Thomas G. Vadaketh
Thank you, Nick, and good morning, everyone. In the second quarter, total revenue was $562 million and adjusted EBITDA was $65 million. As Nick mentioned, our Environmental segments executed well and performed consistent with our expectations in the second quarter. Favorable cost performance and a weaker U.S. dollar in Harsco Environmental offset the impact of sluggish product and services volumes relative to our expectations earlier in the quarter. At Clean Earth, better pricing and volumes as well as administrative cost controls offset weather impacts and higher disposal costs resulting from outages at our primary service providers. Overall, our adjusted EBITDA was within guidance, albeit at the lower end, driven by the Rail results. Rail performance was negatively impacted by volumes with equipment, aftermarket and technology sales coming in much lower than anticipated. We saw our customers adopting a very cautious view on maintenance-related spending. Rail's order activity has been unusually weak by any historical measure as a result. This demand weakness is most prominent in the U.S. where customers, including the Class 1s and others now seem to be deferring maintenance and related capital spending due to economic uncertainty. And we're also seeing limited to no demand out of Mexico, Canada and China, likely as a result of global trade tensions. Given these trends in Rail, we have lowered our guidance for the year. I'll come back to Rail and our outlook in a bit when I'll comment on actions underway to mitigate Rail's operating and market challenges. Now let me turn to our second quarter performance details on Slide 4. In the first quarter, revenues totaled $562 million, which was down approximately 6% on an organic basis. Adjusted EBITDA was $65 million with Clean Earth achieving record second quarter profits in the quarter. Divestiture impacts were an unfavorable $3 million compared with the prior year and FX impacts were not material. Our adjusted diluted loss per share was $0.22 for the quarter, excluding the impact of unusual items. These unusual items include $16 million in Rail, mainly related to additional costs anticipated to complete our Network Rail and SBB contracts. The amount related to Network Rail assumes we continue with the contract. As Nick mentioned, our discussions with Network Rail are ongoing. In fact, we recently sent Network Rail a letter communicating our urgent need to bring these negotiations to closure and summarizing various options, including a substantial revision of the contract's economic terms or finding a mutually acceptable exit. And the additional SBB costs are for manufacturing and commissioning expenses as we approach completion of deliveries of the first vehicle type and work towards the final phase of this contract to complete production and deliveries of the second vehicle type. The remaining unusual items in the quarter include project-related costs and an $8 million impact in HE, most of which relates to our decision to exit a downstream products business in France. Lastly, on this slide, our adjusted free cash flow for the quarter was a negative $14 million, which is in line with our expectations. Our cash flow performance is expected to improve in Q3 despite our semiannual interest payment on our bond and free cash flow should further improve in Q4. Now please turn to Slide 5 and our Harsco Environmental segment. Segment revenues totaled $258 million and adjusted EBITDA totaled $40 million. The year-over-year change in earnings is the result of divestitures and lower service levels resulting from site exits and closures as well as lower product sales from our Excell operations. These impacts were partially offset by lower SG&A expenses and severance costs that were incurred in 2024 that were not repeated this year. Steel production at our customer locations on a continuing site basis rose modestly compared with the prior year with various puts and takes across our global and diverse footprint. The implementation of steel import tariffs in the U.S. has supported higher production at our customer locations domestically. However, this impact has been offset elsewhere, including in Canada, where output has declined. Overall, steel demand globally remains stable, although utilization rates remain well below optimal levels. Next, please turn to Slide 6 to discuss Clean Earth. For the quarter, revenues totaled $246 million, which was up 4% compared with the 2024 quarter and adjusted EBITDA reached $25 million, up 5%. Revenue growth was slightly more weighted to price over volume. CE's earnings growth is attributable to the increase in revenue as well as cost efficiencies, partially offset by higher transportation and disposal expenses. As mentioned earlier, transportation and disposal costs were higher as we utilized alternative and more costly disposal options given that our primary outlets were not available for a period of time. This situation has improved in early Q3. Each of our industry segments verticals within hazardous waste saw solid growth in the quarter, while soil dredge volumes and earnings were lower as anticipated. The lower contribution from soil dredge relates to seasonal weakness due to dredging restrictions in the Northeast and some higher-margin projects in 2024 that are not repeating this past quarter. Now please turn to Slide 7 and our Rail business. Rail revenues totaled $58 million, and its adjusted EBITDA loss was $3 million in the second quarter. The year-over-year EBITDA change is the result of lower volumes and a less favorable product mix as well as higher manufacturing costs due to inefficiencies and inflation. We've discussed our manufacturing challenges previously, and these continue. Supply chain and manufacturing improvements are underway. These initiatives take time, however, and the related benefits are taking longer than we originally expected. Rail is now also dealing with a weak demand environment, as mentioned earlier. Q2 standard equipment bookings were anemic, and our year-to-date orders are now down more than 30%. Rail's backlog has contracted as a result. We're taking actions to rightsize the rail organization in line with the lower demand. The team is currently working on restructuring plans to support the lower demand outlook with these actions starting in late Q3 and fully implemented in Q1 of next year. Finally, on the ETOs, we've already mentioned Network Rail. We are making good progress on our smaller contracts as well as the SBB and Deutsche Bahn contracts. We expect to complete most of our smaller contracts, which total roughly 10 this year. The remaining 2 should conclude in 2026. On SBB, where we are delivering 2 vehicle types, we expect to have completed deliveries of the first vehicle type by the end of this year. On the second vehicle type, we will be testing the equipment later this quarter and expect to complete deliveries by the end of next year. On Deutsche Bahn, which is a contract to deliver 23 vehicles, we are encouraged by our internal testing results on the first unit. The first 3 vehicles will commence the formal acceptance process in Germany by the end of this year, after which they can be accepted by the customer. Production of the remaining 20 vehicles are on track to be completed and delivered by the end of 2027. We continue to expect that our existing ETO contracts will consume roughly $50 million of cash this year, an improvement from the $80 million outflow in 2024. Next year, we expect similar cash impacts before these contracts turn positive in subsequent years. Importantly, we continue to expect that project cash flows on these ETO contracts will be neutral on a go-forward basis. Now let me turn to our full year outlook on Slide 8. The midpoint of EBITDA and free cash flow guidance is reduced by $15 million, driven by Rail. Our EBITDA range is now $290 million to $310 million, and our free cash flow range is now $15 million to $35 million. Let me conclude on Slide 9 with our third quarter guidance. Q3 adjusted EBITDA is expected to range from $76 million to $86 million. Each of our segments is anticipated to see sequential improvement in earnings. Compared with the prior year quarter, HE results are expected to be lower as a result of divestitures and site exits, while results for CE and Rail should be higher due to volumes and/or price. Thanks, and I'll now hand the call back to the operator for Q&A.