Earnings Labs

Clean Harbors, Inc. (CLH)

Q3 2020 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 4, 2020

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Clean Harbors Inc. Third Quarter 2020 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host Michael McDonald General Counsel for Clean Harbors Inc. Thank you, Mr. McDonald, you may begin.

Michael McDonald

Analyst

Thank you, Christina and good morning everyone. With me on today's call are Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alan S. McKim; EVP and Chief Financial Officer, Mike Battles; and SVP of Investor Relations, Jim Buckley. Slides for today's call are posted on our 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 of 1995. Participants are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these statements which reflect management's opinions only as of today, November 4th, 2020. Information on potential factors and risks that could affect our actual results of operations 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 in today's call other than through filings made concerning this reporting period. In addition, today's discussion will include references to non-GAAP measures. Clean Harbors believes that such information provides an additional measurement and consistent historical comparison of its performance. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in today's news release, on our website, and in the appendix of today's presentation. And now I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Alan McKim. Alan?

Alan McKim

Analyst

Thanks Michael. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us. Starting on slide three, we delivered exceptional results in Q3 and I can't say enough about the efforts of our team in driving these outstanding performance. Since the outset of the pandemic in March, everyone from really the top levels of the organization to our frontline workers, have excelled in response to this challenge and it's truly been a team effort. At its core, Clean Harbors is a crisis response company and we can still thrive in difficult environments like the one we've all faced over the past eight months and the resiliency of our organization and the versatility of our business model clearly were evident here in Q3. Revenue, while down year-over-year due to the unprecedented market conditions, was up nearly $70 million on a sequential basis. This growth was driven by an accelerated recovery in several core lines of business in our Environmental Services segment. At the same time, we also saw a strong sequential pickup within Safety-Kleen. Adjusted EBITDA of $161.2 million included $13.3 million in government programs, primarily from the revised CEWS legislation in Canada. The high level of EBITDA supported by controlled capital spending resulted in adjusted free cash flow of $123.5 million, a quarterly record for the company. Mike will review the P&L in more details in his remarks. Turning to our segment results on slide four, Environmental Service revenues declined 10% from a year ago, but were up 6% from Q2. As many of our service businesses bounced back from the early days of the pandemic, adjusted EBITDA grew 16%. This increase was attributable in part to our cost reduction efforts, productivity improvements, and a healthy mix of higher margin work. The two government programs accounted for $10 million of adjusted EBITDA…

Mike Battles

Analyst

Thank you, Alan and good morning, everyone. Our company clearly delivered outstanding results this quarter. I want to echo Alan's remarks about the organization. We have an outstanding team that is able to meet the needs of our customers during a crisis like the pandemic in ways most companies cannot. It's not just the decontamination work where we are heading into locations that others have evacuated for safety reasons, it is a fundamental DNA of Clean Harbors and how this company measures up to challenges. We excel at generating new revenue streams, meeting customer needs during times of disruption and improving operational efficiencies, all while doing it safely and under rapidly evolving health protocols. I said this to open my remarks last quarter and they're worth repeating. I couldn't be more proud of the way our organization has met the challenges of this pandemic head on. Turning to slide 8 and our income statement. Our third quarter results exceeded the expectations we set when we resumed guidance in August. Revenues declined 13% year-over-year, but on a sequential basis was up nearly $70 million. Preparing for the possibility of a protracted downturn we have continually -- we have continued to aggressively manage our cost structure. These comprehensive efforts combined with the systems we received from government programs, mostly Canada this quarter, resulted in a 310 basis point improvement in gross margins. Adjusted EBITDA increased to $161.2 million from a year ago. Excluding the government assistance, adjusted EBITDA would have been $147.9 million, down only 6% year-over-year despite revenues being 13% lower. Adjusted EBITDA margins of 20.7% was 310 basis points -- was up 310 basis points from last year's third quarter, which speaks to the effectiveness of our actions. We have now improved our adjusted EBITDA margins on a year-over-year basis…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We’ll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Noah Kaye with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.

Noah Kaye

Analyst

Good morning, and thank you so much taking the question. First congratulations on these results. I think if -- as anybody on the sell side, would you guys be able to do, flat EBITDA year-over-year back in April? Nobody was there. Consensus was $100 million below midpoint of your guide. So, nice job really managing all aspects of the business. And that really leads into kind of a high-class problem type of question, which is capital allocation. And I think you've got to start with around $245 million left, I think on your share repurchase program. And at the free cash flow, you're expecting to generate in the fourth quarter. I mean not that it's feasible necessarily, but you can basically exhaust that program and still exit the year at around $300 million cash balance, which is kind of a traditional midpoint for you. So, just help us understand here where you sit now on capital allocation. Why not be a bit more aggressive on the share buybacks? Is there something out there that is really enticing you from any perspective? It doesn't necessarily sound like that's the case. And if not, why not go a bit more aggressive on buybacks?

Alan McKim

Analyst

Sure. I'll start and maybe Mike can chime in. I think when we think about where we are from a capital standpoint, there are acquisition opportunities out there, and we continue to be aggressive and looking at a lot of deals and that is something that we really would like to try to do with the strong balance sheet that we have. And so, I think that clearly is important. I think second is, although we've cut back on capital spending quite a bit this year, there are number of projects that we're working on to expand our existing facilities expand our plans. And so next year, we'll be spending more capital, as we've gone through the engineering and permitting and what have you. So really want to expand capacity and get a good return on our capital investments into our plants. And this year, we also have some really nice projects that we've put in and within our incineration facilities to improve volumes as well as debottleneck. I think, personally I think, where we've been the beneficiary of some of these government programs we've been, somewhat reluctant to be really aggressive in the stock buyback program quite frankly. And if it wasn't for those programs then we would have had to deal with even more employee reductions and other additional cost savings. So I think that's held us back a little bit. But certainly next year, we could continue to look at stock buybacks as a use of capital. Mike, I don't know if you have anything else you want to chime in on?

Mike Battles

Analyst

Yeah. Noah thanks for your kind words upfront. And I actually kind of say, if you would ask any of us here in the room back in April May where we would have landed, I don't think anyone would have said flat to PY. That's -- so we were kind of waiting we drew on the revolver. We were looking at covenants. I mean we were doing all the things that everyone else in the world was doing. And it just worked out that given all the -- as I said in my prepared remarks, the DNA of the company was to look for opportunities and we found one with the decontamination work and that really helped us kind of bridge the gap here. And again, we're really proud of kind of where we landed, where we will land in 2020. And I think it puts us in, as Alan said, puts us in a great spot in 2021. On what Alan said, 90 days ago, I think still rings true. We did -- M&A has been slowed down, because we are worried about conserving capital. And I think we're on the back end of that now. I think we feel pretty good about going into 2021. And I think there are targets out there, including all four pillars whether it be CapEx, as Alan said, there's a lot of debottlenecking good ideas out there. There's M&A opportunities and we're very aggressive in looking at that and the buybacks. We did do a fairly large buyback in Q3, not at the numbers that we could do, but certainly want to support the stock and we will continue to do that.

Noah Kaye

Analyst

That's helpful. Thanks so much, and raises my follow-up question really off of Alan's comments, which is around potential expansion of the incinerators. I think the question here is really as you look at both the recovery dynamics from the initial trough of the pandemic and maybe longer-term considerations around the captive. Is there -- how is your appetite now to do some meaningful expansions here at the incinerator network? We know it takes a couple of years from permitting a site and several years to construct. Are you incrementally inclined to do that at this point?

Alan McKim

Analyst

Yes. We certainly are. We -- I think as we look back at our third incinerator that we built within the El Dorado facility, we're extremely pleased with the performance there and what the team has been able to do and continues to do there. We certainly see a lot more investment going in the chemical space here in the U.S. and particularly in the Gulf. And so we're seeing more opportunities, more waste streams and we're trying to make sure that we're partnering with our customers to align with what they're going to be generating and be able to handle that in our plants. And then we also have the unknown with PFAS. And so we truly believe that as we move forward in the regulatory environment that destroying those forever chemicals to incineration is really the best way of dealing with them and that might drive some additional need for capacity. But even if it is to be landfilled, if landfill is an acceptable treatment method through regulation then we're certainly well positioned there as well with our landfills and we can certainly build out more capacity if we need to at our landfills to put more capital there too.

Noah Kaye

Analyst

Okay. That’s very helpful. Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of David Manthey with Baird. Please proceed with your questions.

David Manthey

Analyst · Baird. Please proceed with your questions.

Yes. Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

Alan McKim

Analyst · Baird. Please proceed with your questions.

Good morning.

David Manthey

Analyst · Baird. Please proceed with your questions.

My first question is regarding the IMO 2020 in SKO. Could you just talk about your thoughts as it relates to that opportunity? The question out there is just has this dissipated or has it been delayed? And what are your thoughts on the eventuality of improved spread dynamics at SKO stemming from the supply and demand imbalances in used motor oil relative to IMO 2020?

Alan McKim

Analyst · Baird. Please proceed with your questions.

Yes. Certainly David, as you know in the very early beginnings of 2020, we saw that thing playing out the way we had hoped, but nothing since. And the whole disruption that's taken place because of the pandemic particularly in the airline industry where it's just a huge decline in jet fuel consumption and subsequently some of those fuels and diesels and other just becoming such a glut. And so we haven't seen it really materialize to the level that we would have hoped. And I think it's going to take some time into 2021 as that part of the industry kind of comes back where maybe we will start seeing the IMO 2020 impact that we had hoped for in both the marine diesel oil market and subsequently maybe in the base oil market as well. But I think it was probably, at least 12 months away from getting anything meaningful out of it.

David Manthey

Analyst · Baird. Please proceed with your questions.

Right. It sounds like you're doing a pretty good job of managing the spread in the interim based on what you reported here today. Second, could you talk about these cost reduction and productivity efforts? Could you just at a high level outline what happened in the third quarter? And then give us an idea of what might be in the tank for fourth quarter and 2021?

Mike Battles

Analyst · Baird. Please proceed with your questions.

Yes, Dave. I'll take that. This is Mike. Good morning. I'd say that we have different costs right? Some costs that come back I think in a post-vaccinated world whether it be some healthcare savings we've experienced, incentive compensation maybe some T&E come back over some period of time. But there are other costs we've done within outside transportation, outside disposal, temporary labor, labor utilize -- over time and other things we've managed very well. I don't think those and we took -- as we talked about took out some heads here in the SG&A world. I don't think those come back at the same level until revenue is really there and the business is there and they may not come back ever. And so I really do believe that in areas like in leases and other areas we even have some material savings. That again, I don't believe going of come back at the same levels in a post-vaccinated world. And so there's one bucket of cost that probably does come back. But there's a larger bucket, I don't think it does. And how much of that affects our EBITDA margins going forward, I think that's a real number there. And is it 10 basis points? I don't know. But there's certainly a winner there that allowed us to do some things that we probably were -- probably needed to do and puts us in a good spot in a post-vaccinated world.

David Manthey

Analyst · Baird. Please proceed with your questions.

All right. Sounds good. All right. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Hoffman with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Michael Hoffman

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Hi. Thanks, Alan, Mike and Jim. Can you catch us up and remind us then what's in guidance for these government programs just so we have a sort of a total number to play with? And then how do we think about what that comparability is next year? How much of that's for -- doesn't have to be repaid versus does?

Mike Battles

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Yes Michael. So this is Mike and I'll take a shot at it. So on the P&L there's -- we'll end the year. We're at $36 million right now. We'll get as I said in my remarks $3 million to $5 million. So let's say that gets to $40 million, $40 million that does not get paid back. That is a grant. Most of it is Canada. That is a wage subsidy and that is not reimbursed by -- to us. The other part of the equation though is part of the CARES Act as most companies have not been paying payroll taxes and that number is about $11 million $12 million a quarter. So let's say, through the last two quarters, which has only been applicable is about $24 million, but we'll end the year with $36 million of additional cash flows that will have to be repaid $18 million in 2021 and $18 million in 2022. But so -- so there are two parts of this. Part of it is, reimbursable which is the payroll tax, and part of it is not reimbursable which is just the government grant mostly in Canada.

Michael Hoffman

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

So, given how strong free cash flow is, why not prepay the CARES Act and just take it off the table from a comparability standpoint?

Mike Battles

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

We think that, our sell-side analysts and our investors are smart enough to adjust for that. And I think that it's -- I'd rather have the tax -- the interest-free loan and invest that in our business.

Michael Hoffman

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. And then, if you took out the decon work and then what we know about these -- the P&L hit positive impacts from the grants, our calculation is you still meaningfully improve margins. So this isn't all on the back of government programs in decon that you -- and so that's a part one of that. And then how much of it, do you get to retain on a permanent basis?

Mike Battles

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

That is the big question of how much of these cost saves, do we kind of retain. And I think that's a valid question. We have to go through a budget process to get through it. As I said to one of the other sell sides is that, I think a meaningful amount stays. And just to be clear, with the turn of the calendar, I don't think the decontamination work kind of goes away. I do think that is going to be with us for quite a period. Will it be $100 million in 2021? No. I hope not frankly. But it will be a number there that will be kind of a soft landing if you will as you look at 2021. But we have -- as you know Mike, we have to go through the budgeting process. We have to go through all that. It is a challenge for us and all the companies in the space about how we think about 2021 because it really depends on kind of when a vaccine is available to us.

Michael Hoffman

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

And so to that end, some of that savings was things like incentive comp and bonus accruals. Have -- are all those all caught up given that your guidance is almost on top of your original 2020 or better in some cases like the free cash flow?

Mike Battles

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

As you know Michael, we set our targets at above The Street numbers. We hold ourselves to a higher standard to get our full bonuses. Will there be some bonuses? Yes, but not at the levels that they were in 2019.

Michael Hoffman

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

And still below the original plan of '20? So, 2021 accruals will be higher if everything stays the course they are, is what I guess I'm trying to get at?

Mike Battles

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

That's right. That's right. Yes. That will be -- I'm hopeful that's a headwind in 2021.

Michael Hoffman

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Yes, it'd be a nice problem to have. And then Alan, the investments you were making this year on the capital, how do we think about what the incremental EBITDA contribution from those are in 2021 and '22?

Alan McKim

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

I don't have a number here quantified to share with you. But I think, as we continue to drive margin improvement and talk as we have about why we think some of the things that we're doing to internalize third-party disposal costs, transportation to put in more processing in our facilities, which allows us to eliminate some of the double and in some cases even triple handling of some of our drums. That's why, you're going to continue to see those margins improve, but I can't kind of quantify right at the moment here.

Mike Battles

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

We have to go through a budget process, Michael. But be clear, 11 straight quarters of year-over-year margin expansion. That is done kind of well before COVID, well before incentive compensation went down and healthcare went down. Those were things we were doing, led by Alan and the team to kind of -- to improve efficiencies across the network.

Michael Hoffman

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

And then on cash flow from ops at the midpoint of the revised numbers from 2Q to 3Q, it's about $45 million. What's the split between a profit contribution and working capital?

Mike Battles

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

That will have the impact on.

Alan McKim

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

I love it when I get this thumping right?

Mike Battles

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

I prepared pretty robust for this call and you got me.

Michael Hoffman

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

So Alan, last one. Veolia is trying to buy Suez. Do you think they end up selling their U.S. business to help fund it?

Alan McKim

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Well certainly, we're looking at what is going on with that transaction. And we're really not sure what the implications will be here in the U.S. As you know, we acquired the facility from Suez in '06 in El Dorado. So they exited the environmental business back then. And maybe something like that might happen again, but we really don't know. We'd only be guessing at this point.

Michael Hoffman

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. Well nice job for really improving this business fundamentally as well as participating in the recovery of the economy.

Alan McKim

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks Michael.

Mike Battles

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks Michael.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Hamzah Mazari with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Hamzah Mazari

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good morning. Thank you. Alan, I was hoping you could maybe just touch on what you're hearing on PFAS. What avenue you think it could go down? I know clearly there's an election result that hasn't come out yet that may have an impact. But just any thoughts as to where that is stuck in the process and maybe, any thoughts as how that could impact your P&L long term?

Alan McKim

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Yes. Certainly, we really think, we need sort of a federal mandate here. We really need a federal program. And I think, when each state starts taking on their own initiatives, I think it gets confusing sometimes and we end up dealing with things differently from state to state which is not helpful. So, if we do have a change in administration, I think probably, we would see more aggressive focus on getting regulatory framework put in place PFAS, and we do believe that incineration is the – at least for contaminated materials. Ground water on the other hand, we do have treatment capabilities, and we've been doing a lot of that kind of PFAS groundwater recovery. And so I think, we have all the tools in our toolbox. And I think, what we really need is that regulatory framework.

Hamzah Mazari

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Got it. And then just on the landfill volume side you had mentioned lack of remediation and some waste projects. Is there pent-up demand there? Do you see – did you sort of walk through what your pipeline looks like there and just outlook on the landfill volume side?

Alan McKim

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Absolutely, there's pent-up. We have a lot of business that got pushed and subsequently has been pushed into 2021. A lot of it is really more to do with the pandemic, I think is just moving people having – whether it's consultants, or government officials, or other folks and regulators being on these sites that need to oversee some of these larger projects that we end up working on. That's all been disruptive and has delayed a number of projects. And so I think, there'll be a built up demand for us, and certainly our competitors I think in that area.

Hamzah Mazari

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Got it. And then just lastly, I'll turn it over, maybe for Mike. I know, you touched on sort of costs coming back and certain costs structurally not coming back. But, do you have a number around incremental margins for you guys as you sit today over the next quarter two quarters? I know, it's tough to predict longer term, but what's the incremental margin today in your business?

Mike Battles

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah. Hamzah, it's hard to kind of put a number on that depending on kind of where the – what kind of revenue we get in, and different waste streams have different margin – contribution margin percentages. But back to my point, we've had 11 straight quarters of year-over-year margin expansion. We've tried to target 50 to – 25 to 50 basis points of margin expansion a year. I'm confident that, we'll continue down that path in 2020 and beyond.

Hamzah Mazari

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Got it. Thank you so much.

Alan McKim

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. Thank you, Hamzah.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Silber with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Jeff Silber

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks so much. I had a couple of questions on the Environmental Services segment. Incinerator utilization was down pretty significant year-over-year. You talked about some production lag from the second quarter and some timing of turnarounds. Where do you think that goes? Do you think 3Q was the bottom? And when do you think we'll get back to kind of normalized levels obviously assuming you don't add any capacity?

Mike Battles

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, Jeff, this is Mike. I'll start and Alan feel free to jump in. I do think that the Q3, low utilization we talked about that in the second quarter call that we had some slower demand and we saw that in July. It started to pick up. We did have some more down days this quarter than in prior quarters that led to kind of a low utilization number. I wouldn't read too far into that. I would say that, our pipeline as we look at 2021 is better than it was this time last year. And that's – that has to do with win rates and timing, and everything else that's along with that. But make no mistake, we're very bullish about 2021 and we feel like we're going to – all this pent-up demand as we said in an earlier question is there whether it be turnarounds, whether it be remediations on waste projects, and there's a very healthy pipeline, and I'm really confident that this will translate into incremental revenue in 2021 as the economy gets back to whatever normal looks like.

Jeff Silber

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

All right. That's great to hear. And then continuing just on the incineration side the EBIT price per pound you had a nice increase, because of continued mix improvements. Do you expect that to continue in the fourth quarter? And any color on, where you think prices are going next year would be helpful? Thanks.

Alan McKim

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Sure. We – we certainly paused on our price and margin initiatives around this area because of the virus. And certainly, what we saw our customers dealing with. Across the board customers were looking for lower pricing or some type to temporarily relief, while they were going through their challenges and we work with a lot of customers in that regard, and we hope that we will go back to where we were. And then in 2021 begin the process of improving pricing again through our pricing initiatives, because we do have to continue to make those capital investments, and I think customers we've been working with in regard to that. So hopefully, just a little bit of understanding that this is a really, really tough year to try to do anything around price. But we think we can get back on track with that next year.

Mike Battles

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah. Like our peers have said, we're going to be kind of back on track with pricing in 2021. And the good news is that, deferred revenue did grow in Q3, and that does give us good indications for Q4.

Jeff Silber

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. That's really helpful. Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Tyler Brown with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Tyler Brown

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good morning, guys.

Alan McKim

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, Tyler.

Tyler Brown

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, Mike, can you put a finer point on incentive comp in the guide? Just how much is incentive comp help versus 100% accrual? Again, I'm just trying to get all the puts and takes here?

Mike Battles

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah. I'd say, it's – I’d say, it's a $10 million to $12 million good guide.

Tyler Brown

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. Okay. That's helpful. And then Alan, I'm just curious so and I'm going to switch over to SKO real quick. If I'm a local body shop, do I pay you a monthly or annual subscription and you come do a prescribed service or is that done more on a requested basis? I guess, my question is in Q3, did you get any extra boost from a rush of service as all of these body shops and quick lubes kind of reopened?

Alan McKim

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Sure. Yes. So, two points. I guess, one is we have about 800,000 subscriptions with the Safety-Kleen customer base. So each service that we provide whether it's a parts washer or used motor oil a VAC, they are on a subscription plan and we may do an eight-week or 12-week or 16-week kind of thing. So it's a awesome business, and since we've acquired that in 2012 we've almost doubled the EBITDA margins at this. So we believe that that will continue to grow for us. I think, second, yes, we saw a lot of ad hoc work. We did have some furloughs in that part of our business. And so when the business started coming back on, we got inundated quite frankly with some service requests and so we played a little bit of catch-up here just because of the shear disruption. We were showing up at customer sites as part of our subscription service and customers were closed. And so back in April and May, everything, we had to redo all of our subscription plans. And fortunately, we were able to get those services back on track, but there was quite a bit of disruption with our customers in that area.

Tyler Brown

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. Okay. That's helpful. I appreciate that. Very helpful. At this point though what percent of the re-refining capacity is online roughly?

Alan McKim

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

We only have half way. So I think we only have one re-refinery that represents about 15 million gallons on West Coast that's down. So everything else is online here. So we still should be in that 150 million gallon or so level of base oil manufacturing.

Tyler Brown

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. Okay. Very helpful. And I'm going to switch back to ES just real quick. And this may be a bit of a silly question but of the 9,000 decontaminations that you've done year-to-date, are all of those basically sporadic in nature? Or do you have some customers who are saying, hey, we want you guys to come every weekend and do a deep clean? Again, I'm just trying to kind of understand how recurring that line is.

Alan McKim

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

We have national contracts with a lot of companies that really need a national response company that can handle locations all over North America. And so those contracts they're ad hoc like you would expect, we get when we're needed. And every night we see our nightly calls come in there could be 30 or 40 calls a day for those requests. And sometimes it could be 100,000 square foot warehouse, or it could be a 5,000 square foot office, but almost all of that business is coming from our national contracts that rely on us to do that across the board.

Tyler Brown

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. Okay. That's helpful. And then maybe my last one. So Alan I'm just curious in your internal meetings, are you hearing from any of your folks just any pressure or expected pressure on the transportation side? I mean, it feels that that market is tightening up. It's going to be inflationary in 2021. And can you talk about how much you do spend on transportation again?

Alan McKim

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Sure. So we have added quite a bit of additional drivers and expanded our fleet quite a bit. And I think Mike might have commented that our outside transportation has continuously come down, and we've also been leveraging our rail. So we have a very large rail infrastructure that we own. And so we're expanding moving more of our waste products as well as other products on rail. I think next year we will continue to internalize more transportation. I think we're talking about hiring at least another 100 national transportation drivers. So we don't feel the pressure on that, because I think we are trying to do more and more to internalize that and control our own destiny.

Tyler Brown

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah. Yeah. Now that's very helpful. Okay. Well, thanks guys. Thanks for the time.

Alan McKim

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Good to have.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Jim Ricchiuti with Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Jim Ricchiuti

Analyst · Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Hi. Good morning. A couple of questions. Just as it relates to the ES business, as you entered the quarter and then saw the way the business really played out, any surprises in terms of either some of the end markets or geographies? As we saw -- we've seen PMI data improving. Just kind of, curious from a macro level, what you saw in the quarter maybe, relative to your expectations going into it.

Mike Battles

Analyst · Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah, Jim, I'll take a shot at this, and Alan you can chime in, if you need to. The -- I'd say across the board it was, better than we expected. We did talk about some softness in the Q2 call, with kind of -- in the chemical space, in our incinerators and that was down. But overall, across the board, things were better than we expected. And I think that's driven by macroeconomic factors. And our performance in our end markets, along with the fact that the decon work came in better than we expected. And so, all those things, when you look at kind of where we were 90 days ago and kind of where we are today, it's -- all these things are just a little bit better than what we expected and the cost saves kind of continue to kind of roll on through, which is -- and along with the government programs that we didn't really, think we're going to get much in Q3. At the time, the Canadian government hadn't finalized a new wage subsidy program.

Jim Ricchiuti

Analyst · Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Got it. And with respect to the pause on pricing, I'm wondering, as you look out to next year, how should we think about some of this being layered in over the course of the year?

Alan McKim

Analyst · Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

I think it would be, probably better to be conservative. And not layer too much price increases for next year, only because until we get some more visibility here on COVID and see where things go with the vaccine. I think we're just going to be really cautious on, how we handle the pricing with our customers at this point. I think just one other point to make is that, I mean we've had, an unprecedented number of hurricanes and weather-related shutdowns. Both our customers have experienced that and quite frankly, we had as well. A number of our facilities were impacted in the Gulf, due to the hurricanes. Somewhat helped us a little bit, in regards to some of the refineries being taken off online, or shutting down some refining capacity. So to some extent it helped us a little bit on our oil side of our business. But on a net basis, I mean we've seen a lot of customers suffer a lot of damage. And we've been shut down as well. Our Safety-Kleen business particularly got impacted, quite significantly. And we really didn't get a lot of response work out of that, like we normally did. And probably just one other point I just want to highlight. When we did the bird flu back in, 2015 timeframe that was a $350 million event for us here. So as much as we're appreciative of the work we're doing. And it's really important work that we're doing for our customers it's nowhere near the size and scale that we had when we were dealing with, other pandemic issue here in the past.

Jim Ricchiuti

Analyst · Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. Thank you.

Alan McKim

Analyst · Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We have no further questions, at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Mr. McKim for closing comments.

Alan McKim

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thank you for joining us today. And we have participated in many virtual events in recent months. And we'll continue that in the coming weeks, including the conference with Baird and BMO Capital, the New York Stock Exchange and Bank of America. So, we look forward to connecting with many of you there. I hope that all of you and your families stay safe, during the remainder of this pandemic. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation. And have a wonderful day.