhaps we weren't clear, Stephanie, so my apologies, is some of the recent acquisitions we've done in the consulting advisory space haven't been at that 35 plus percent margin status that we've historically talked about. And so those, so in the commentary, we were alluding to the fact that that had some impact on the quarterly variance, quarter in, quarter out for that specific segment. There are some smaller acquisitions we may do, for example, on the testing side that are similarly lower margin than they would be on a run rate basis. In select instances, we certainly expect margins to rise as they get integrated into our systems. But as you know, ours is really an organic revenue play, right? This is not a cost synergy play. But as we continue to cross-sell services, as the revenue trajectory increases, the natural organic and operating leverage in the business for cost margins to accrete. So the recent acquisitions, for example, environmental standards, triad, air kinetics, those relative to our existing segment margins weren't necessarily margin accreted, which is what we were alluding to in the commentary, if that makes any sense. But yes, over time, we have no change in our expectations around margins.

Okay. Understood. Thank you.

Stephanie, does that conclude your questions?

Yes. Thank you. That was helpful. Thanks, Stephanie. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, you're welcome to press star and then 1 to place yourself in the question queue. The next question comes from another adult's obstacle.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my call. Hey, so I was wondering if you were to take out just for CTEH and if you were to kind of look at the, what I would characterize as the legacy businesses versus, you know, the higher growth that you're seeing in PFAS and biogas and CO2. Could you give us a sense of kind of how to think about the growth trajectory of each of those groups in 2021? and how you're thinking about how we should be thinking about sort of the mix of growth for 2023. Thanks.

Yeah, it's a good question, Noelle. We highlight PFAS, biogas, and greenhouse measurements and mitigation because those are at elevated levels of organic growth, as you know, right, as you can see from our numbers. But that doesn't mean that the rest of our core environmental services aren't also growing very attractively. We just don't highlight that. by virtue of the math. But as we look at our core testing business, for example, the organic growth trajectory in that business is among the best it's ever been on the back of some of the regulations that have already been implemented and some that are expected to be implemented. Our clients are heavily engaged with us across our testing business, our field services, our labs. We're seeing some really great trajectory across our engineering remediation and consulting businesses, we're seeing some really nice growth opportunities. As we look at our recent acquisitions, for example, on the West Coast, the work we're doing with utilities and fire mitigation, I alluded to our team out of Pennsylvania Environmental Standards. Those two, as an example, are seeing exceptional organic growth opportunities ahead of them, and they are indicative of kind of our broader sentiment in that group. And so, as we look forward, we're really, really feeling great about what the three- to five-year outlook looks like. And then, obviously, we've talked a lot about the PFAS water treatment, the biogas, renewable energy, and the greenhouse gas mitigation business. And the reason for that is those addressable markets have been increasing in size, and the velocity and client demand in those business lines has been something you guys have been paying a lot of attention to, and we're naturally benefiting from that already. So, We're feeling great. I think the, and again, as you said, excluding ETH, obviously that business is a bit tougher for us to predict year in, year out. But the fundamentals there are really strong as well. So you can see that, I think, in the investor presentation as well. You know, that's the blue bars, which we would call core environmental services. You can see that trajectory, you know, that cadence is incredibly strong and has been in the last couple of years. And as we look out over the next three to five years, we're feeling really bullish.

Okay, great. Sure does. And then just on the PFAS remediation services, is there any way you could kind of talk about how many programs you have at this point that are in, say, you know, beta testing and kind of how we should think about your historical hit rate in terms of moving those tests into full-scale deployment? Thanks.

Yeah, we don't disclose the number of pilots. Um, that we have ongoing well, but I'll give you kind of some structural that points that may be helpful. Um, we. You know, as we think about, uh. In aggregate representing, uh, mantra's percentage of revenue from single digits. To this year, we think it will be closer to 20% as we look across the next 3 to 5 years. We think that has the possibility of increasing well beyond that. The 20%. a full revenue mix. And that's a function of a series of pilots that are on the way. The reason we're not disclosing pilots, we're disclosing exactly when they'll start, but that's a little unpredictable for us. It's about an 18 to 24 month cycle from when the initial water testing is done, a lot of which started at the end of last year, to when the pilots get implemented, to when those pilots become full scale. And some of that, especially when dealing with departments of defense, Uh, airports, which are public private partnerships is also predicated on public funding cycles. Um, and so over the 3 to 5 year horizon, we're feeling really, really good about the growth trajectory. Um, but we're not in a position today to disclose exactly how many pilots we have. Nor how many of those will convert it to full scale system next year 2023.

I got it Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as we have no further questions in the conference lines, my apologies, we've got another question coming from Colonel Mulrooney of William Blair.

Hey, thanks for sneaking me in. I just wanted to build on the last conversation that you were having with Noel. You know, given that your PFAS remediation technology is, Vijay and Alan, is particularly well-suited for certain applications. I'm curious if there are certain markets where there's a greater near-term opportunity, near-term, I think, like, you know, three to five years, whether that be military bases or airports or large industrial sites or other particular set of customers in specific end markets where you're seeing outsized demand at the moment as you think about those pilot programs. Thank you.

Yeah, it's a great question. In general, our clients for us have already been adopting the technology and we expect we'll continue. So that is probably our number one focus point, Tim. These tend to be more complex water streams. I'm talking about industrial wastewater specifically. More complex water streams with short-chain or long-chain PFAS that benefit from our technology and regeneration. We're demonstrating pretty consistently that if you have high concentrations and short chain, that the life cycle costs are lower with our system and the efficacy is stronger with our system. Again, speaking of generalities, and we've shared a lot of the technicalities with you and publicly, Tim. We're also seeing similarly a lot of both inquiries and demand from Department of Defense sites, specifically Air Force bases. Not surprisingly, when training occurred, with the spraying of firefighting foam on Air Force bases, as an example, and obviously many, to a lesser extent, Navy sites, the PFAS from that seeped into the water streams and now requires remediation. So Pease Air Force Base, as a simple example, which we took you to and others to, Tim, is an example that we're seeing a lot of demand picking up from that sector, and that's consistent has been consistent in Australia and is now increasingly consistent across Europe. And so we are seeing just a consistent uptake from those two constituencies in particular. And going back to Noelle's question, exactly when that starts at full scale, at the velocity many expect is a little tougher to predict, but it's already, as you can see in our organic growth, in our margin accretion and remediation, it's already in our numbers. It has been at the end of over the course of 2021 through this year as well. And we certainly expect over the next three to five years that those two constituencies, the industrial wastewater and the DODs across the world, will be our primary sources of engagements.

That's really helpful. Thanks, Vijay. That's it from me.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does now conclude our question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Vijay Mantripragada for closing remarks.

Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you all for the time again this morning. Alan and I and the team are thrilled with the quarter, and we're looking forward to speaking with you about the end of the year in 2023. So thank you again. Take care and be well.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you for your participation.