Montrose Environmental Group - Q3 2022
November 9, 2022
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Montrose Environmental Group third quarter of 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator's assistance during the conference, please press star then zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Rodny Nacier of Investor Relations.
Rodny Nacier (Investor Relations Officer)
Thank you. Welcome to our third quarter 2022 earnings call. Joining me are Vijay Manthripragada, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Allan Dicks, Chief Financial Officer. During our discussion today, we will be referring to our earnings presentation, which is available on the investors section of our website. Our earnings release is also available on the website. Moving to slide two. I would like to remind everyone that today's call will include forward-looking statements that are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ in a material way due to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that should be considered in evaluating our operating performance and financial outlook.
We refer you to our recent SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, which identify the principal risks and uncertainties that could affect any forward-looking statements as well as future performance. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. In addition, we will be discussing or providing certain non-GAAP financial measures today, including Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted Net Income, and Adjusted Net Income Per Share. We provide these non-GAAP results for informational purposes, and they should not be considered in isolation from the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Please see the appendix to the earnings presentation or our earnings release for a discussion of why we believe these non-GAAP measures are useful to investors, certain limitations of using these measures and a reconciliation thereof to their most directly comparable GAAP measure.
With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Vijay, beginning on slide four.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
Thank you, Rodny. Welcome to all of you joining us today. I will provide a few business highlights and hand it over to Allan Dicks for our financial review, and we will then open it up to Q&A. I will speak generally to pages four through eight of the presentation shared on our website. Before I begin, I would like to reiterate two themes that we've highlighted before. The first is that demand for our environmental services does not follow fiscal quarter patterns and is best evaluated on an annual basis. The second theme is that these results belong to our colleagues around the world who have managed through a pandemic, macroeconomic shocks and geopolitical turbulence. I am proud of all of our team members whose dedication helped us produce another quarter of great results.
With that, let me now take a moment to recap several key themes that are relevant to our third quarter 2022 results. First, as it has all year, our business continues to benefit from growing demand across most of our service lines, and in particular, in the areas of PFAS water treatment, greenhouse gas measurement and mitigation, and renewable energy. The quarter also saw strong performance across our air and lab services and recent acquisitions, which are recurring and are driven primarily by regulations. Our third quarter performance continues to validate the demand tailwinds and regulatory themes we've outlined since our IPO over two years ago. Our stellar organic growth, excluding CTEH, reflects the continued demand for our integrated service model and differentiated solutions. Second, in addition to strong organic revenue growth excluding CTEH, we are pleased with our overall sequential margin improvement.
As noted last quarter, we were able to respond with pricing and other initiatives given some of the unexpected inflationary pressures we saw on select costs such as travel. The impact of those efforts, along with business mix and other factors, allowed us to get back on track with EBITDA margins. Third, and finally, we are also happy with the strength of our balance sheet and strong cash generation. Our acquisitions to date have been funded through cash flow from operations, and our balance sheet provides us with ample flexibility to continue consolidating our industry and investing in cutting-edge environmental innovation. As it relates to acquisitions, our strategy and outlook remain unchanged. We continue to consolidate our highly fragmented industry, completing four deals this year. Our acquisitions are usually immediately accretive, and they add great talent and service capabilities to our Montrose team.
This year, given the rate of increase in our organic growth excluding CTEH, we tempered our pace of acquisitions as we focused on supporting the surge in organic revenue growth. For example, helping with hiring, training, and quality management programs across multiple geographies. The number of potential acquisitions and average multiples haven't moved, so our pipeline and opportunity to create value remains as strong as ever. Despite our choice to move at a relatively slower cadence of acquisitions in 2022, we were thrilled to welcome the TriAD and AirKinetics teams to Montrose during the third quarter. The addition of TriAD's consulting team and focus in the Southeastern United States, and the addition of AirKinetics's air testing team and capabilities in the Southwestern United States are all very strategically additive to Montrose. We expect our 2023 cadence of acquisitions will accelerate back to where we have historically trended.
Next, let me take a few minutes to walk through some recent developments and catalysts that we see for our business moving forward. As it relates to regulatory industry opportunities, we see tailwinds across our business lines as corporate ESG initiatives, environmental regulation and enforcement, and better environmental stewardship remain at the forefront of private sector and government policies. We believe Montrose is exceptionally well-positioned to capitalize on these tailwinds, and that fundamental belief underpins the favorable long-term outlook for our business. In terms of select and specific regulatory developments that will have or continue to have the potential to impact Montrose, in September 2022, the EPA proposed to designate PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability, or CERCLA Act. This action will cause PFOA and PFOS to be eligible for cleanup under the recently refunded Superfund program.
This designation also triggers a requirement for companies to report any spills to the environment, like when putting out a fire, that could trigger additional contamination investigations as well as remedial actions. Furthermore, the EPA recently announced the addition of certain PFOS chemicals to the Toxics Release Inventory, which likely impacts current and future demand for consulting and advisory services in particular. Outside of direct actions by the EPA, we also saw additional momentum with PFOS regulations at the state level in the United States, and in October, a formal request for continued monitoring of PFOS from 49 members of Congress. We expect all these developments will continue to create tailwinds across our three segments. With regards to methane emissions, late last year, the EPA proposed performance standards for new sources of methane emissions.
The proposal expands and strengthens emission reduction requirements and would require states to reduce methane emissions from hundreds of thousands of existing sources nationwide for the first time. We are also aware that the EPA is seeking information about community monitoring opportunities and technologies to support community monitoring programs. Should these regulations be adopted, we would expect to see increased demand for our emissions measuring, monitoring, and assessment services, primarily impacting our measurement analysis segment. Regarding our environmental consulting services, in April, the EPA made further changes to the NEPA, N-E-P-A process. Regulators will now have to account for how government actions may increase greenhouse gas emissions, may fragment wildlife habitats, and may impose new burdens on communities, particularly disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Notably, the EPA has also created a new division to oversee the implementation and delivery of the $3 billion Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grants created by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. While this is a new development that has yet to be fully implemented, we believe that in aggregate, this is a positive update for Montrose, given our expertise with environmental advisory, testing, and remediation services. This is all to say that momentum for environmental protection continues to grow. We believe Montrose is exceptionally well-positioned to help our clients navigate rapidly evolving priorities and mandates regarding environmental stewardship as it continues to become more and more central to corporate and governmental policies. I would next like to discuss our third quarter business performance by segment.
Within our assessment, permitting, and response segment, despite the anticipated deceleration in CTEH COVID-19 revenues, our CTEH team continues to perform above run rate levels and is doing an exceptional job for our clients with business continuity services. Support following environmental incidents caused by fires and hurricanes, in particular, have picked up compared to last year. Excluding CTEH, we were pleased to see positive contributions from our acquisitions. Our acquisitions supporting West Coast utilities managing fire risk, for example, are performing well along with attractive growth in select areas such as our greenhouse gas advisory services. Margins in this segment were primarily impacted by the shift in CTEH margins and the lower margins of our recent acquisitions. Within our measurement and analysis segment, demand for our testing services remains very strong and drove solid organic growth during the third quarter.
Given the regulatory momentum I just discussed, we expect further opportunities in this segment given our position as a market leader. Our margins in this segment continue to normalize in the high teens to 20% range, as we've previously discussed. Finally, within our remediation and reuse segment, our organic growth outperformance in the third quarter was once again driven by demand for our PFOS water treatment and renewable biogas services. As we've reiterated on prior calls, margins remain below what we would consider normalized levels given our ongoing investments into this business. For example, the establishment of our European infrastructure. Investments that we believe will enable us to capitalize on the outsized growth opportunity over the next three to five years. That said, we did see sequential margin improvement in this segment, which is in line with our expectations.
In summary, and before I turn it over to Allan, I would like to thank all of our team members around the world for their tremendous efforts so far this year. To those of you that are listening, thank you for all the hard work you've put in through these uncertain times. I am incredibly grateful for you. To our investors, thank you for your continued support and for giving us the opportunity to continue creating value while leaving the world a better place. Our third quarter results reflect positive momentum in our business, and based on our current trajectory, our outlook for 2022 remains firm. Allan is gonna expand upon that in a moment. We look forward to closing out a strong 2022 and to a great 2023. Thank you. Allan.
Allan Dicks (CFO)
Thank you, Vijay. The strong organic growth in our core business continued in the third quarter, reflecting our expanding customer relationships and ongoing cross-selling success. We are also continuing to execute our M&A strategy with the recent closing of our fourth acquisition in 2022. Moving to our revenue performance on slide 10. We saw organic growth across most of our business lines. Our third quarter revenues were $130.3 million, compared to $132.6 million in the prior year quarter. This decrease in revenues was driven by significantly lower COVID-19 revenue from CTEH, whose COVID-19 revenue dropped by $31.1 million, and the exiting of certain wastewater treatment and biogas O&M contracts.
The revenue decrease was partially offset by organic growth in our measurement and analysis and remediation and reuse segments, as well as the positive contributions from acquisitions, which added $7.5 million to the quarter. Year-to-date, revenues were up 0.6% versus the prior year period to $404.9 million. The primary driver of revenue growth in the year-to-date period was organic growth in our measurement and analysis and remediation and reuse segments, as well as the positive contributions from acquisitions, which added $19.9 million to year-to-date revenue. These year-to-date benefits to revenue helped us to more than overcome the significantly lower COVID-19 related services provided by CTEH, whose COVID-19 revenues were down $103.4 million year-over-year, as well as our planned exit from legacy O&M contracts.
Looking at our Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA performance on slide 11. Third quarter Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA was $17.1 million or 13.1% of revenue, compared to Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA of $20.3 million or 15.3% of revenue in the prior year quarter. Year-to-date, Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA was $48.4 million or 12% of revenue, compared to Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA of $56 million or 13.9% of revenue in the prior year period.
The year-over-year change in Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA dollars and as a percentage of revenue for both periods was driven by business mix, the cyberattack in June, which temporarily disrupted certain of our labs' ability to operate in both June and July, our continued investments in operating infrastructure in our biogas and water businesses, and higher variable costs impacting travel, field and lab supplies, and other direct costs. Year-to-date in 2022, we have seen strong traction with our pricing initiatives and have been pleased to see the resulting sequential improvement in quarterly margins, which we expect will continue into the fourth quarter. I'll re-emphasize that Montrose's performance needs to be assessed annually. This is consistent with how we evaluate the business due to the stronger predictability of our performance on an annual basis. This is consistent with how we hire staff, allocate resources, and manage the company.
Turning to our business segments on slide 12. In our assessment, permitting and response segment, revenue and operating segment adjusted EBITDA decreased to $46.4 million and $9.8 million respectively. The year-over-year decreases in both revenue and adjusted EBITDA in this segment was driven by significantly lower revenue from COVID-19 related services provided by CTEH, partially offset by revenue from companies acquired subsequent to the end of the third quarter of 2021. As we've reiterated on recent calls, the normalization of our CTEH revenues was expected as the demand for our pandemic-related services has waned following the reduction of COVID-19 testing and prevention requirements in the U.S.
Operating segment Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue was 21.2%, which was lower than the prior-year quarter as a result of the acquisitions of Environmental Standards earlier this year and Environmental Intelligence and Horizon in 2021, all of which run at lower margins than our other businesses in this segment. In our measurement and analysis segment, revenue increased 12.9% to $43.8 million, primarily attributable to organic growth, as well as acquisitions completed in and after the end of the third quarter of 2021. Measurement and analysis Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue decreased to 19.4% as a result of business mix, the timing of projects in some of our specialty labs, and to a lesser degree, the impact of the cyber attack, which temporarily disrupted some of our labs' ability to operate.
Finally, in our remediation and reuse segment, revenues increased 32% year-over-year to $40.1 million, reflecting a significant increase in demand for our PFAS water treatment services and organic growth in our biogas business, partially offset by the exiting of discontinued O&M contracts. The slight decrease in remediation and reuse adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue to 17.5% was primarily a result of business mix and our continued investments in the operating infrastructure of our biogas and water treatment technology businesses, which temporarily impact margins. Moving to our capital structure on Slide 13. Year-to-date cash flow from operating activities was $8.2 million, compared to cash flow from operating activities of $13.7 million in the prior year period.
Cash from operations includes the payment of acquisition-related consideration of $19.5 million in the current year and $15.5 million in the prior year, respectively. Excluding acquisition-related payments, cash from operating activities was $27.7 million in the first nine months of 2022, compared to cash from operating activities of $29.2 million in the first nine months of 2021. This change was primarily due to lower earnings before non-cash items of $6 million, partially offset by an increase in working capital of $13.4 million in the current year period, compared to an increase in working capital of $17.6 million in the prior year period. Cash from operating activities before acquisition-related payments as a percentage of Adjusted EBITDA improved to 57% in the current year from 52% in the prior year.
Our strong cash flows reflect our ongoing focus on balancing the generation of cash with investments in technology, R&D, and corporate infrastructure to ensure continued scalability. Given our performance year-to-date, we expect to report another strong year of operating cash flow in 2022, excluding acquisition-related payments. Our liquidity position remains strong, with cash on hand as of September 30, 2022 of $93.6 million and an additional $125 million of availability on our revolving credit facility. We have almost no exposure to rising interest rates as a result of the interest rate swap we put in place in January of this year and the cash we have on the balance sheet.
In addition, effective September 1, 2022, the company received an interest rate reduction of 5 basis points under the 2021 credit facility based on the company's achievement of certain sustainability and environmental, social, and governance-related objectives as provided for in the 2021 credit facility. Our leverage ratio as of September 30, 2022, which includes the impact of acquisition-related contingent earn-out obligations payable in cash, was at 1.2x. Our Series A-2 preferred stock has no maturity date, and we have the option, but not the obligation, to redeem the preferred shares at any time for cash, subject to a make-whole payment if prepaid prior to April 2023. We view this preferred equity instrument as favorable to the value creation potential in the business, given its flexible dynamics and the fixed nature of the dividend in a rising interest rate environment.
If you include the $182 million balance of the Series A-2 equity in our market cap, our total equity capitalization stands at approximately $1.5 billion. Looking at a review of our business trajectory on Slide 15. As we've discussed over the past few quarters, we anticipate an average annual revenue run rate of $75 million-$95 million for our CTEH business. Although CTEH revenue continues to normalize, CTEH revenues remain elevated compared to our expected average revenue run rate for this business as a result of continued demand for COVID-19 related services, which are expected to be transitory in nature. When excluding the above-trend revenue from CTEH, the remainder of our revenue is what we refer to as our base business, which includes the normalized revenues we would expect to see from CTEH, in addition to all of our other business lines.
Our base business continues to grow at a solid trajectory, reflecting the organic tailwinds we've discussed on this call. Moving to our full year outlook on Slide 16. Based on our updated visibility through year-end and our resilient performance thus far in 2022, we now expect full year 2022 revenue to be in the range of $535 million-$555 million. This revenue range is narrowed from our prior full year guidance of $520 million-$570 million in revenue. On this growth, we reiterate our expectation for Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $68 million-$73 million for the full year 2022. Our full year outlook remains anchored on our expectations for double-digit organic growth, excluding CTEH, plus the contribution of completed acquisitions.
As always, the timing of sales and the mix of business may influence Adjusted EBITDA in any quarter. This is due to the timing of large projects and the emergency response nature of CTEH's business. Earlier in the year, there was time to make up for quarter-to-quarter variability, but we are mindful of some projects towards the end of the year getting pulled up or pushed back between 2022 and 2023. In summary, our third quarter and year-to-date results reflect the resiliency of our business model and focused execution across all levels of our operations. We are also very proud of our ability to more than replace the year-over-year reduction in CTEH COVID-19 revenues of over $100 million year-to-date.
We remain optimistic about the momentum in our business and would like to thank our dedicated team again for their focused efforts in helping us produce another quarter of robust results. Thank you all for joining us today and for your continued interest in Montrose. We look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter. Operator, we are ready to open the lines to questions.
Operator (participant)
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star two to leave the question queue. For participants making use of speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question comes from Tim Mulrooney of William Blair.
Tim Mulrooney (Partner and Group Head of Global Services)
Vijay, Allan, good morning.
Allan Dicks (CFO)
Good morning, Tim.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
Hey, Tim. How are you?
Tim Mulrooney (Partner and Group Head of Global Services)
Pretty good. Some quick questions. Just two quick ones for me, numbers related questions. The revenue of $130 million for the third quarter, you know, that came in below consensus expectations. You guys don't guide to quarters, you guide to full year. And you maintained your guidance or narrowed it for the full year, keeping the midpoint. My question is, so was third quarter revenue in line with your internal expectations, or did some stuff get pushed out into the fourth quarter?
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
Hey, Tim, I'll take that conceptually. Our outlook is exactly the same, and the reason we don't guide to quarters is there is by virtue of some of the projects that we do on the testing side, on our water side, on the renewable energy side, for example, they will ebb and flow. By virtue of us not changing our annual outlook, the midpoint as you alluded to, you can see that we have a lot of conviction in what the trajectory looks like through the back half of Q3 and sorry, the back half of Q4 and into next year. Yes, it was very much in line with expectations and our annual expectations. We have a lot of confidence in that as well.
Tim Mulrooney (Partner and Group Head of Global Services)
Got it. Consensus got too aggressive, but no change in business, as far as you're concerned.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
Yeah.
Tim Mulrooney (Partner and Group Head of Global Services)
Second question.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
All right.
Tim Mulrooney (Partner and Group Head of Global Services)
Oh.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
Tim, implicit in that is that consensus for Q3, if the annual doesn't change, is too aggressive, then consensus for Q4 may not be aggressive enough, right? If you were just to take those two quarters in isolation. We don't guide to quarters precisely for that reason.
Tim Mulrooney (Partner and Group Head of Global Services)
Yeah. Yeah. Ten-four. Okay. On the EBITDA margins for the fourth quarter now. You know, the midpoint of your guidance, Vijay, I mean, it implies pretty strong EBITDA margin expansion in the fourth quarter following several quarters where EBITDA margins have declined year-over-year. Can you just kinda walk us through the puts and takes on why, you know, why you expect that margins would inflect into such a positive expansion territory in the fourth quarter? Thank you.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
I'll take that conceptually, Tim. We don't look at the business on a quarterly basis, and so again, it's influenced by revenue mix, and various initiatives that we would implement over the course of the year. This year, part of the reason for this sequential improvement was because of the cyberattack that we talked about in Q2, as an example of kind of anomalous impacts that we had earlier in the year. And then because of the inflationary pressures in Q2 that we then tried to recoup over the course of Q3 and Q4, and we've had a lot of success doing that, we've seen really positive momentum on the margin side. And so we're expecting sequential margin improvement as a function of those efforts.
As you look over the course of the year, Tim, our outlook is very consistent with where it was even at the beginning of the year.
Tim Mulrooney (Partner and Group Head of Global Services)
Got it. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. The next question comes from Andrew Obin of Bank of America.
Andrew Obin (Managing Director)
Hi, yes, good morning.
Allan Dicks (CFO)
Hey, Andrew.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
Hey, Andrew.
Andrew Obin (Managing Director)
Hey, how are you guys? Just a question, just more of a sort of bigger picture question. As you're getting bigger, you know, what other sort of system challenges have you run into in sort of trying to manage the company? And, you know, what have been any actions that you have taken to sort of change your approach to how you manage the systems, how you manage complexity as you continue to make acquisitions? Or does the current setup continue to work?
Allan Dicks (CFO)
Yeah, let me try that, Andrew as well. As you know, shortly after IPO in late 2020, we replaced our ERP precisely in anticipation of the continued growth we were expecting, and in particular, some of the business mix that we were seeing that was more project oriented and needed a system that could handle more complex projects. That system has now been in place for two years and is operating really well. The training, the SOPs, the KPIs around those systems are now well implemented, and incentive plans have been built around those. At the same time, we implemented our new CRM, as we've talked about.
Between those two systems, we are operating as well as we've ever been, and operating through those single systems, right? We don't operate multiple systems. Also, as we've discussed, when we acquire companies, we integrate those company systems into our systems pretty quickly. We feel really well fit from a system perspective.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
Andrew, I totally agree with Allan. I would perhaps highlight a couple of other considerations. You're right, we are more than double the size we were at IPO, but we have stronger organic growth, higher margins, better cash flow generation, and lower leverage. Hopefully by virtue of our results, you can see that even though we are a larger, more complex business, by any objective measure, it's a much stronger business. The variables we're considering now as we enter this new phase of our growth are more related to some of the externalities that we face, all of which you guys obviously are very close to. We have gotten a lot more disciplined with pricing. As Tim Mulrooney alluded to, we're seeing, you're already seeing the benefits of those efforts, right?
With our sequential margin expansion. We've gotten a lot more disciplined system-wise and infrastructure-wise with our cash management. and our sales and marketing efforts, which were nonexistent, in a coordinated sense, right, post-IPO, and all of which we talked about, in a formal way, have resulted in us seeing, materially higher cross-sell activity, right? over 18% of the revenue the last year, and increasing, is coming from, clients purchasing multiple services. We're largely harvesting our clients and working more closely with them as opposed to trying to acquire new clients.
Those are all examples of us operating in a more complex environment, but with a series of new capabilities, which are largely a function of the infrastructure and systems we put in place, some of which Allan alluded to. As we think about getting from, you know, $500 million-$600 million of revenue to $1 billion, a lot of what we talked about in terms of the corporate investments we made this year, right, which were a function of our accelerated growth, we think will position us well in a similar way over the next couple of years.
Andrew Obin (Managing Director)
Got you. Just to follow up, you know, can you just provide more color on price cost? Specifically, you know, how does the equation on sort of labor availability, labor skill, and wage inflation work against your ability to go to your customers and continue to raise price in the face of what appears to be a tight labor market? Maybe not. You know, if you could provide color there. Thank you.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
No, it's a very tight labor market. I mean, we are very sensitive to it. It's something we've spent a lot of time on. Through our ESG report, you see us we disclose all of our retention rates. I think we said this on earlier calls, Andrew. We feel really good about the efforts we've made and the quality and strength of our team, particularly at the senior levels, the ones interacting with our clients regularly. Our retention is strong. They're heavily equitized and continue to be heavily engaged, as is the management team. Where we are more sensitive and really need to do a better job candidly is at the more junior level, the entry-level staff, the hourly staff. We need to continue focusing there.
We have a series of efforts and initiatives through our human resources team and all of our operating leaders to engage more, be more flexible with the work environment and think about creative ways to compensate and incentivize. That's a huge focus. Last year, with that preamble, our labor costs, which aren't just salary, right, including benefits, went up 5%, as opposed to our historical cadence of around 3%. Our pricing this year reflected that. We had to take pricing up again in Q2, Q3 because of some of the variable costs we alluded to earlier. Because it's primarily a services business, as long as we are really disciplined with translating that labor cost increase to our pricing algorithms, we'll be able to offset that increase.
It is something that we are spending a ton of time on, in ways that we weren't four, five, six years ago.
Andrew Obin (Managing Director)
Got you.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
Andrew-
Andrew Obin (Managing Director)
Ultimately, you know, the pricing pressure is still there on labor, but you feel comfortable being able to keep up or stay ahead of it.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
We feel comfortable being able to keep up or stay ahead of it. Yes.
Andrew Obin (Managing Director)
Thanks so much.
Operator (participant)
The next question comes from Stephanie Yee of JPMorgan.
Stephanie Yee (Equity Analyst)
Hi, good morning.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
Hey, Stephanie.
Allan Dicks (CFO)
Hey, Stephanie.
Stephanie Yee (Equity Analyst)
I wanted to ask. I appreciate that you highlighted a lot of the business is tied to regulations and, even kind of in this environment of uncertainty, still see very robust growth for the business. Have you seen any projects or customers kind of pulling back, just shifts maybe in timing? Just any color in terms of maybe some hesitancy in terms of client demand because of the environment?
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
We haven't, Stephanie, no. You know, as we talked about, the only time we really saw that was in 2020 when the government effectively shut down the ability to move either within states, cities, or between states. Then some of those projects got pushed, as we talked about with you and others, into other quarters. No, this year we haven't really seen much of that. I mean, there is the natural scheduling variances that occur all the time, which is why we talk about ours not being a quarterly business. A project that may be scheduled for, you know, late Q2 may move into early Q3 or something like that, which happens all the time. No, in aggregate, we haven't really seen much movement of projects in or out.
Stephanie Yee (Equity Analyst)
Okay. Okay, that's awesome. In terms of the comment about some of the acquisitions being lower margin than the company's business, impacting kind of the assessment segment, I guess over time, do you expect some of these acquisitions, the margins to come up to the company level as you integrate them, as you derive more synergies for them? Or is it, you know, is it they're structurally, I guess, lower margin than the company, but the acquisitions are accretive from a strategic standpoint?
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
Yeah, it's a great question. What we were alluding to, and perhaps we weren't clear, Stephanie, so my apologies, is some of the recent acquisitions we've done in the consulting advisory space haven't been at that 35%+ margin cadence that we've historically talked about. In the commentary, we were alluding to the fact that that had some impact on the quarterly variance, quarter-in, quarter-out for that specific segment. There are some smaller acquisitions we may do, for example, on the testing side that are similarly lower margin than they would be on a run rate basis. In select instances, we certainly expect margins to rise as they get integrated into our systems. As you know, ours is really an organic revenue play, right?
This is not a cost synergy play. As we continue to cross-sell services, as the revenue trajectory increases, the natural organic and operating leverage in the business will cause margins to accrete. The recent acquisitions, for example, Environmental Standards, TriAD, AirKinetics, those relative to our existing segment margins weren't necessarily margin accretive, which is what we were alluding to in the commentary, if that makes any sense. Yes, over time, we have no change in our expectations around margins.
Stephanie Yee (Equity Analyst)
Okay. Understood. Thank you.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
Is that-
Operator (participant)
Okay, Stephanie, does that conclude your questions?
Stephanie Yee (Equity Analyst)
Yes. Thank you. That was helpful.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
Thanks, Stephanie.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, you're welcome to press star and then one to place yourself in the question queue. The next question comes from Noelle Dilts of Stifel.
Noelle Dilts (Managing Director)
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my call.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
Hey, Noelle.
Noelle Dilts (Managing Director)
I was wondering if you were to take out, adjust for CTEH, and if you were to kind of look at what I would characterize as the legacy businesses versus, you know, the higher growth that you're seeing in PFAS and biogas and CO2, could you give us a sense of kind of how to think about the growth trajectory of each of those groups in 2022 and how you're thinking about how we should be thinking about sort of the mix of growth for 2023? Thanks.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
Yeah, it's a good question, Noelle. We highlight PFAS, biogas and greenhouse measurement and mitigation because those are at elevated levels of organic growth, as you know, right? As you can see from our numbers. That doesn't mean that the rest of our core environmental services aren't also growing very attractively. We just don't highlight them as much, by virtue of the math. As we look at our core testing business, for example, the organic growth trajectory in that business is amongst the best it's ever been, on the back of some of the regulations that have already been implemented and some that are expected to be implemented. Our clients are heavily engaged with us across our testing business, our field services, our labs. We're seeing some really nice trajectory.
Across our engineering remediation and consulting businesses, we're seeing some really nice growth opportunities. As we look at our recent acquisitions, for example, on the West Coast, the work we're doing with utilities on fire mitigation, I alluded to our team out of Pennsylvania Environmental Standards. Those two, as an example, are seeing exceptional organic growth opportunities ahead of them, and they are indicative of kind of our broader sentiment in that group. As we look forward, we're really feeling great about what the 3-5-year outlook looks like. Obviously, we talk a lot about the PFAS water treatment, the biogas, renewable energy, and the greenhouse gas mitigation business.
The reason for that is those addressable markets have been increasing in size, and the velocity and client demand in those business lines has been something you guys have been paying a lot of attention to, and we're naturally benefiting from that already. We're feeling great. I think, and again, you said excluding CTEH, obviously, that business is a bit tougher for us to predict year in, year out, but the fundamentals there are really strong as well. You can see that, I think, in the investor presentation, Noelle. You know, that's the blue bars, which we would call kind of core environmental services. You can see that trajectory, you know, that cadence is incredibly strong and has been for the last couple of years.
As we look out over the next 3-5 years, we're feeling really bullish on it. Is that-
Noelle Dilts (Managing Director)
Okay, great. Sure does. Just on the PFAS remediation services, is there any way you could kind of talk about how many programs you have at this point that are in, say, you know, beta testing and kind of how we should think about your historical hit rate in terms of moving those tests into full-scale deployment? Thanks.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
We don't disclose the number of pilots that we have ongoing, Noelle, but I'll give you kind of some structural data points that may be helpful. We, you know, as we think about PFAS in aggregate representing Montrose's percentage of revenue going from kind of single digits to this year, we think it'll be closer to 20%. As we look across the next three to five years, we think that has the possibility of increasing well beyond that, the 20% of total revenue mix. That's a function of a series of pilots that are underway. The reason we're not disclosing pilots or disclosing exactly when they'll start is that's a little unpredictable for us.
It's about an 18-24 month cycle from when the initial water testing is done, a lot of which started at the end of last year, to when the pilots get implemented to when those pilots become full scale. Some of that, especially when dealing with departments of Defense, airports, which are public-private partnerships, is also predicated on public funding cycles. Over the 3- to 5-year horizon, we're feeling really, really good about the growth trajectory. We're not in a position today to disclose exactly how many pilots we have, nor how many of those will convert to full-scale systems next year in 2023.
Noelle Dilts (Managing Director)
Got it. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as we have no further questions in the conference lines. My apologies. We've got another question coming from Tim Mulrooney of William Blair.
Tim Mulrooney (Partner and Group Head of Global Services)
Hey, thanks for sneaking me in. I just wanted to build on-
Operator (participant)
Hey.
Tim Mulrooney (Partner and Group Head of Global Services)
The last conversation that you were having with Noelle. You know, given that your PFAS remediation technology, Vijay and Allan, is particularly well suited for certain applications. I'm curious if there are certain markets where there's greater near-term opportunity. Near term, I think like, you know, three to five years, whether that be military bases or airports or large industrial sites. Are there particular set of customers in a in specific end markets, where you're seeing outsized demand at the moment as you think about those pilot programs? Thank you.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
Yeah. It's a great question, Tim. Industrial clients for us have already been adopting the technology, and we expect will continue. That is probably our number one focus point, Tim. These tend to be more complex water streams. I'm talking about industrial wastewater, specifically. More complex water streams with short-chain or long-chain PFAS that benefit from our technology and regeneration. We're demonstrating pretty consistently that if you have high concentrations of short-chain that the life cycle costs are lower with our system and the efficacy is stronger with our system. Again, speaking in generalities, and we've shared a lot of the technicalities with you and publicly, Tim. We're also seeing similarly a lot of both inquiries and demand from Department of Defense sites, specifically Air Force bases.
Not surprisingly, when training occurred with the spraying of firefighting foam on Air Force bases as an example, and obviously many, to a lesser extent, Navy sites, that the PFAS from that seeped into the water streams and now requires remediation. Pease Air Force Base, as a simple example, which we took you to and others too, Tim, as an example that we're seeing a lot of demand picking up from that sector. That's consistent, has been consistent in Australia and is now increasingly consistent across Europe. We are seeing just a consistent uptick from those two constituencies in particular. Going back to Noelle's question, exactly when that starts at full scale at the velocity many expect is a little tougher to predict.
It's already, as you can see in our organic growth, and our margin accretion of the remediation revenue. It's already in our numbers and has been at the end of 2020 over the course of 2021 through this year as well. We certainly expect over the next three to five years that those two constituencies, the industrial wastewater and the DODs across the world, will be our primary sources of engagements.
Tim Mulrooney (Partner and Group Head of Global Services)
That's really helpful. Thanks, Vijay. That's it from me.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does now conclude our question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Vijay Manthripragada for closing remarks.
Vijay Manthripragada (President and CEO)
Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you all for the time again this morning. Allan and I and the team are thrilled with the quarter, and we're looking forward to speaking with you about the end of the year in 2023. Thank you again. Take care, and be well.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you for your participation.