Quest Resource Holding Corporation (NASDAQ:QRHC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Greg Kitt: Okay, great. And so, then, getting close to double-digit gross profit growth for the year, if you add back $900,000 and do around $13.5 million of gross profit for the Q4, but maybe a little less this year, is kind of how that looks to me. And so — but I do hear you talking about your confidence in getting double-digit growth going forward, and you talked about some of it, just a lot of different areas in which you can attain it. And so I would appreciate if you can help us to understand how much of that do you think is coming from your existing customers like wins that are already in hand, how much of it is coming from optimization, which you touched on? And then how much — is there, like, a go get where you need to go get $1 million of gross profit to get to 10%? Or do you think that it is kind of already in hand?

Ray Hatch: I would say — yes, that’s a tough one to quantify, Greg, obviously, because there’s a go get factor in there, which is always hard to put your finger on. But I would say first of all, that optimization that you talked about, the profit optimization is with existing clients. So — and that’s been an ongoing thing that Dave’s team has done a fantastic job by lowering costs, leveraging costs and lowering costs, and increasing the gross profit for a long time. And that’s still a big contributor to us. But there’s a portion to go get. I would go ahead and say, I think more than half that is in the existing client opportunity. The go get stuff’s looking a lot stronger than it has been in the past. So the confidence flows pretty high, but we’ve got a big head start with the existing clients, Greg, and we’ve already got mapped out a lot of those things that draw that increasing gross profit, it’s calendared and mapped out already on existing clients.

So we feel good about that.

Greg Kitt: And on the $1.7 million SG&A cost savings, RWS. You talked about seeing some of that in the fourth quarter, but I think I also heard you say that SG&A should be around $9.5 million. How much of that — and that’s kind of in line with your prior commentary, how much cost savings from the RWS $1.7 million a year, which is like $425,000 a quarter, how much do you think can fall into Q4 versus you start in Q4 and you’ll see it in future quarters?

Brett Johnston: Yes, most of it should be in Q4. We’ll get a little bit of additional pickup after Q4, but most all of it will be in place. We’ve got a couple of other SG&A lines that are coming in and offsetting a bit of that. But overall, we expect the full amount to be realized in quarter four.

Greg Kitt: And so $1.7 million annualized, like $425,000. So, you’ve put this cost savings plan into place very early, like in the September time period is like September 1st — or first couple of weeks of September if you think you’re going to get most of it in the fourth quarter. Is that fair?

Brett Johnston: Yes, it kind of had a rolling aspect to it, so this wasn’t a one-time thing. But yes, we’ve certainly by the end of the Q3 had most of the savings already realized.

Ray Hatch: So it’s important to note that this isn’t a want to do, this is already done. And we’ve given the annualized number, but the execution of the initiative is already completed.

Greg Kitt: And then on the new customer that I think you said was going to start ramping September 1st, that sounded like that was going great. Is there total number of locations 380 locations or is that just the size of the initial opportunity that they gave you?

Brett Johnston: No, that’s the number of locations the size of the initial opportunity is. It’s a lot locations are different sizes. Some of them are smaller, some or large. It’s not uniform. So the number of locations is less important than the waste generated and the amount of it. So it starts out with one part of it, and we’re adding waste streams as we go. And we’re also adding new locations and I’m really proud of the team that we have here that’s convinced them that they need to accelerate and move forward with additional waste streams and locations as opposed to phasing it over the longer period of time. We were thinking it was going to be, frankly. There is still a phase in aspect, Greg. But we feel pretty confident it has accelerated from what we thought it was initially.

Greg Kitt: That’s awesome. And is there a way to think about the opportunity with some of those competitors, which it sounds like you think, you are also pursuing, are any of those in that bucket? I think you quantified, Ray, as something like far along in the process and/or maybe at the closing stages something. I don’t remember the exact way you described it, but is there a way to think about how some of those other competitors are in the pipeline, where they are?

Ray Hatch: Are we getting those prospects from other competitors? Is that what you are asking, Greg?