Harsco Corporation (NYSE:HSC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Larry Solow: Got you. Yes, that’s fair enough. And just maybe a question for Pete. Could you just clarify, you said the — you’re targeting, sort of, getting towards or maybe even under 4 times lever by the end of the year. So I think the $260 million EBITDA that I used the high-end number. Right now I’d suggest you’re going to get your net debt a little over $1 billion or down like (ph), is that right? And how do you do that, yes.

Pete Minan: Yes, that’s right. So you got to recognize that the leverage ratio I quoted is the Yes.

Larry Solow: Got you.

Pete Minan: So they’re still adjusted. Yes.

Larry Solow: That’s fair. We could talk about that offline. That was my calculation. Sounds great. Yes, I appreciate the color guys. Thanks.

Pete Minan: Thank you.

Nick Grasberger: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Rob Brown at Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Rob Brown: Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to get a little more detail on the competitive environment in Environmental with the Phoenix bankruptcy. Are you seeing more opportunities, sort of, come to market? How has that change things?

Nick Grasberger: Yes. Good morning, Rob, and thanks for the question. Yes, it’s a very dynamic situation now with the Phoenix bankruptcy and that’s — you really need to look at on a contract-by-contract basis. Of course, we all know that these mill services that we perform on behalf of our customers are extraordinarily critical to the production of steel. So our customers understandably need to be very cautious in how they navigate. This situation with Phoenix and what if anything of Phoenix will survive and what the ownership structure will be and how they’re going to approach their contracting function in the future. So we are very focused on a handful of contracts or sites that we know well that we think truly appreciate our value proposition.

And so we’re selectively targeting six, eight contracts, which we would hope to secure at some point during the year. But it’s a very unusual bankruptcy process in many ways and it’s going to take a little more time. And so we’ll see how this plays out. But again, our focus is on the six to eight sites, where we think we can really add value and would be good new business for our company and for our shareholders.

Rob Brown: Okay, great color. Thank you. And then on the Rail sale process, you talked a little bit about reenergizing it later this year. Is that sort of dormant right now? How has that progressed? Is it waiting for certain things? Just an update on what sort of driving that?

Nick Grasberger: Yes. So it’s certainly dormant from our standpoint. We continue to have a lot of interest expressed both to us and to our banker from parties that want to re-engage. As I think both Pete and I mentioned, we’re very focused on simplifying the core part of the business and also continuing to renegotiate the delivery schedule and penalties and price on somebody’s large longer-term contracts. And that is a frustratingly slow process as Pete can attest. He’s kind of on point for us there. But it’s moving in the right direction. The customers understand and it’s, of course, this is not a situation unique to our Rail business many, many other suppliers to our Rail customers are facing similar situations. So our customers understand that the need to provide a degree of relief and we’re negotiating that as we speak and we’re confident that we’ll be pleased with the outcome, but that’s going to take still a few months and between wrapping up those negotiations and executing the simplification of other parts of the Rail business we think will be in a very strong position to re-engage with buyers in the second-half of the year.

Rob Brown: Great. Thank you. I’ll turn it over.