Clean Harbors (NYSE: CLH) reported Q4 EPS of $0.71, $0.32 better than the analyst estimate of $0.39. Revenue for the quarter came in at $796.2 million versus the consensus estimate of $801.44 million.

Business Outlook and Financial Guidance:

“We enter 2021 with positive momentum on many fronts – financially, operationally and within the markets we serve,” McKim said. “While the pandemic continues to weigh on some of our lines of business, we expect to experience a measurable recovery as the year progresses. In the interim, our COVID-19 decontamination business continues to serve as a natural hedge against continued slowdowns in other parts of the Company. At the same time, we start the year with a healthy backlog of waste in our disposal facilities. We see opportunities to drive additional streams into our network, including the ongoing rebound in the U.S. chemical and manufacturing industries. Our pipeline of remediation and waste projects is sizeable today, and we expect that to grow over the course of 2021. In addition, we see our customers’ ongoing shift toward greater environmental responsibility aligning even more closely with the sustainability solutions we offer.

“Within Safety-Kleen, the growing demand for sustainable solutions has only increased the opportunities for our parts washers, base oil and blended lubricant products. For our Safety-Kleen branch business, we anticipate a steady recovery as vehicle miles driven increase with the rollout of vaccines across North America. For SK Oil, our re-refineries are running well and pricing conditions in the marketplace are favorable. We anticipate continuing to carefully manage our re-refining spread going forward while more aggressively seeking to grow our collection volumes given the market dislocations created by IMO 2020 and other factors,” McKim concluded.

Beginning with the first quarter of 2021, Clean Harbors will revise its calculation of reported Adjusted EBITDA to add stock-based compensation costs, a non-cash item, to other charges that are added back to GAAP net income for purposes of calculating Adjusted EBITDA. This change aligns our definition of Adjusted EBITDA to be consistent with all of the Company’s loan agreements, facilitates comparison with industry peers and as revised will be the primary metric by which management will evaluate the performance of its businesses going forward. Using that approach, for full-year 2021, Clean Harbors expects:

• Adjusted EBITDA in the range of $545 million to $585 million, based on anticipated GAAP net income in the range of $105 million to $146 million; applying the Company’s revised definition, Adjusted EBITDA for 2020 would have been $573.8 million.
• Adjusted free cash flow in the range of $215 million to $255 million, based on anticipated 2021 net cash from operating activities in the range of $400 million to $460 million.
• For the first quarter of 2021, Clean Harbors expects Adjusted EBITDA, using the new definition for both periods, to be approximately 5-10% below what the Company delivered in the first quarter of 2020 when Adjusted EBITDA under the revised definition would have been $125.9 million. This expected decline is based on the record results that the Company delivered in the prior-year period before the onset of the pandemic

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