Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC): History, Ownership, Mission, How It Works & Makes Money

How does a company navigate a challenging market while simultaneously pushing the envelope on corporate sustainability? Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) is a national leader in environmental waste and recycling services, and its story is a perfect case study in the tension between operational efficiency and the circular economy.

For the first nine months of 2025, the company reported revenue of $191.3 million, yet still posted a GAAP net loss of $(13.7) million, underscoring the high-stakes financial tightrope walk in the asset-light waste management space. You need to know how Quest Resource Holding Corporation manages to divert roughly 80% of its clients' waste from landfills, using an asset-light model that is defintely the future of ESG compliance, and whether their recent cost-saving actions-like the $3 million annualized SG&A reduction-are enough to turn the corner.

Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) History

You're looking for the bedrock of Quest Resource Holding Corporation, and honestly, the company's origin story is less a single founding moment and more a series of strategic transformations. The core business today, providing environmental waste and recycling services, traces its corporate structure back to a holding company that evolved through several name changes and key acquisitions.

The company was founded in July 2002, but the current entity, Quest Resource Holding Corporation, was formally established in 2013 following a pivotal acquisition. This history of strategic pivots is defintely what you need to understand the current business model.

Quest Resource Holding Corporation's Founding Timeline

Year established

The company was founded in 2002 (July 2002).

Original location

The corporate headquarters is in The Colony, Texas, which is a key operational hub for the company's national footprint.

Founding team members

The current public entity is the result of a corporate restructuring and name change in 2013. The original founding team of the 2002 entity is not publicly emphasized, but the company's current structure was shaped by leaders like Brian Dick, who was CEO during the 2013 rebrand, and current CEO Perry W. Moss.

Initial capital/funding

Specific initial capital data is not publicly disclosed, but a major funding milestone was the company's listing on the NASDAQ exchange on May 19, 2014, with an initial issue price of $2.56 per share.

Quest Resource Holding Corporation's Evolution Milestones

Quest Resource Holding Corporation's Transformative Moments

The company's history is defined by two major transformative periods: the 2013 corporate re-focus and the 2021 scaling acquisitions. The re-focus was a necessary step to align the holding company structure with a clear, high-growth business model in environmental services.

The 2021 acquisitions were the real game-changer for scale. Buying RWS Facility Services, LLC and InStream Environmental, LLC for a combined consideration of around $44 million was a bold move that was expected to increase annual revenue, net income, and Adjusted EBITDA by more than 50%. That's how you buy market share in a fragmented industry.

• Strategic Rebranding (2013): The shift from Infinity Resources Holdings Corp. to Quest Resource Holding Corporation was more than a name change; it was a clear signal to the market that the focus was now squarely on sustainability, recycling, and resource management programs.
• The 2021 Scale-Up: The RWS and InStream acquisitions added over $80 million in revenue, immediately expanding the company's presence in commercial property and industrial markets. This move cemented Quest Resource Holding Corporation as a national provider, capable of managing over 100 waste streams.
• 2025 Operational Streamlining: The Q1 2025 divestiture of a non-core RWS business portion, while causing a temporary revenue dip, was a clear move toward operational efficiency and margin improvement. Management anticipates sequential improvements in gross profit dollars starting in the second quarter of 2025 due to these efficiency initiatives.

As of the third quarter of 2025, this strategy is playing out with TTM revenue hitting $261 million and Q3 Adjusted EBITDA at $2.9 million, showing the company is navigating a tough market while maintaining profitability on an adjusted basis. If you want to dive deeper into who is currently backing this strategy, you should be Exploring Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) Ownership Structure

Quest Resource Holding Corporation's ownership structure is a mix of institutional investment and significant insider holdings, which means management and directors control a substantial portion of the company. This balance is defintely worth watching because it points to strong alignment between leadership and shareholder interests, but it also limits the public float (the shares available for trading).

For a deeper dive into the company's financial health, you can check out Breaking Down Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

Quest Resource Holding Corporation's Current Status

Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) is a publicly traded company, with its common stock listed on the NASDAQ Capital Market (NasdaqCM) under the ticker symbol QRHC. As of November 2025, the company's market capitalization stands at approximately $31.51 million, reflecting its size as a small-cap player in the environmental services sector.

The stock price has seen volatility, trading around $1.82 per share on November 21, 2025, which is a sharp decline from its 52-week high of $7.40 per share.

Quest Resource Holding Corporation's Ownership Breakdown

The company's ownership profile, based on fiscal year 2025 data, shows a relatively high concentration of shares held by insiders and institutional funds, which is typical for a smaller public company. Here's the quick math on who holds the equity:

Institutional ownership is at 41.12%, which is a significant portion, but insiders-the people running the business-control nearly a third of the stock at 30.41%. This means any major strategic decision will have strong backing from the people who know the business best, but also that a large block of shares is not actively trading.

Quest Resource Holding Corporation's Leadership

The strategic direction of Quest Resource Holding Corporation is guided by an executive team focused on operational excellence and profitable growth, especially following key changes in 2025. The Board of Directors, led by the Chairman, oversees the management team.

• Perry Moss serves as the President and Chief Executive Officer, having been appointed in March 2025 after previously holding the Chief Revenue Officer role.
• Brett Johnston is the Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President, managing the company's financial strategy.
• Daniel M. Friedberg is the Chairman of the Board of Directors, a position he has held since April 2019.
• The leadership team also includes Nick Ober, Senior Vice President of Operations, who joined in March 2025 to drive the new Operational Excellence Initiative.
• Other key executives include Will Reynolds, Senior Vice President of Business Solutions, and Tonya Martin, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) Mission and Values

Quest Resource Holding Corporation's purpose goes beyond being a logistics provider; it's about turning a client's environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy into a measurable financial and competitive advantage. Their cultural DNA is currently rooted in a dual focus: operational excellence and financial discipline, which is defintely a necessary pivot for 2025.

Quest Resource Holding Corporation's Core Purpose

The company's core purpose is to be the essential partner for large businesses navigating the circular economy (a system aimed at eliminating waste and the continual use of resources). They deliver tailored waste and recycling solutions that directly impact both the client's sustainability report and their bottom line.

Official mission statement

The mission is to empower businesses to achieve their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals through comprehensive recycling and resource management programs, ultimately delivering quantifiable business and sustainability results. That means they don't just haul trash; they focus on maximizing landfill diversion and finding value in over 100 different waste streams, from electronics to food waste.

• Empower Clients: Translate complex sustainability strategies into simple, actionable, and trackable programs.
• Drive Quantifiable Results: Provide data and information that tracks environmental outcomes and helps improve client business operations.
• Circular Economy Focus: Transform waste into valuable resources, moving materials like plastics and metals back into the supply chain.

Vision statement

Quest Resource Holding Corporation's vision is focused on driving sustainable, profitable growth and leveraging its technology platform to create new revenue streams. The management team is confident in maintaining this trajectory as they exit 2025 and move into 2026.

A key part of this vision, as of the third quarter of 2025, is developing a subscription-like model for clients to access the rich data generated from their resource management services, which is expected to be a margin-accretive revenue stream. This is a smart move to stabilize revenue beyond transactional services.

• Subscription Data Model: Create a new, high-margin revenue stream from proprietary operational data.
• Operational Excellence: Standardize and streamline internal processes to reduce variability and generate consistent cash flow.
• Financial Health: Aggressively reduce debt, with a focus on improving cash generation, which saw a year-to-date debt reduction of $11.2 million by the end of Q3 2025.

Quest Resource Holding Corporation slogan/tagline

While the company uses several descriptive phrases in its communications, the most direct and encompassing tagline that maps to its core service is: NATIONAL PROVIDER OF WASTE & RECYCLING SOLUTIONS. It's plain English, which I like.

This commitment to efficiency and financial health is already showing up in the numbers. For example, the company's focus on internal initiatives led to a 10% year-over-year reduction in Selling, General, and Administrative (SG&A) costs, bringing the Q3 2025 SG&A to $9.2 million. That's a tangible result of their operational excellence initiative.

If you want to dig deeper into who is buying into this mission, you should read Exploring Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) How It Works

Quest Resource Holding Corporation operates as a national, asset-light environmental services provider, acting as a single-source manager for large, multi-location businesses to handle their complex waste and recycling needs across the United States. They don't own a massive fleet of trucks or landfills; instead, they use a vast network of vetted third-party vendors, which keeps their capital expenditure low and allows them to focus on service, data, and compliance.

Quest Resource Holding Corporation's Product/Service Portfolio

Quest Resource Holding Corporation's Operational Framework

You might think of Quest Resource Holding Corporation as a sophisticated general contractor for waste management. They manage the complexity so you don't have to, which is crucial when you have hundreds of locations. Their operational framework is built on an asset-light, vendor-managed model.

• National Vendor Network: They maintain relationships with a nationwide network of recycling and disposal vendors, covering every U.S. zip code. This allows them to find the most cost-effective and environmentally sound solution for each specific waste stream, regardless of location.
• Operational Excellence Initiative: Management is defintely focused on internal efficiency, implementing an operational excellence program that tracks 25 key performance indicators (KPIs) to standardize processes and reduce service disruptions.
• Financial Discipline: The focus on cash generation is clear. Year-to-date through the third quarter of 2025, the company has reduced debt by approximately $11.2 million, prioritizing a healthier balance sheet.
• Technology Platform: A core value driver is their technology, which aggregates data from all vendors and locations into a single source. This provides clients with detailed, auditable reports on waste diversion and recycling metrics, which is essential for meeting corporate sustainability mandates.

Here's the quick math on their recent performance: for the first nine months of 2025, Quest Resource Holding Corporation generated $191.3 million in revenue and $7.2 million in Adjusted EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization). That shows they are generating cash, even as industrial volumes remain subdued.

Quest Resource Holding Corporation's Strategic Advantages

In a consolidating, highly regulated industry, Quest Resource Holding Corporation's competitive edge isn't about owning more landfills; it's about their unique market positioning and data capabilities. This is where the real value is created for stakeholders.

• Asset-Light Model: This is a huge advantage. By not owning the physical assets (trucks, landfills), they gain flexibility and can grow with limited need for capital, allowing them to align fully with the client's business needs instead of their own fixed infrastructure.
• Scale and Scope: They offer a single point of contact for over 130 different waste streams across a nationwide footprint. This simplifies a massive logistical challenge for large retailers and manufacturers, which is a powerful sales proposition.
• Data-Driven Compliance: The ability to provide comprehensive, granular data on waste diversion and recycling is critical. This is a non-discretionary service for large companies facing increasing pressure to meet ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) targets. The data itself is a premium product.
• Vendor Agnostic Optimization: They can constantly re-bid services among their network, driving down costs for clients through competitive pricing. This directly translates into lower fixed and variable costs for their customers.

If you want to dive deeper into the financial mechanics of this model, you should read Breaking Down Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors. It's a good next step to understand the balance sheet.

Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) How It Makes Money

Quest Resource Holding Corporation generates revenue primarily by acting as an asset-light, national provider of outsourced waste and recycling management services for large, multi-location businesses. The company essentially acts as a broker and manager, leveraging a vast network of third-party haulers and processors to manage over 100 different waste streams, charging clients a fee for this comprehensive, data-driven service while also earning revenue from the salvage value of recycled commodities.

The core of the business is its ability to reduce operational complexity and increase landfill diversion for clients like major retailers and automotive chains, which drives both the service fee and the value of the recovered materials.

Quest Resource Holding Corporation's Revenue Breakdown

Quest Resource Holding Corporation does not publicly report a detailed, quantified split of revenue by service stream in its quarterly earnings. However, based on the nature of its client base and the operational commentary in 2025, the revenue is driven by two main client-facing segments, with a clear shift in focus.

Here's the quick math: The company's year-to-date (YTD) revenue through September 30, 2025, was $191.3 million. Analyst consensus projects a full-year 2025 revenue of around $254.75 million. The shift in the growth trend is critical: the Industrial segment saw significant softness in 2025, while new contracts with major retailers and a large full-service restaurant chain are expected to drive sequential growth in the latter half of the year. The divestiture of a lower-margin mall-related business also contributed to the year-over-year revenue decline of 12.5% YTD.

Business Economics

Quest Resource Holding Corporation operates on an asset-light model, meaning it avoids the massive capital expenditure (CapEx) of owning a fleet of trucks or landfills. This is the key to their margin structure, but it also creates a reliance on their vendor network.

• Pricing Model: The company primarily uses a fee-for-service model under long-term contracts, often structured to share the cost savings generated from increased recycling and waste diversion. They aim for 'share-of-wallet' expansion, meaning they try to manage more of a client's 100+ waste streams over time, which typically results in higher margins as the service is optimized.
• Commodity Price Volatility: A significant risk is the fluctuation of commodity prices (e.g., cardboard, metals) for the salvaged materials. While they divert about 80% of waste from landfills, the revenue from selling these commodities can be volatile, which directly impacts their gross profit dollars.
• Operational Leverage: The company is focused on operational excellence initiatives to standardize processes and reduce Selling, General, and Administrative (SG&A) expenses. For instance, SG&A was reduced to $9.2 million in Q3 2025, a 10% reduction year-over-year, which is a defintely necessary move to improve profitability in a tight revenue environment.

The business is built on data and scale, not on physical assets. That's a powerful model, but it means their margins are highly sensitive to vendor pricing and client volume. Breaking Down Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors

Quest Resource Holding Corporation's Financial Performance

The company's performance through the first nine months of 2025 shows a mixed picture: strong sequential operational improvements but a continued year-over-year revenue decline due to macroeconomic headwinds in the industrial sector.

• Revenue and Profitability: YTD 2025 revenue was $191.3 million, a 12.5% decrease compared to the same period in 2024. Despite this, the gross margin has shown sequential strength, reaching 18.1% in Q3 2025, up from 16.1% in Q3 2024, reflecting the focus on higher-margin services and operational efficiencies.
• Adjusted EBITDA: YTD Adjusted EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization), a key measure of operational cash flow, was $7.2 million. Critically, Q3 2025 Adjusted EBITDA was $2.9 million, a sequential increase of 9.5% from Q2 2025, indicating that the cost-cutting and efficiency measures are starting to take hold.
• Cash Flow and Debt: The company has prioritized balance sheet health. It generated $5.7 million in operating cash flow in Q3 2025, a significant sequential improvement. More importantly, they reduced total debt by $11.2 million year-to-date, bringing net notes payable down to $65.4 million at the end of Q3 2025. This focus on cash generation is a clear action to de-risk the balance sheet.
• Net Loss: The GAAP net loss for the first nine months of 2025 widened to $(13.7) million. This loss includes non-cash charges totaling $6.0 million YTD, related to a loss on the sale of assets and an intangible impairment, showing that while operational performance (Adjusted EBITDA) is improving, GAAP profitability is still pressured by one-off and non-cash items.

Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) Market Position & Future Outlook

Quest Resource Holding Corporation is positioned as a niche, asset-light provider in the vast, capital-intensive US waste management industry, focusing on complex, multi-site waste streams for large clients. While the company faces near-term revenue headwinds-with full-year 2025 revenue expected to decline by approximately 5.8%-its strategic pivot toward operational excellence and debt reduction is defintely a necessary move to stabilize the balance sheet and set up for a profitable 2026.

You're looking at a company that competes not on owning landfills, but on superior data and service coordination, which is a key differentiator in a market dominated by heavy-asset players. This strategic focus is designed to capture higher-margin, specialized waste streams and improve cash flow, a critical task given the net notes payable of $65.4 million as of the end of Q3 2025.

Competitive Landscape

Quest Resource Holding Corporation operates in the shadow of the industry's giants, who control the physical infrastructure. Its competitive edge is its asset-light model, which delivers customized, data-driven solutions for Fortune 500 companies, a service the giants often struggle to replicate with the same flexibility. Here's the quick math: Quest's trailing twelve-month revenue as of Q3 2025 was $261.28 million, a fraction of its largest competitors.

Opportunities & Challenges

The company's future trajectory hinges on its ability to execute internal efficiencies while navigating a tough macroeconomic environment, particularly the weakness in its industrial segment. For every new client win in retail, there's a corresponding pressure point from a high debt-to-equity ratio of 144% earlier in 2025.

Industry Position

Quest Resource Holding Corporation is a specialized player in the US environmental services market, not a volume leader. Its standing is built on complexity and compliance, not collection trucks and landfills.

• Service Niche: Focuses on over 100 different waste streams for multi-site customers like major retailers and automotive after-market operations, which require a high degree of service coordination and regulatory expertise.
• Financial Stability: Management has prioritized cash flow, resulting in a year-to-date debt reduction of $11.2 million as of Q3 2025, a strong signal to the market that capital management is paramount.
• Technology Edge: Leveraging its customer portal and data platform is a major move, providing clients with zero-touch access to track their waste materials, associated costs, and end destinations, which is a powerful sales tool for ESG-focused companies.

The company's ability to turn an analyst-projected 2025 full-year loss of -$0.28 per share into a profit in 2026 will depend entirely on these internal initiatives overcoming the external market drag. For a deeper dive into the capital structure, you should be Exploring Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why? Exploring Quest Resource Holding Corporation (QRHC) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Finance: Track the Q4 2025 debt reduction figures closely to assess progress against the 2026 covenant timetable.