Perma-Fix President and CEO Mark Duff said Wednesday he was “disappointed” with the environmental services company’s second quarter financial performance, which he blamed on complications related to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.
For the quarter ended June 30, Perma-Fix posted company-wide net income of around $3 million or $0.25 per share, according to an earnings report released Wednesday. Despite an operating loss of more than $2 million, the bottom line was up nearly 1,400% from the $204,000, or $0.02 per share, that the company reported in the second quarter of 2020. The drastic increase was attributed to forgiveness in June of a $5.4 million federal Payment Protection Plan (PPP) loan Perma-Fix received from the U.S. Small Business Administration. PPP loans were part of the U.S. coronavirus bailout bills in 2020.
Quarterly revenue was around $16.1 million, down around 26% year-over-year from about $22 million. Perma-Fix’s services segment was the main drag on revenue, owing to delays in procurement awards and contracts as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The services segment, which provides waste management, nuclear decommissioning and site remediation services, posted roughly $8.4 million of revenue in the second quarter of 2021, about a 40% decrease from the $14.2 million it brought in during the corresponding quarter last year.
On the other hand, revenue from the company’s waste treatment segment in the second quarter was relatively flat at $7.7 million, compared to $7.8 million in the second quarter of 2020. Revenue in this segment was impacted by delays on waste shipments “from certain key customers” as a result of the pandemic, Perma-Fix said. The company ships waste to processing sites in Florida, Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Richland, Wash., near the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site.
Despite weakness in the company’s services sector, Duff said on a Wednesday conference call with investors that Perma-Fix is “well-positioned to aggressively grow both sides of the business” and that he expects things to recover in the second half of the year. Duff said that there was “a large backlog” of waste shipments in the second quarter that will be delivered later in the year. Perma-Fix is also bidding on government contracts that would be “transformative” to its business, Duff said.
The company is beginning to see increases in waste treatment activity across contract bidding, shipment receipts and plant production, which Duff said in a Wednesday statement “illustrates the improving nature of the market.” Duff told investors in April that he expected waste shipment levels to return to normal by the summer.
