Clean Harbors, Inc.
CLHHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITYClean Harbors, Inc. reads as an High Velocity (composite 78/100); Consistent Strategic Buyer deploying $598M across 6 disclosed transactions, down 56% vs the prior cycle · primary market Waste, ranked #4 on disclosed spend.
Lens
Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)
$598M
vs $1.3B in 2020–2022
Disclosed transactions
6
2/3 active fiscal years in window
Buyer archetype
Consistent Strategic Buyer
Meaningful spend appears across repeat years.
Composite score
78
High Velocity dominates · Filing Intensity
Clean Harbors (CLH) is a public-company acquirer in waste management with $3.9B of disclosed M&A spend across 30 acquisitions over 16 active years. Strategy mix is led by Bolt On (44%), Geographic Expansion (22%), Horizontal Consolidation (15%). Current capacity: $548M cash, $2.8B total debt, 1.9x net leverage (conservative). Has $1.2B of incremental debt capacity to a 3.0x IG threshold and $3.5B to the 5.0x HY transition. Disclosed median deal size sits at $131M.
- “We have a history of strategic acquisitions ranging from small “tuck-ins” to large-scale operations, and we continue to actively pursue selective acquisitions that we believe can enhance and expand our business.”- 10-K FY2025
- “We have history of strategic acquisitions ranging from small, "tuck-ins" to large scale operations and we continue to actively pursue selective acquisitions we believe can enhance and expand our business.”- 10-K FY2022
- “Strategic acquisitions are executed to expand existing services, generate incremental revenues from existing and new customers, obtain greater market share, broaden the markets in which we operate and expand our total waste disposal or oil re-refining capacity.”- 10-K FY2023
- ▸Continued tuck-in cadence around existing operations
- ▸Disciplined size constraint suggests no transformational deals
- ▸Room for a $3.5B debt-funded acquisition before HY 5.0x.
Behavioral posture, nine reads.
Each index scores the issuer 0–100 against an EDGAR-anchored definition. Scores ≥ threshold elevate the issuer into the index's constituent set; the dominant index drives the masthead label.
Active Acquirer
Companies actively deploying disclosed capital into M&A
- $4.4B disclosed buyer spend
- Filed within 20d
Buyer Cadence
Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity
- Filed within 20d
- 40 acquisition-history signals
- 231 8-Ks
Target Probability
Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings
- 24 activism filings
Spin/Carve
Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture
- 24 activism filings
Pressure Watch
Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure
- 24 activism filings
- Latest activism 11y ago; heavily discounted
Distress Watch
Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns
- 24 activism filings
Restatement Risk
Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings
Capital Velocity
DominantIssuers with the highest filing-activity intensity
- 231 8-Ks
- Filed within 20d
- 5 form types
Quiet Power
Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence
- Enterprise value $15.1B
- 10-Q 20d ago
- 2 active signals
Capital cadence.
Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($MM); ticks show recorded transaction count. Disclosure tier annotated where v6 audited corpus carries an entry.
Disclosed spend $MM Disclosed transactions (right axis)Peak spend year: $1,253M · Peak count: 7
| FY | Disclosed buys | Disclosed spend | Avg ticket | Audited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2024 | 5 | $478M | $96M | N/A |
| 2023 | 1 | $120M | $120M | N/A |
| 2022 | 2 | $86M | $43M | N/A |
| 2021 | 2 | $1.3B | $627M | N/A |
| 2020 | 1 | $9M | $9M | N/A |
Strategy posture.
The buyer's playbook in terms of strategic archetype: what each disclosed move says about how they're deploying capital.
Archetype mix
- Bolt On20%
- Geographic Expansion20%
- Horizontal Consolidation20%
- Tuck In20%
- Talent Acquisition20%
Strategy keywords
Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.
- bolt_on
- geographic_expansion
- horizontal_consolidation
- tuck_in
- talent_acquisition
Filing language.
Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.
“Strategic acquisitions are executed to expand existing services, generate incremental revenues from existing and new customers, obtain greater market share, broaden the markets in which we operate and expand our total waste disposal or oil re-refining capacity.”
“We have a history of strategic acquisitions ranging from small “tuck-ins” to large-scale operations, and we continue to actively pursue selective acquisitions that we believe can enhance and expand our business.”
“We have history of strategic acquisitions ranging from small, "tuck-ins" to large scale operations and we continue to actively pursue selective acquisitions we believe can enhance and expand our business.”
“We believe that we can expand existing services through strategic acquisitions in order to generate incremental revenues from existing and new customers and to obtain greater market share.”
“During the year ending December 31, 2024, we invested nearly $500.0 million of capital in growing the business through acquisitions.”
Market context.
Where this issuer sits inside its SE-Cluster rollup wedge, with disclosed-spend rank plus trading comparables against the public peer set.
Primary market
Waste
- Market spend (2023–2025)
- $24.4B
- Market spend (2020–2022)
- $21.3B
- Recent vs prior
- +15%
- Issuer rank in market
- #4 of 38
- Share of market capital
- 7.0%
Valuation positioning
CLH trades at a -1.6-turn discount to the Waste peer median of 14.7×.
- EV / Revenue
- 2.5×
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 1.9×
- Peer median EV / EBITDA
- 14.7×
Trading comparables
FMP market data · 2026-05-10
| Company | EV / EBITDA | EV / Rev | Net debt / EBITDA | Revenue | M&A 2023–2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17.3× | 5.0× | 3.3× | $9.6B | $3.6B | |
| 15.7× | 3.4× | 2.5× | $1.9B | $1.5B | |
| 14.7× | 4.3× | 3.1× | $25.4B | $8.1B | |
Clean Harbors, Inc.CLH | 13.2× | 2.5× | 1.9× | $6.1B | $598M |
| 12.7× | 3.7× | 2.8× | $16.7B | $3.1B | |
| 12.0× | 3.9× | N/A | $6.7B | N/A |
Trading multiples from FMP market data; disclosed M&A spend from the SE-Cluster EDGAR 10-K corpus. Peer set = top disclosed buyers in Waste. Bars scaled to the highest EV/EBITDA in the set.
Target landscape.
Public-issuer targets that fit this buyer's archetype and target categories from filing-derived signal. Scores reflect cross-signal fit; reasons cite the EDGAR-anchored facts that drove the match.
No qualifying public-issuer targets surfaced from the current signal mix.
Stated target categories
No target categories enumerated in the audited corpus for this issuer.
Filing activity & signal stream.
Filing cadence and event-driven signals visible on EDGAR. The signal stream below is curated from restatement / spin-carve / activism categories, providing context for any near-term call.
Filing cadence
- 10-K (annual)322026-02-18
- 10-Q (quarterly)1012026-05-06
- 8-K (event)2312026-05-06
- Proxy / DEF 14A492026-04-10
- Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)242015-02-11
Signals on file
- elevated
Activism on file
2015-02-1124 activist filings on file (13D, DFAN14A, PREC14A series).
- info
Signal
Disclosed acquisition spend
- info
Signal
10-K strategy themes
Audited corpus.
No audited record on file for this CIK in the current v6 corpus.
This issuer has not been extracted into the v6 audited acquirer corpus yet. The brief above pulls from ranking-level aggregates and issuer-index signal only.