Heritage-Crystal Clean Inc (HCCI) 2021 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Heritage-Crystal Clean, Inc. Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. (Operator Instructions)

Some of the comments we will make today are forward-looking. Generally, the words aim, anticipate, believe, could, estimate, expect, intend, may, plan, project, should, will be, will continue, will likely result, would, and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include a variety of factors, some of which are beyond our control.

These forward-looking statements speak as of today and you should not rely on them as representing our views in the future. We undertake no obligation to update these statements after this call. Please refer to our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K, as well as our earnings release posted on our website for a more detailed description of the risk factors that may affect our results. Copies of these documents may be obtained from the SEC or by visiting the Investor Relations section of our website.

Also please note that certain financial measures we may use on this call, such as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization or EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA are non-GAAP measures. Please see our website for reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP. For more information about our company, please visit our website at www.crystal-clean.com.

With us today from the company are the President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Brian Recatto; and the Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Mark DeVita.

At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Brian Recatto. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Julie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. On behalf of the entire Crystal-Clean team, I want to let our investors know how pleased we are with the record-setting third quarter results we released last night.

We produced several records during the third quarter, including total revenue, net income, earnings per share and EBITDA. In several cases, our third quarter results were significantly higher than our previous record performance. Mark will provide additional detail. But total third quarter revenue exceeded expectations at $123.3 million, which helped produce record EBITDA of $30.6 million.

Now, I would like to discuss the results of both of our reporting segments. As I did last quarter, I will start with our Oil Business segment. During the third quarter of fiscal 2021, Oil Business revenues more than doubled compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2020 to $50.8 million.

The increase in revenue was mainly due to an increase in our base oil netback, about $2.17 per gallon compared to the third quarter of 2020 and about $0.63 per gallon compared to the second quarter of 2021.

Additionally, our base oil sales volume of 11.2 million gallons during the quarter was 12.9% higher than the volume of base oil sold during the third quarter of 2020 and further contributed to our record revenue performance.

Oil Business segment operating margin increased sharply to a record 42.8% in the third quarter of 2021, compared to 3.4% in the third quarter of fiscal 2020. The higher operating margin compared to the third quarter of 2020 was mainly due to an increase in the spread between a netback on our base oil sales and the price paid or charged to our customers for the removal of their used oil.

Our re-refinery team continued to execute well during the third quarter. It has been more than 2 years since we've had significant unplanned downtime in our re-refinery. We produced a 12-week quarterly record of 12.5 million gallons of base oil, which was approximately 10% more than the third quarter of 2020. We're very pleased with the consistency our re-refining operation has demonstrated over the past 2 years.

Let's now move on to the Environmental Services segment. In the Environmental Services segment, revenue for the third quarter of 2021 was $72.3 million compared to $62.4 million for the same quarter of 2020, an increase of $9.9 million or 15.9%.

Increase in revenue was mainly due to our continuing recovery from the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. We experienced volume increases across all service lines in the segment when compared to the third quarter of 2020.

While it was great to see our improvement relative to the pandemic-impacted results from 2020, we were even more pleased to see that our revenue for the third quarter exceeded revenue from the third quarter of 2019 by 4.9% in this segment.

Environmental services profit before corporate, selling, general and administrative expenses were $17.3 million or 23.9% of revenue compared to $14.6 million or 23.4% of revenue in the year ago quarter. The improvement in operating margin would have been greater if not for inflationary headwinds caused in part by supply chain challenges, which are affecting many industries today.

Before we look ahead, I want to provide an update relative to our M&A activities. I'm happy to report we closed on 3 acquisitions in the past 2 months. One transaction closed at the end of the third quarter and the other 2 transactions closed at the beginning of our fourth quarter.

These transactions are providing several benefits to us. First, 2 of the businesses operate in the Western U.S., which helps build our density in these important growth markets. These acquisitions have also provided additional wastewater treatment and non-hazardous containerized waste processing capabilities, as well as expanding our internal technical field services offering.

We can now internalize more projects such as lab pack field work, which should increase our win rate and profitability for these projects. Most importantly, we are very excited about the new additions to the Crystal Clean family as a result of these acquisitions.

Now, I would look to forward and discuss our outlook for the future. In our Environmental Services segment, our growth compared to 2019 is an indication that we are working hard to put the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic behind us. We achieved the growth compared to 2019, even though our manpower lost time hours were up approximately 27% during the third quarter compared to the third quarter of 2020.

While there is still risk relative to the Delta variant of COVID-19, we are confident that we can operate effectively and continue to drive revenue growth in the current environment. During the fourth quarter, we expect to continue to grow our Environmental Services segment revenue at a mid-single-digit rate compared to the fourth quarter of 2019.

From an operating margin percentage standpoint, we have been facing and expect to continue to face supply chain issues and inflationary pressure for containers, fuel, third-party logistics, waste disposal and other items. We are working hard to counteract the negative impacts of these items by internalizing more non-hazardous waste processing and by implementing our annual price increase at the beginning of the fourth quarter.

We have early indications that the rate of customer acceptance of the price increase is higher than what we might expect in the typical year. Despite the cost pressures we are experiencing, we believe our price increase, along with increased internalization of customer waste streams, will allow us to improve operating margin in Q4 compared to our Q3 results.

From an Oil Business segment perspective, we're beginning to see more balanced supply and demand with mid-to-light grade Group II base oils as we move further into our fourth quarter. While our current base oil netbacks are slightly higher than our average during the third quarter, we expect seasonally reduced demand and higher feedstock prices as offsetting factors, which should keep our product pricing stable through year-end.

As we look forward to 2022, there are several base oil refinery outages planned for the fourth quarter of this year and the first quarter of 2022. This will reduce available supply and should provide support for base oil prices in the early next year.

On the used oil feedstock side of the business, we saw our cost increase with the bullish move upward in crude oil pricing during the third quarter. With crude prices still on the rise, we continue to feel upward pressure on used oil feedstock costs. However, the pressure has moderated more recently, and we do not expect significant additional upward pressure on used oil pricing during the remainder of the year.

As planned, we completed an extended re-refinery turnaround during the beginning of the fourth quarter. The turnaround generally went as planned, and we have another shorter turnaround planned for the next month. Repeat turnaround will somewhat limit our base oil production during the fourth quarter, which we expect will be approximately 13.3 million gallons. For the year, we are still on pace to produce over 49 million gallons of base oil.

From a profitability perspective, we expect fourth quarter operating margin to be in the mid-to-high 20% range, as continued high base oil pricing is somewhat offset by less production volume caused by a planned downtime as well as constraints on the availability of hydrogen. In addition, it appears that higher natural gas prices will increase operating costs for the remainder of the year and into the first quarter of 2022.

The outlook I just provided assumes the general economy will continue to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and the supply chain disruptions will gradually subside. Should this not be the case, this could negatively impact our outlook.

Before I turn things over to Mark, I want to let everyone know, we recently took a significant step forward in our ESG initiative with the release of our first sustainability report. You can find a copy of the report on our website.

We believe we have a very compelling ESG story to tell and the issuance of the sustainability report is the first step in our continual process to communicate the many ways in which we are striving to protect the Earth's resources by helping the business world run cleaner and positively impact the people and communities we interact with on a regular basis.

With that, Mark will take us through our third quarter financial results.

Thank you, Brian. Good morning, everyone. It's great to be with you today. In the third quarter of 2021, we generated $123.2 million of revenue compared to $87.1 million in the same quarter of 2020, an increase of $36 million or 41.4%.

The increase in revenue was mainly driven by higher base oil pricing and continued growth in recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in our Environmental Services segment businesses, which negatively impacted 2020 revenues.

Net income was a record $18.5 million or $0.79 per diluted share for the third quarter of 2021. This compares to net income of $4 million or $0.17 per diluted share in the year-earlier quarter. This past quarter was not only the second quarter in a row in which we had record high net income, but net income for the quarter was 22.5% higher than the second quarter of this year, which represented our previous quarterly revenue.

Let's get into the details of our Oil Business segment results. Oil Business segment revenues for the third quarter of fiscal 2021 were a quarterly record $50.8 million, an increase of $26.1 million or 105.9% compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2020 and an increase of 41.9% compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2019.

Brian mentioned the increase in netback built higher revenue and gave you the change in netback on a year-over-year and sequential basis. But from a pre-pandemic standpoint, our netback increased by $1.56 per gallon compared to the third quarter of 2019.

From a profitability standpoint, Oil Business segment profit before corporate SG&A expense increased $20.9 million to a record 42.8% in the third quarter of 2021 compared to 3.4% in the third quarter of fiscal 2020.

The increase in operating margin compared to the third quarter 2020 is mainly due to an increase in the spreads between the netback on our base oil sales and the price paid or charged to our customers for the removal of their used oil. This spread was up $1.73 per gallon compared to the third quarter of 2020 and up by $0.50 per gallon compared to the second quarter of 2021. Compared to the third quarter of 2019, profits before corporate SG&A expense was higher by $18 million, driven by a spread increase of $1.43 per gallon.

From a used oil collection standpoint, on a weighted average basis, during the third quarter, we experienced a net change of $0.44 per gallon compared to the third quarter of 2020 as we moved from a charge-for-oil position in 2020 to a pay-for-oil position this year. Compared to the second quarter of 2021, our pay-for-oil increased by $0.13 per gallon.

From an used oil collection standpoint, despite an 18% increase in the number of oil sales and service reps, we were able to keep our used oil collection route efficiency essentially flat during the third quarter compared to the prior year quarter.

As you might expect, the cost of third-party used oil feedstock also increased during the quarter. However, the cost of this feedstock increased by only $0.11 per gallon from the second quarter to the third quarter. Part of the reason for this modest cost increase was the decline in demand for this material.

During the third quarter, we lowered our third-party feedstock purchases by 35% compared to the second quarter.

Now, let's discuss the Environmental Services segment. The Environmental Services segment reported revenue of $72.3 million, an increase of $9.9 million or 15.9% compared to the year ago quarter. The 15.9% increase in revenue was mainly due to the lessening impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business during the third quarter of 2021 compared to the third quarter of 2020.

We saw volume increases in all of our lines of business compared to the third quarter of 2020. As Brian mentioned, compared to the results for the third quarter of 2019, third quarter 2021 revenues were also higher. This growth was led by our containerized waste business, but our wastewater vacuum, field services and antifreeze business is also showing growth.

Environmental Services profit before corporate SG&A expense increased $2.6 million or 18% in the third quarter of fiscal 2021 compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2020. Operating margin for the third quarter of 2021 was 23.9% compared to 23.4% in the third quarter of 2020 and 25.7% during the third quarter of 2019.

The increase in operating margin from last year was mainly driven by higher revenue due to the waning negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which produced improved leveraging of fixed costs during the third quarter of fiscal 2021, partially offset by increasing cost for items such as containers and disposal services.

The increase in operating margin compared to -- excuse me, the decrease in operating margin compared to 2019 was primarily due to increasing costs in the areas I just mentioned.

Total company operating costs increased $12.4 million or 18.5% during the third quarter of 2021 compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2020, which was mainly due to higher labor costs, health and welfare costs, transportation related expenses and higher used oil feedstock costs as a result of more business activity due to the lessening impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our overall corporate SG&A expense of $14.4 million represents an increase of $3.9 million or 41.4% compared to the year ago quarter, driven by an increase in our bonus reserved as well as the absence of temporary wage reductions and the lack of a suspension of our 401(k) match, both of which occurred during the third quarter of 2020.

EBITDA of $30.6 million was a record and up $19.6 million compared to the year ago quarter. This was the fourth consecutive quarter of record EBITDA and the third quarter EBITDA was 16.8% higher than the previous record than the second quarter of 2021.

The company's effective income tax rate for the third quarter of fiscal 2021 was 25.1% compared to 22.7% in the third quarter of fiscal 2020. The rate increase is principally attributable to consistent levels of profitability as compared to the same quarter in the previous year.

Looking at the balance sheet, we had an increase of $8 million in cash during the third quarter, which resulted in a balance of $75.3 million of cash on hand at the end of the quarter, despite an $11.4 million cash outlay for the acquisition Brian mentioned earlier.

Our primary sources of liquidity for the quarter are cash flows from operations and funds available to borrow under our revolving bank credit facility. We generated $24.2 million in cash flow from operations during the quarter, which represents a 384% increase compared to the third quarter of 2020. We also generated free cash flow of $20.7 million during the third quarter of 2021 compared to $1.6 million during the third quarter of 2020.

As Brian mentioned earlier, we've recently closed on multiple acquisitions. We expect these businesses will contribute approximately $25 million to $30 million in annual revenue. Even as we work to integrate the newly acquired businesses, we continue to identify other potential acquisition targets, which we believe can help us improve our business and achieve our mission.

To summarize, we are working hard to combat the negative impacts inflation is having on our business in order to restore the margins in our Environmental Services segment, and we are thrilled with the execution in the Oil Business segment and our ability to continue to take advantage of the favorable market conditions.

This concludes our prepared remarks. I will now turn the call over to Julie to take your questions.

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Michael Hoffman with Stifel.

Used oil -- just to be clear, when we had the second quarter call, you gave us a maintenance schedule of sort of 3.5 days in 3Q and 8 to 10 days in fourth. Because of the strong performance, did you push all sort of 11 to 14 days into 4Q?

No. We didn't change anything, Michael. We may have miscommunicated on Q2, but we're right on plan relative to our turnaround schedule. We just got a plug in towards the end of this year, which we always do in Q4. So nothing has changed.

But we took downtime increase and we were --

Yes.

So you had a really good quarter and you took more downtime? That's it. That is the [Brian's] comment.

Yes. We still produced the record production, and we -- it's not like we cheated and pushed it all into beginning of Q4.

Then this next question is a little philosophical. But can you quantify, in your mind, how IMO has actually impacted the shifting between a charge-for-oil scenario and a pay-for-oil. My sense is you're paying less than you might have been if this was 2019 and oil prices were where they were, because of IMO.

Yes. No doubt. And if I remember correctly, we talked a little bit about this on the Q2 call. Absolutely, what we're seeing a lower price than we would normally pay for used motor oil out in the marketplace. I actually look at the math, and it's $0.10 to $0.15 lower than we would normally pay for used motor oil. There's ample supply, Michael, still out in the marketplace.

I'm bit worried with crude pricing sheeting up like it is and natural gas pricing going up that we may see more demand in the winter months for converting these motor oil to some type of waste fuel, but we're not seeing it now. We've still got ample supply, and we're getting it at a pretty good price. So, I mean, we talked a lot about the shift in our oil segment, driven by the fact that we think IMO 2020 has helped the business fundamentally and will help us over the long haul. So structurally, we've seen the changes.

And on the flip side of that, we were out at the base oil conference last week with lots of activity around ESG and the desire to purchase our base oil because of the fact that we've recycled the hydrocarbon molecules. So we feel really good about demand, because of the fact that people are focused more on sustainability. So I think it -- I would harken back to what we talked about on the Q2 call. I'd love to see us not have to discount our base oil, and I think we're headed that way.

So just so I understood -- so understood some of the comments in the script. You do expect some normal seasonality and supply-demand starting to be level. But between the strength into 4Q, the normal seasonality, the comment was, and if am I right, that we should be flat sequentially on the spread. So it neither expands or compresses in 4Q and then potentially starts to compress again in 1Q?

Yes. We've seen a little bit of an uptick in spread. We're not expecting much more, and that's driven by the fact that we're hitting a seasonal period where demand is lower. But, because the virgin-refineries are paying more for feedstock, we do expect that they're going to probably change posted pricing if this continues. But net-net, we're thinking it's going to be a relatively flat spread into Q4.

Certainly, I think supply will be diminished because of the heavy fall and spring turnaround season. We heard a lot of that last week at the conference, so I expect supply to be certainly muted because of that, and that will give us a strikes out into Q1 on pricing. And we will have to [apply] the used motor oils out of it.

Yes. And then you have the operating cost, and as Brian mentioned, you've got netbacks as a --

Yes. Our allocation on hydrogen should be done December 1, as at least the latest report. We had a plant that was feeding our vendor that literally shut down and it was the Occidental chemical plant in Niagara falls was feeding our vendors, that cost us or will cost us some production in Q4. But we're still going to produce 49-plus million gallons of base oil for the year. So an outstanding year for us.

Your comments about inflation, is that spread over a lot of things or is there a one item that's particularly an issue in ES business?

I mean, it's kind of all over the map, Michael. But, I mean, as you know, we rely on a lot of third parties. We're working hard to internalize as much of that waste as we possibly can. But we're seeing it in heavy logistics cost. We're certainly seeing it in our third-party disposal cost. We're seeing it on labor. We're seeing it on general supplies to support our customers. It's all over.

I mean, it's been tough to manage, but we got the price increase over. And we should have done it a bit earlier, a little disappointed that we didn't, but we got it done. And we're seeing it be fairly sticky. As Mark talked about in his prepared remarks, we're seeing at this point, 7-plus percent that's sticking right now. So we're pretty happy with what we did on the price increase.

Another area. Anytime you have the things that commodity complex, so steel as far as containers even on the oil side, so probably containers -- all of our containers have -- I mean, gone up materially, some of them are -- it's obviously not [profitable] thing that some of them, in the extreme are 50% to 100% increase. So it's been something we got to down.

Hard to get equipment, Michael. We've got trucks that were parked because we couldn't get sensors. I'm sure you've heard that from other industries. That's beginning to improve. At one point, we have 40-plus trucks down. We're now at about 15. But it's been a grind, and our people have done an excellent job servicing our customers in spite of all of this. We're a little bit short of staff, but because of the way we pay our people. They get out the hospital and get the work done. We haven't left any work out in the field that's for sure.

And then, Mark, what are you suggesting we should do as far as the $30 million, divide by 4 and allocate it all into ES predominantly? And at what margin should we add that? I mean, divide it by 4 and to the 12-week thing in the --

Yes. It's mostly, yes, there'll be a little bit of some oil and (inaudible) as well included in 3 deals. There's a little bit of oil collection, but probably not a ton of revenue from that. So it’s mostly ES. On margins, we're depending on what we see, probably going to be on an EBITDA basis in that 20% range from what we acquired in the low 20s something like that.

Michael, we have some integration work to do, obviously, with any new acquisitions. So I'd prefer not to give you the EBITDA target. Yes, let us do our work, and we'll get you stuff soon. Great assets, though, and the asset out in California, we love, because it gives us a physical asset in the marketplace that we're trying to expand into. It has an oil permit. It has a non-haz consolidation permit. It has a California haz permit. We're going to add antifreeze. We're going to add a hub out there, which will cut our logistics cost. That really was more of an asset deal for us, and we'll grow off of that business, feeding -- most of our West Coast branches will begin to start feeding that location, and we'll pull product out of that location, which will save us quite a bit of money over the long haul, but we've got some part to do to get there.

You're referring to coal?

Yes.

And the other one is just like us. They are the waste brokerage company. A lot of small to mid-sized generators and waste is going to right third-party. They've got a great technical field services group, which will grow out west and try to internalize as much of that work as we possibly can. That's a goal for us across the United States. So we'll look for other opportunities on the East Coast doing same thing.

And then we bought a wastewater plant down in the Southeast, which has -- not has consolidation capabilities. We'll do port work out of that location, supporting the Miami Port area. The cruise lines will recover, so we'll be in a position to get that work back. And then it takes in small quantity generator non-haz waste, which fits good with us.

So that's a perfect segue to cite just the EI Digest conference in late September. And some of the chatter around that conference was the Heritage Group, which is one of your large shareholders, was rethinking their portfolio allocation. Can -- to degree, you can comment on any of that? Are they contemplating possible sale of any of their assets and would that include you all?

Michael, I cannot get into what the Heritage Group is thinking. I'm not on the Board of the Heritage Group. Certainly, our job is to continue to focus on creating shareholder value. They've been in this field for 25 years and great long term shareholders and we love having a part of -- having them as a part of our company.

It's always fun to have the wind at your back, isn't it?

Yes, it is nice. And I wish we can get the one at our back from an operating standpoint. It's tough to be a senior leader of the company these days.

And your next question comes from Jim Ricchiuti from Needham & Co.

Most of -- a lot of questions were answered. I just wanted to focus a little bit on the M&A side, because you did allude, I think, in the last call to some additional acquisitions. Where do you stand with those? And Mark, maybe you could talk to whether there was any acquisition-related expense that you feel should be called out either in the quarter just ended or the quarter you are in now.

I'll take the first part, and I'll kick the balance of it over to Mark. But we're going to slow it down by hair just at the end of the year, that we want to focus on integrating these 3. We certainly have a long pipeline, as we alluded to on the Q2 conference call. So we're going to continue to pursue acquisitions with the goal of getting another 3 to 5 done in 2022. And as always, we're looking for something that could bring us even more scale, but those are few and far between, but we're pursuing them. And I'll kick out the business related economics over to Mark.

A purely related acquisition costs as we report them, we have accounts in that general ledger of about $0.25 million. And that would only be part -- most of that would be related to the coal from the other 2 deals that we closed. If you add it all up, it's probably a little less than $1 million by the time you add up all the legal fees and all that type of stuff for those 3 transactions.

And curious, how long were you guys talking to these folks before you came to an understanding we're able to close these deals. So I'm just thinking about -- Brian, as you're thinking about next year, it sounds like you've got an active pipeline. But I'm just kind of curious, just given the environment we're in, whether folks are a little bit more valuation sensitive here given what's happening in the market?

Yes. I would say that the 2 deals that were not being managed by investment banks, well, we've had dialogue with both of these companies for 2.5 years. I mean, that's how long it takes to get the entrepreneurs in a position to be willing to pull the trigger on selling a company that they've grown from more often than not from scratch. So it is an emotional battle to get the owners to pull the trigger. So it takes time to build relationships. They want to make sure their people are going to be in good hands, with an operator that cares about employees.

So I would say, on average, it takes us 18 months or 2 years to get these guys to agree to do a deal. And then you've got to get it closed, and that takes another 3 to 6 months to get it closed. The other one a little bit quicker because it was a deal that was being managed by an investment bank, and they had a little bit more bandwidth than a typical entrepreneurs, so we were able to get it done a little bit quicker.

When we kind of look backwards, we had a director of M&A position for a little more than 2 years. So now at this time, it sits right with the time line by mentioning the 18 months' time on folks. But we probably worked a little bit quicker on some of these, because you got to really take out 6 months or so for the pandemic. I mean, we were setting up lot of (inaudible) M&A market we see itself. So I think we're executing fairly well is my way of interpreting against that. I think it's a great baseline buying games. But that part of the business is only as good as you like to deal, so we've got to keep pushing forward. We're going to focus on some integration here in the coming months. But after that, we'll turn it loose on getting some of these other ones close.

Our next question comes from Kevin Steinke with Barrington Research.

I wanted to just clarify in my mind the guidance for the mid-single-digit growth in Environmental Services in the fourth quarter of 2021 versus fourth quarter 2019. Is that on an organic basis or are you factoring the acquisition contribution to that.

I still think even when you do the math, you're kind of in that same range. Obviously, we weren't giving the set number, but in that mid-single-digit growth range would be the answer for. I think it would be there organically in -- and you heard the revenue numbers, and if you do the math, it's not going to be that much different.

But that was the original guidance that's to do it on a purely organic. The inorganic will be a little infused, since how you define high and it might not get fit into what some would consider high-single digits.

Yes, I agree.

And you mentioned, obviously, the inflationary pressures in Environmental Services, but you expect some sequential improvement in the margin there in the fourth quarter. Should we think, though, that maybe that approaching 27% goal by the end of the year is going to be a little more challenging than you might have thought last quarter?

Yes, I'm not going to go there and tell you we can get to 27%. We feel good about it given that the bulk of our projected price increase is sticking, and we've worked hard to make sure the guys are forcing to happen out in the field because of the inflation that we're seeing everywhere. So we feel good. I'm not going to sit here and say we're going to get to 27%, but it's certainly going to be an improvement over where we were in Q3.

Yes. If you do the rough math based on where some of the percentages be coming in, yes. But I'm not going to contradict Brian. Just to reinforce, it's certainly possible, but there is -- we thought 12 weeks ago -- at least, I'm pretty sure I can speak of Brian, that things were going to be a little more transitory. I'm not saying they're going to spin forever, but there's a little more leg to the supply chain disruptions and some of the knock-on effect there. So it will be hard work to get that done.

Yes. We think the inflationary pressure and the transitory issues that we've dealt with will stretch into even Q1, Q2. But based on what we're hearing from our suppliers, it's difficult positions out there, difficult for people to get staffed up and make the products we need, which is causing the pricing to go up.

Did you give the -- just the capacity utilization at your re-refinery, if not, what was that?

It was 111%, and I didn't give that. I meant to put that in the math, not online. But, yes, we've got another phenomenal -- with record production, I'm sure you're not [self]. But remember, that is based on an annualization. And you know whatever the quarter we take our larger turnaround and -- longer, more extended turnaround, which is usually Q4, we got back on that case this year. You're going to expect --

Because if you add them all up, all 3 quarters so far you're saying well, this is a BS number that's annual capacity. Well, it's really not Brian mentioned, we'll probably hit it, it probably be right around the 100 for the year, maybe we're a time a bit higher. But that's still -- that's why the math being sloppy in 2, 3 quarters.

It will pull back -- expect it to pull back into the fourth quarter with the turnaround. You mentioned, I think in your prepared comments that you lowered the volume of third-party used oil purchases, I believe, by 35% sequentially. I mean, what enabled that? Did you have -- I think maybe you were experiencing some logistical challenges in getting used oil to the plant, but what enables you to lower the third-party use by so much?

I mean our goal in general is to have -- to build what's been our #1 automotive or vehicle maintenance focused initiative. And I think we're pretty sure we talked about last quarter. We're using one big part of that is driving better oil collection. And we are just -- I mentioned, our route efficiency, usually, you would expect when you had several oil sales and service reps, you're not going to come on right away and that route is going to be a [pitch]. Again, we are comparing it last year to pandemic low, and we had some furloughs and whatnot. But we're adding people back and we have missed the peak.

So it's basically just collecting more used oil, that is in-line using the win with one program and just our other efforts to collect more, and have more direct relationship with the generators, have them be customers as opposed to having a third party. So having only about 17% of our feedstock that we're setting that the re-refinery be from third-party as that might even be a rapid roll. So -- and usually in these summer quarters, it's a little easier. So I don't expect it to hold there forever. But, overall, we are looking on an annualized basis to continue to drive that down.

Thank you.

Thanks Kevin.

And there are no more questions at this time. Will there be any final remarks?

No. Thank you thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.