About a year after acquiring the company for about $2 billion, Republic Services, Phoenix, has nearly integrated the operations of the old US Ecology with its own, according to Republic’s latest earnings report.
US Ecology operates radioactive waste disposal sites in Idaho, Michigan, and Washington state. The Richland, Wash. site accepts low-level radioactive waste from power plants participating in the Rocky Mountain and Northwest interstate compacts.
“We expect to be substantially complete with our integration activities by the end of 2023,” Republic Services wrote in an earnings press release last week. Since the deal to acquire Boise, Idaho-based US Ecology closed on May 2, 2022, Republic Services has spent a little more than $80 million, pre-tax, to bring the company into the fold, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
That includes nearly $5 million in integration costs in the first quarter of 2023, with about another $30 million to go in 2023. Republic Services’ wide range of waste disposal and recycling business generated roughly $13.5 billion in revenue in 2022. Most of that came from solid waste disposal and recycling, but about $1.2 billion came from the Environmental Solutions segment that includes the operations of the former US Ecology.
In the three years leading up to the acquisition, US Ecology’s radioactive waste disposal business, what was once the Waste Solutions segment, generated between $400 million and $450 million in annual revenue.
