Clean Harbors Inc. Reports Operating Results (10-Q)

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May 08, 2009
Clean Harbors Inc. (CLH, Financial) filed Quarterly Report for the period ended 2009-03-31.

Clean Harbors Inc. through its subsidiaries operates in one industry segment providing a wide range of environmental services to a diversified customer base in the United States and Puerto Rico. The Company is managed on a regional basis with a full range of services being offered in the Northeast Mid-Atlantic and Midwest regions and a presence in the Western region. The Company has a network of sales and regional logistics offices and service centers. The service centers interface with customers and perform a variety of environmental remediation. Clean Harbors Inc. has a market cap of $1.27 billion; its shares were traded at around $53.41 with a P/E ratio of 20.3 and P/S ratio of 1.3. Clean Harbors Inc. had an annual average earning growth of 21.2% over the past 5 years.

Highlight of Business Operations:

During the three months ended March 31, 2009, our revenues were $206.3 million compared with $242.5 million during the three months ended March 31, 2008. The first quarter of the year has historically been our seasonally weakest quarter due to the timing of customer projects and the effect weather conditions can have on our operations and volumes. In 2009, our first quarter revenues were further impacted by the current economic environment, severe winter weather in parts of North America, reductions in fuel recovery fees, and the continued weakness of the Canadian dollar.

Our costs of revenues decreased from $170.2 million in the first quarter of 2008 to $143.5 million in the first quarter of 2009. This decrease in expenses is primarily due to the reduction in revenues, but was also attributable to decreases in fuel and energy costs, our continued initiative to actively manage our costs, and specific cost cutting measures initiated as a response to the current economic environment. An example of our continued initiative to manage our costs was our focus on reducing outside transportation expenses by expanding our internal transportation fleet, making better use of our rail capabilities and capturing related increased efficiencies. These measures helped reduce outside transportation expense in the current period. Even with declines in revenues and increases in costs for certain raw materials, our cost control initiatives enabled us to maintain a stable gross profit margin of 30.4% for the three months ended March 31, 2009, compared to 29.8% for the same period ended March 31, 2008.

The Company realized a net benefit in the three months ended March 31, 2009, of $0.2 million related to changes in our environmental liability estimates. Changes in environmental liability estimates include changes in landfill retirement liability estimates, which are recorded as cost of revenues, and changes in non-landfill retirement and remedial liability estimates, which are recorded as selling, general, and administrative costs. During the three months ended March 31, 2009, the net $0.2 million benefit was recorded as cost of revenues.

Read the The complete ReportCLH is in the portfolios of Ron Baron of Baron Funds.