Redishred Capital Corp (Pre-Merger)

XTSX:KUT

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q3

[Operator]

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the RediShred Capital Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results and Business Update Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Jeffrey Hasham, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Thank you very much, Claudia. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our third quarter call related to our just released financial results. I think I'll start by maybe stating the obvious that we were fortunate to have a very good quarter. And so far, the year has been a good year. I think I would be very remiss if I didn't start by thanking the management team and the employees of RediShred, our Board, our franchisees and our shareholders for all the support and all the things that they've done over the last 24 months because these past 24 months have been like no other. And it is nice to come here and report on a third quarter that I think all of the hard work and all the effort and all the support has sort of come and brought us to this point. So I did want to make that statement right out of the gate because this doesn't happen by accident. It happens because a lot of people do a lot of good work every day. So on the consolidated results, I think the 53% growth in consolidated EBITDA, obviously, is the headline. As usual, Kasia is going to get into the corporate location details in a moment. But we can see that, really, 2 components: number one, acquisitions have fueled that, but not just acquisitions, same location EBITDA was an impressive 27% growth as well. And that is a -- that's what we wanted to do, and we wanted to continue to grow this business. We survived the pandemic reasonably well, and now we're back in the growth mode in all areas of our business. Shredding, scanning and e-based in all areas of our business are in growth mode. I view this sort of as a clean quarter because, when Kasia sort of talks about the performance of the business, not only were our service revenues and our -- and if you exclude recycling from the big scheme of things, the business performed -- operation performed well. It was up -- even if paper were static or lower, it would have been up. And so when you take out recycling, it would have been up. And then recycling happened also be driven up because of increased tonnage as well as increased price. So having a 53% increase on consolidated EBITDA, just shy of CAD 3 million, was a great result. EBITDA margin, 29%, again, continue to hang at that high 20s. We were not forecasting anywhere near the high 20s for this year. We were sort of looking at mid-20s, so to be at the high 20s. Again, the nice thing is I think we're seeing some operating leverage a little bit ahead of schedule. Yes, we cut costs during the pandemic, and we were very careful to bring people on. And we brought on a number of people in the third quarter and even a little bit into the fourth quarter. But of course, the acquisitions helped add incremental EBITDA and cash flow, which is very good. And again, the ability to do be better at routing and better at our logistics and better at selling into routing and marketing into routing, that has been very helpful to our EBITDA margin. So we're very pleased with that number. Again, it's sort of coming a little bit ahead of what we thought it would be and what we forecasted it to be. So again, this EBITDA growth, Massachusetts, Richmond, Atlanta, we've done those deals in a 9-month period. All of them are performing to expectation, if not a little bit better. We have new bookings. And all of our -- even our franchisees are having a great year, and their unit economics are very good. And they're seeing the same factors, they leverage the same marketing and sales platforms. And so we're pleased about that. Clients continue to come back to work. As we know, the downtowns are still tough. Many of those of you in downtown Toronto, we still know that it's still a bit of a tough environment. But there are more people coming back to work and some of our larger clients are coming back to work. And maybe they're not taking the full frequency, but they are certainly taking increased frequency than they were 6, 12 or 18 months ago. We generated record revenue, almost CAD 10 million, just shy again. That's a 47% growth over last year. Now remember, foreign exchange hasn't gone in our favor. So if you take up foreign exchange in U.S. dollars, that was...[Technical Difficulty]

[Operator]

Again, this is the operator, please hold the line while we reconnect the speaker. Please go ahead, sir.

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Sorry. I don't know where I dropped off, but my apologies for that. Maybe might need to invest in a new phone system or something, but my -- or new Internet system here -- maybe we overloaded it. But let me pass this over to Kasia, and I'll allow her to talk about the corporate locations. And I think you've heard enough from me anyhow.

[Katherina M. Pawluk, CFO & Secretary]

Great. Thanks, Jeff. I think we just missed the last bit on the foreign exchange. So I don't think you dropped off for long, which is great. So good morning, everybody. Great to hear from everyone today. During the third quarter, as Jeff just mentioned, we did see the U.S. dollar continue to be weaker than last year. So the average rate was down from $1.35 in the prior year to $1.25 this quarter. So we have included in our MD&A the constant currency growth rates in U.S. dollars to eliminate that foreign exchange fluctuation. So I'll speak to the results using that constant currency. So overall, we saw very strong performance from our corporate locations once again this quarter, and that's not only when comparing to the prior year, but also when comparing to pre-COVID performance and from an overall efficiency and margin standpoint as well. I also wanted to remind everyone that our results don't include any government assistance so the corporate store results are strictly from an operational standpoint. So our same location or organic shredding sales, they grew by 24% this quarter over our Q3 2020. They recovered well from the pandemic, and our sales teams continue to add new clients on a monthly basis. We did see a substantial increase in paper prices of 44% this quarter, and that was coupled with increased tonnage. And so our same location recycling sales grew 64% year-over-year. Our costs continue to be well managed, both on the direct cost and fixed cost side. So while they did increase year-over-year by 16%, they increased at a lower rate than our sales growth. And this led to a 35% organic EBITDA growth. And our paper prices did play a factor in this growth as well. However, even when we exclude recycling revenue from EBITDA, we still saw growth of USD 200,000 in EBITDA before recycling revenues year-over-year, with margins improving 100 basis points. And our results from acquisitions or non-same locations in the quarter, they included the Massachusetts results, including the PROSCAN business, as well as a full quarter of Richmond's results, and then we had 2 months of Atlanta's results. And the EBITDA from acquisitions was $818,000 in the quarter, with a strong EBITDA margin of 47%. So when you combine all the locations, the same and acquired, we saw revenue growth of 60% and EBITDA growth of 86% year-over-year to just under USD 3 million for the quarter. And when we remove recycling revenue, we still saw our EBITDA margin improve by 400 basis points. In terms of our sales performance in our electronic lease and scanning businesses, we saw another strong quarter in the PROSCAN Massachusetts location, where we had our highest quarterly scanning sales to date at USD 469,000, which was great. On the e-waste sales, we did see a decline by 20% during the quarter, with clients holding on to their electronics. We've seen that the supply for new bulk electronics have been low and prices have gone up. But we have, however, seen improvement in the e-waste sales quarter-over-quarter this year as well as on the EBITDA side. So with Q3 being our strongest quarter so far this year, so we are trending in the right direction there. And so overall, we are very pleased with the performance of our corporate locations this quarter and the record sales and EBITDA levels we've been able to achieve as we continue to acquire more businesses and then -- as well grow organically. And then on a year-to-date basis, given the strong second and third quarter results, that's really helped us improve the year-to-date results as the business was still coming back from COVID restrictions in Q1. And then we saw that Q1 2020 was mostly a pre-COVID quarter. So on a year-to-date basis, our organic shredding sales and total sales both grew 18% and then our organic EBITDA growth was 36%. And then when you look at our organic EBITDA, excluding the recycling revenue, that was also strong, with $1 million in growth year-over-year, and we saw improved margin of 400 basis points. And then on a total location basis, our sales growth year-to-date has been 49%, and then EBITDA growth has been 80%, which equated to a $3.3 million increase in EBITDA year-over-year. And lastly, our year-to-date EBITDA margin also remained strong at 39% and even at 30% when you exclude the recycling revenue. And both of those measures saw a 700 basis point improvement, which is great. And lastly, I'll just speak briefly in terms of capital management, and then I'll pass it back to Jeff. So during the quarter, we did generate $2.4 million in cash from operations, and that was up from $1.8 million last quarter, which was very positive to see. And we continue to pay off a significant amount of debt, a total of $1.2 million as well. We also advanced $850,000 from our bank facility for the acquisition of the Atlanta business, and we used $1.4 million for that purchase. And so with that, we ended the quarter with $1 million in the bank, and we have still $1 million available on our line of credit and $1.4 million on our facility. And lastly, we also filed a short-form base shelf prospectus in November, and so that will allow us to issue shares for up to $2 million over the next 2-year period as well. And I'll pass it back over to Jeff.

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Thanks, Kasia. And just -- I think you broke up a little bit there. So that shelf prospectus is a $25 million shelf for 25 months, so it allows us to be ready when we need to be ready. And so we're going to flip over to acquisitions because that might get us there. The acquisitions, as Kasia had mentioned, had performed very well. The numerics coming out of it is great. I think this is probably an important moment. Just to remind everybody of the market opportunity and RediShred's execution vis-a-vis that opportunity. So a, we have, what I would call, a homegrown opportunity with our approach to franchisees. We have 16 franchisee locations. Many of them, again, coming to renewal over the next little while. Many of them getting to a certain age as well, where it's logical for them to exit. Their current run rate in Canadian dollars is about $30 million in revenue so -- and an estimated EBITDA of about CAD 10 million. So there is significant opportunity there. And remember, our franchisees tend to be larger than the independents. So those of you that have sat with me for my investor presentations and road show presentations and/or with Kasia, you know that there's still that homegrown, what we call hubs. On the other end of the spectrum, we have independents. There's 750 independents in the U.S. And we estimate that, that market share is about $750 million, with the majority of those independents either in markets that we're in or adjacent markets, okay? So we have that opportunity as well. And so what have we done? I mean, obviously, in the last few years, even with COVID, we've executed on $55 million in acquisitions. We've brought -- we continue to grow our same corporate location revenue. Our current run rate, revenue run rate, is about $35 million, if you look at just the 2021 results so far and the third quarter results, in particular. And we've got a 10-year EBITDA CAGR of over 80%. So we have a platform. We have a team that's executing on this business plan, and we will continue to execute on this business plan. One of the things that we've been talking about here internally is how do you do it? How do you deploy more technology? How do you continue to drive good performance out of the things that we buy? We buy and we build. And that is the plan. So our pipeline, and I'm sure we'll get questions on that. We have a good pipeline of independents and some franchisees that we're looking to continue to work with. And that pipeline continues to develop the right way, and we're looking forward to hopefully executing on that. And that's why we have to be ready with the things that we need to be ready with: a good management team, investment in people that are doing technology, investment in trucks to allow us to service our customers. And we've done all of those things, and we're executing on that business plan. And so I'm really happy that we've been able to execute on the business plan so well, knock on wood, and even through COVID, and even through some rough waters. So I just want to make that note that we are continuing to be very aggressive and continuing to go after acquisitions because that is part and parcel of our 3-pronged strategy of buy it, build it, also support our franchisees along the way so that they have something of value to sell when it's time to exit. So with all of that being said, again, thank you to everybody for listening to us as we review these numerics and review our strategy, and I'd love to open this up to questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from David Ocampo with Cormark Securities.

[David Ocampo, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

Just sticking with the theme of M&A here. You guys do have a bit of cash in the balance sheet, some room on your lines, and you guys do generate pretty good free cash flow. So how should we be framing up that growth ambition that you guys have? Is it more the case where you can do those 2 to 3 acquisitions a year on that internally? And then the outside capital that you guys are talking about, the $25 million, that will be more used for larger chunky type acquisitions?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Yes, I think that's the right way to look at it. So the smaller acquisitions, we can generally do on our own through the cash flows that we're generating, for the most part. Obviously, where that might not be the case is if you have a number of them at the same time, all right? So you got -- and that's sort of the way things sometimes work if you get a whole bunch of them at once. So if you get a number of them together, then we'll need to go to market. But typically, what we have been doing historically, as you sort of do one every couple of months, the cash flows provide for that. Where you need to raise the dollars from an equity perspective is when you have larger deals. So whether it's a franchisee or a larger independent, that's obviously where we need to come to market for the financing of those.

[David Ocampo, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

Yes. And as a follow-up, and we've talked about this in the past, but with paper pricing moving up, and that typically keeps those low-margin competitors afloat, are you starting to see these tuck-in opportunities delay their plans to sell? Or is it perhaps, with inflation and difficulty sourcing drivers and trucks, these smaller independents are ready to just throw in the towel despite paper pricing moving up?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. I mean, I think the good news is paper pricing hasn't moved up to what I would say the early 2019 or late 2018 numbers, where it was just insane. I mean those are extremely high numbers. So people could survive quite nicely on the paper. We knew back then, as we know now, it goes up and down and you got to be able to survive on the business, not on the paper. And to your point, with COVID, with fuel, with drivers and trying to find them, it's been difficult. Well, mostly the independents we look at, I mean, they can't afford to provide medical benefits and 401(k) contributions, and so -- and we can, right? And so drivers get to drive the nice trucks with us, right? Some of these independents are 10-year-old trucks, right? So the ability for us to retain our people is better. That doesn't mean we don't feel those pressures. But we certainly don't feel them anywhere near as acutely as independent that's operating 1 or 2 or 3 trucks. And again -- but typically, the 1- or 2-truck operators, they're owners on the truck. So it makes it even worse and even more painful. And they're not getting $200 or $225 a ton for paper. So they're still not seeing anywhere what they used to make prepandemic. And I think that's still driving the independent market to really consider selling at this time, and that's a good thing for us.

[David Ocampo, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

No, that's great color. And then just sticking with the inflationary pressures that you guys are personally seeing, whether it's labor or equipment costs, how easily is that for you guys to pass it off to your customers? Or is there a lag, especially with your scheduled routes, that might be on a more contracted basis?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Yes, we are putting through price increases more frequently. And again, sometimes you can just do it little amounts when no one is looking. Right now is a good time, it's Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, right? But look, you can't put out a 10% increase. That will get noticed. But you can put through some increases, look anyone that's under contract or under contract. So you're going to get a lag. Anyone that we signed up this year, we typically won't give an increase to because they're new and you don't want to, "Hey, we signed you up, and now you've got an increase." But those longer-standing customers, we are looking through them and putting through increases. So we did one earlier in the year. We're doing one later now as we're at the end of the year. And that's going to help offset some of these pressures. Paper going up, in a way -- so again, the nice thing about paper going up is fuel and paper tend to mirror each other. So that's the good news, right? And even when paper fell last time, fuel also fell. So other than COVID periods, where things were wonky, the 2 do correlate. So one does offset the other.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Amr Ezzat with Echelon Partners.

[Amr Ezzat, Managing Director of Research]

Congrats on a very strong quarter again.

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Thank you.

[Katherina M. Pawluk, CFO & Secretary]

Thanks.

[Amr Ezzat, Managing Director of Research]

The first one is maybe a tough one. But like I asked it last quarter, can you help us segment your 13% same corporate location shredding growth into proper organic growth versus accounts coming back post-COVID? Any way to sort of quantify that for us?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. You know what, I think it's a good question. I would argue that the majority of the growth is new client acquisition. We're sort of at this point now, Amr, and this is more anecdotal, and we can get you some quantification, but most of our clients that were sort of on hold last quarter are still on hold this quarter. Some have come back. No doubt about it. Some will never come back, right? [ Based on ] that we'll just close down. The good news is we haven't seen a lot of that. We haven't seen a lot of their -- permanently closed down. There's -- so that sort of 8%, 10% that are sort of on hold, and it's probably closer to 8% now than 10%, they're sort of waiting and seeing. It's interesting because it's our clients in the downtown course. It's our professional services clients that are larger and, of course, technology type clients. The good news for us again is the vast majority of our clients are small and medium-sized enterprise. The vast majority of them are back to work. But anecdotally, I can provide you that color, and we do see stats every day and every month on who's on COVID hold. And we probably can get to some incremental color on that, more precise color, if you will, we'll make note of that.

[Amr Ezzat, Managing Director of Research]

Fantastic, but that's a good color, nonetheless. So back on paper prices, Jeff, yes, like not a historical peak, but getting closer probably, again, like a hard one, but do you have any insights to share with us on the dynamics there and expectations? I noticed that you guys gave your usual forecast for Q4.

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Yes, and it's gone up, and it's gone up reasonably well. Again, as you said, it's nowhere near the peak, but we're certainly above the 10-year average. That 10-year average is $135. And I think we're now getting closer to $160, I think, in the fourth quarter, or $155 to $160, which, Kasia, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's where we were or where we are. Am I correct in that, Kasia?

[Katherina M. Pawluk, CFO & Secretary]

Yes, that's correct. Yes.

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

And -- so look, the away market -- and again, it's interesting, right? With away market that we talk about, where people are traveling, going to hotels, going to hockey games and as the vaccine rolls out in the United States, and even here, right, and as people go back to more normal lives, they consume the end result of our paper, right? So our paper that we pick up goes into the toilet and tissue and all that paper. That away market is driving it at the moment. I can't say if China has come back online or not. I don't -- it doesn't look like it. They are taking some shipments of paper, but nowhere near what they were 10 years ago, not even close. Markets like India are taking paper, South America, the domestic market is definitely taking it. But there is demand for the end use of it, and that's what's driving it. I think the good news is -- for me, actually, frankly, is I'm glad we're not at $225 a ton because, again, our independent market, they look at -- they look at the world very differently than we do, right? They price based on the paper price. And that they win, they can win short term. But again, that $135 per ton, 10-year average, if we sort of look at the deviation around that, there's not a lot of deviation around that over the last 10 years, right? Yes, we've had some spikes either way, but again, there's not a lot of deviation. So I think people need to think about that. And look, independents don't, that's fine. And it hurts them in the long run, frankly.

[Amr Ezzat, Managing Director of Research]

Great. And then maybe a second piece of that question on your tonnage and that system tonnage, not bad volumes the past couple of quarters. Are we close to a peak there? Or can you push through more tonnage?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Well, look, as we add more service clients then we will get more tonnage. That's sort of the way it works, right? And that's why it's a schedule business. That recurring business is so important because you're sort of guaranteed a certain amount of tonnage, right? Because each client will produce a certain amount of tonnage in a container every single month or every single year. And then what also drives increased tonnages is the purge, right? And as we get more onetime event-based shredding, we get more tonnage that way, too. So I think as long as we can continue to grow organically and really grow that recurring business, we'll get more tonnage. And again, recurring business leads to more event-based business because once you're in there, you can get the event-based business much easier as well.

[Amr Ezzat, Managing Director of Research]

Great. Then maybe one last one. I appreciate your comments on M&A. You had a couple of nice smaller ones. You spoke to looking at chunkier ones. How do we think about valuation of multiple levels when thinking about these larger ones? Is that like a much higher multiple that we should expect you guys to take? Any thoughts there?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. Look, I think we're going to be in our -- our franchisees, they run really good operations, strong recurring revenue. Those what I would call drivers of value. What is your quality of revenue, what is the quality of your routing, what are the quality of your trucks, what are the quality of your people that drives the value, and that's how we look at it. And our specs franchisees get 6, 6.5 multiple of EBITDA. That's -- but we have franchisees that we paid 5 or 5.5. So that range of, let's call it, 5 to 6.5 for our franchisees is still a relevant range. Large independents, they're, again, checking similar boxes, they're going to get similar multiples, right? They typically don't check as many boxes our franchisees do, but there are many independents that are very good. I look at Safe Shred that we bought in 2018. They've ran very much like a franchisee. They didn't check every single box, but they've got a 6 multiple of EBITDA because it was a good acquisition for us, and it proved to be so. So I think we will look at that. Smaller ones, look, we're -- nothing is changing there, right, sort of 3, 4 multiple of EBITDA. You sort of look at those a little bit different. Sometimes you build up the asset value onto its own. Look, the value in those tuck-ins are what do we do with it in the next 6, 12 or 18 months. That's the value. And we've typically shown that we can pay 4 for something, and the next year, it will be a 3, and the year after that, it might get to a 2.5. So those little independents, as much as they don't move the needle, they are lucrative, right? And so nothing has really changed here, but it's a good question because it allows me to sort of give everyone the information on sort of how we're looking at this.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Nick Corcoran with Acumen Capital.

[Nick Corcoran, Equity Research Analyst]

Congrats on the record quarter.

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Thanks, Nick.

[Katherina M. Pawluk, CFO & Secretary]

Thank you.

[Nick Corcoran, Equity Research Analyst]

Just think about your overall network, what proportion of clients are operating at reduced service levels? And do we expect this to be a tailwind, either through the end of the year or to next year, as these clients resume what we call full service?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. I think in that 8-ish percent that I spoke of earlier than anecdotally, a number of them, our larger professional services clients are still typically at reduced frequencies. And it's interesting because we have been getting some word from some of our larger clients that yes, we're going to bring everyone back to the office or the majority of people back, and we want to resume service or get close to fuller service levels. My take is, as we -- look, it's taken longer than I think we thought. Simultaneously, we were able to add new customers at the same time, which was great. So we've been able to replace the loss with new clients out. I think what we're going to find is, over the first quarter of 2022, those larger clients, the Googles of the world and the large law firms of the world and the investment banking firms of the world, they will be coming back. Look, I don't think we should be naive enough to say every one of them will, some of them may permanently not come back or some of them may permanently shut down, but they're still operating. And you know what? I look at our own office here, and we allow for a flexible model, but more and more people want to come back. And so that's kind of a nice thing, right, that people actually want to go back to the office, and that's a good thing. So I don't have the exact number for you there, but I think we're going to continue to see a migration. And we're going to continue to see some folks get back to the office, and that's a good thing.

[Nick Corcoran, Equity Research Analyst]

Great. And switching gears, did you acquire any trucks in the quarter? And what are the plans for acquiring new trucks through the end of the year?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

In the third quarter, Kasia, I don't think we added any trucks.

[Katherina M. Pawluk, CFO & Secretary]

Yes. We did add a couple of trucks.

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Okay.

[Katherina M. Pawluk, CFO & Secretary]

It's been a total of 7 trucks year-to-date or up to September 30, and there is a plan for a couple more for the remainder of the year.

[Nick Corcoran, Equity Research Analyst]

Did you say a couple more? Can you quantify that?

[Katherina M. Pawluk, CFO & Secretary]

Yes. I mean, we were looking at sort of 2 to 3 or so.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Devin Schilling with PI Financial.

[Devin Schilling, Special Situations Analyst]

Congrats on the very strong Q3 here.

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Thank you for joining us so early in the morning.

[Devin Schilling, Special Situations Analyst]

Just looking at your scanning revenue, another really, really strong contribution from that segment. Just wondering if you could provide a bit more color on what's really driving the growth here and kind of the strategy on why you need to grow this segment?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. Look, I think part of it is, again, people getting back to the office is -- people are coming back to the projects that they left behind that were related to the office. So I think some of that demand is from that, which is good. So that's one component of it. Number two, since buying PROSCAN, our marketing team and our sales team -- so our marketing team has been cracking the code on the marketing. We've been marketing in every corporate location. We actually set up a small scanning operation in Virginia just because we were able to get a nice-sized contract. So we've got that. We've been enabling our sales team. So we're putting some good knowledge about scanning and how to open some doors. They don't need to close the door, but they certainly need to open the door, and we've been enabling them. We're going to continue -- we're actually going to -- we're going to continue to invest in sales-related resources in the scanning area just because we are seeing some good demand. We're seeing some good opportunity in that area as people come back to the office. But again, the nice thing about this is we've got 14 corporate locations that we can market scanning into. And so that's a really good thing. I think the other part of it is we had a lot of government contracts, so there's some pent-up demand there. The other part of it is that, as people downsize, right, people still need to -- they don't want to store paper. So I think one of the fundamental things and the differences between record storage and digital storage is, why on earth would you store your paper physically. You've got to pay for it. When you want to retrieve a document, you have to pay for it. If you want to move it, you have to pay for it. But when you can store this digitally, you're not taking up space in your own facility, nor are you taking up space with one of our competitors, frankly, an Iron Mountain or a Recall or an Access. You're not taking that -- you're not paying for that. You're paying for the digitization. And you're paying potentially for the hosting, the digital storage of that, but that's way cheaper than physically storing it. And you have 100% access to that information, 24/7, 365 days, 366 in a leap year. So that is a very compelling situation. And so both -- all of those things are coming together and allowing us to see the positive results. So as you can tell, we're -- I'm pretty excited about the scanning business. I think it's a good business. We've got a team here really dedicated to learning this. They're already cracking the code in terms of the marketing and in terms of the sales. And I think we're just at the beginning here, Devin. So I'm glad you asked that question. I think it's a great -- I think it's a good business, and we have an opportunity to really leverage so many things by having that business.

[Devin Schilling, Special Situations Analyst]

Yes, for sure. Just as a follow-up, you mentioned that -- your 14 corporate locations, can you just remind me how many are offering scanning services at this time?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

So they're all marketing scanning services, and 3 of them are actually physically scanning, imaging. Two of them have on-prem server capabilities, and 1 is actually leveraging the capabilities and particularly the capabilities of other locations. That's the beauty of this. You can scan in a location. You can actually index in another location if you choose to, and it just depends on the workflow. But so there's some opportunities to leverage what we already have and so you can create like small centers that leverage the bigger centers.

[Operator]

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Jeffrey Hasham for any closing remarks.

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Thank you very much. First of all, everyone, thank you for joining us this morning. As noted, we're very pleased with the quarter. The team did an amazing job. I really can't say enough about what they've done to provide for this quarter. I want to thank Kasia for everything she and her team does to report. As we know, the reporting is very good, and we appreciate that very much. Obviously, if any one of you have any questions, please contact me or one of our partners that can line up a phone call, and we can -- certainly happy to do one-on-one with you as well as we walk you through the quarter. And we're now -- now that this part is done, we go put our head back down as we go work on the business. And hopefully, we can have another successful quarter to finish 2021. So thanks, everyone. Appreciate your support. Be well.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.