Complications in waste treatment operations and closure costs of a site in Tennessee trimmed Perma-Fix Environmental Services’ revenue and increased its operating loss in the fourth quarter of 2017.
The Atlanta-based environmental services company said Wednesday it recorded $12.6 million in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2017, compared to $13.4 million in the same period of 2016. Meanwhile, Perma-Fix reported an operating loss of $1.2 million for the quarter, a sharp downturn from income of $402,000 in the prior year.
While waste shipments rose in the quarter ended Dec. 31, revenue in the treatment business took a hit from the “timing and particular mix of waste we received,” Perma-Fix CEO Mark Duff said in a press release. Treatment business revenue dropped from $9.4 million in fourth-quarter 2016 to $8.7 million a year later.
Quarterly gross profit was $1.8 million, compared to $3.4 million in the same quarter in 2016, largely on the back of closure costs for the company’s East Tennessee Materials & Energy Corp. facility. Shuttering the plant will eventually save the company $4 million to $5 million annually, CEO Mark Duff said in a press release.
Perma-Fix’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization for 2017 was roughly $2.4 million, compare to roughly $575,000 in 2016. The adjustments included factoring in the corporation’s medical isotopes operations, plus losses of tangible and intangible assets.
Duff was optimistic Perma-Fix’s financial picture will improve in 2018. “We’ll continue to develop our revenue in the treatment segment,” he told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing in a telephone interview.
Perma-Fix recently finished a trial processing 3 gallons of low-activity radioactive waste from the Hanford Site in Washington state. The treated material has been shipped to Waste Control Specialists’ disposal site in West Texas. Perma-Fix has submitted a proposal to the U.S. Department of Energy to conduct the second phase of this three-part experiment. Duff did not know when DOE would sign off on the proposal to treat 2,000 gallons of Hanford waste, which would likely take a year. The third phase is to be much bigger, but no figures have been nailed down yet.
