Casella Waste Systems, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Casella Waste Systems Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. You are allowed to ask two questions and a follow-up. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone, and you will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, press star 11 again. please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker, Charlie Woodhutter, Director of Investor Relations, Casella Waste Systems. Please go ahead.

All right. Thank you, Amanda. Good morning, and thank you for joining us on the call today. With us are John Casella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Casella Waste Systems, Ned Coletta, our President and Chief Financial Officer, Jason Mead, our Senior Vice President of Finance and Treasurer, and Sean Steeves, our Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Solid Waste Operations. Today, we will be discussing our third quarter 2023 results, which were released yesterday afternoon. After a brief review of those results and an update on the company's activities and business environment, we will be happy to take your questions. But please note that various remarks we may make about the company's future expectations, plans, and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the risk factor section of our most recent annual report, on Form 10-K, which is unfollowed with SEC. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent our views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date. While we may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we specifically disclaim any obligation to do so even if our views change. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any date subsequent to today, November 2nd, 2023. Also during this call, we will be referring to non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures are not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, to the extent they are available without unreasonable effort, are available in the appendix to our investor slide presentation which will be available in the investors section of our website at ir.cosella.com under the heading events and presentations. And with that, I'll now let John Casella begin our discussion.

Thanks, Charlie, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Welcome to our third quarter 2023 conference call. I would like to begin by offering our sincere thoughts and prayers to everyone affected by the tragic events in Lewiston, Maine last week. It's a community that we're proud to serve, be a part of, and support in any way we can. This quarter marks a pivotal and exciting time in the company's history as we execute against our growth strategy. We closed on three acquisitions in the quarter, which were tuck-ins or adjacent markets across our northeast footprint, where we see lots of opportunity to fold these assets into our operating plans and grow our services. Included in this is Twin Bridges, which we completed on September 1. This is a great platform in the Albany, New York market with young assets, including a state-of-the-art recycling facility that provides greater capacity for us to continue to grow our resource solutions business around the region. I'm also pleased to report that our early results in the Mid-Atlantic are on track to hit or exceed pro forma. Operations and service are excellent, and we are quickly working to establish our culture and core values. We're building our sales pipeline and continue to work on acquisition opportunities in this market. Integration efforts are going well for all our acquisitions, and our nearly 900 new team members are all making this possible. Speaking of new members, last night we also announced the hiring of Brad Helveson as our new Chief Financial Officer, effective Monday, November 6th. Brad has been a very well respected finance executive in the solid waste industry over many years, and we believe that his experience, values, and leadership style fit very well with our company and our entire team. As you know, Ned has been instrumental to this company's success in many ways over the last 11 years as CFO. I'm both proud and excited for him to devote his complete attention to the president's role where he will continue helping to profitably grow this company and drive further shareholder value. Moving to the results reported in yesterday's press release, we grew both revenues and adjusted EBITDA by over 19% in the third quarter on a year-over-year basis along with strong adjusted free cash flow generation. This shows the excellent job that our team is doing to serve our customers and communities and deliver strong operating results in our core business while onboarding and integrating our recent acquisitions. We remain keenly focused on executing a high level over the remainder of this year and carrying this momentum into 2024. Above all, I'm very excited about the performance of the company in the larger platform that we are building. We are once again updating guidance for 2023 and remain very excited about the opportunities looking ahead. Now, a brief review related to our key strategies and recent performance of our operations. Our disposal assets are an important part of our overall solid waste strategy in the Northeast. We are focused on increasing returns across these assets. In doing so, we focused on improving the quality of our revenue and our operating programs. Our landfill price was up 7.4% in the quarter as we worked to stay ahead of higher capital cost items at our sites and ever-increasing regulatory compliance costs. For costs we can control, we continued to refine our operating programs for better productivity and efficiencies while keeping safety at the forefront. As we communicated last quarter, special wastes remain weak, but MSW and C&D, which together are the majority of the volumes we accept at our landfills, continue to track in line with budgeted and historic levels. Timing of special waste volumes can be choppy since most of these volumes are project-based and can be deferred into future periods when there is economic uncertainty. That said, we do have a solid special waste pipeline and have a few projects that just started in October. Despite the volume decline, we still drove 75 basis point of year-over-year margin expansion at our landfills in the third quarter. Our collection line of business. We posted another solid adjusted a bit of growth in underlying margin expansion in our core collection operations. This success is a direct result of Sean Steve's and his team's focus on executing our operating plans. The plan is concentrated around operating efficiency initiatives, flexible pricing programs focused on returns. Ongoing implementation of fleet automation and conversions, route optimization, and onboard computers are delivering increased efficiencies and commitment to safety improvements for our team members. From a pricing perspective, collecting price was up 7.6% in the third quarter, exceeding budgeted levels. Volumes were softer in the quarter as a result of our efforts to improve margins in the residential line of business. This shows the deliberate changes we're making for profitable growth. As always, we will continue to be nimble with our operating strategy and maintain a focus on returns. Resource solutions. We take great pride in providing our customers resource solutions that help them meet their sustainability and economic goals. As noted in our press release yesterday, our fully upgraded Boston recycling facility is back online and again making positive contributions. We are seeing increased productivity, throughput, and safety levels while increasing material recovery and quality on the back end. These early results are very exciting, and we look forward to this positive contribution over the remainder of the year. Our national accounts business has also been a positive area of growth. We continue to lend new contracts and have a plan to overlay our national account sales strategy across our mid-Atlantic region, where we see a lot of opportunity for further growth, potential targeting large commercial and industrial customers. Finally, I'd like to highlight our capital allocation and growth strategy. We remain focused on continuing to integrate our larger acquisitions completed over the last several months. but we'll also keep an eye on the opportunities that meet our return guidelines and review process. Our acquisition pipeline is robust at roughly $500 million of annualized revenue over the top of our Northeast operations, with approximately $400 million more around our Mid-Atlantic operations. On the organic side, our near-term development project pipeline is strong as well and provides a number of building blocks over the next several quarters including further contribution from our upgraded Boston MRF and the RNG projects that are commencing. Overall, we have a nice organic and inorganic growth runway that positions us well to drive long-term shareholder value. And with that, I'll turn it over to Ned for more details on the financials.

Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. Before I get into the quarter, I also want to welcome Brad to the role of Chief Financial Officer. This is a bit bittersweet for me, I've been doing this for 11 years, but I'm excited to pass the torch to someone who's so talented and really fits the value system of our company and will be a great partner for our team. Moving on to the quarter, revenues in the third quarter were 352.7 million, up 57.5 million, or up 19.5% year-over-year. With 18.9% of the year-over-year change driven by acquisition activity, Solid waste revenues were up 28.9% year-over-year, with price up 6.9%, acquisition growth of 25.5%, and volume slightly down at negative 3.3%. Revenues in the collection line of business were up 43% year-over-year, with price up 7.6% and volumes down 1.9%. As Sean mentioned, volume declines were primarily driven by our efforts to improve the quality of revenue and margins in the residential line of business. Revenues in the disposal line of business were up 0.3% year over year, with landfill pricing up 7.4% and landfill tons were down 10.1%. MSW and C&D landfill volumes were roughly flat year over year. while special waste and contaminated soils volumes were down 35% year-over-year on lower regional activity levels. It's important to note a few things about this decline in landfill special waste volumes. One, the third quarter last year was particularly strong for special waste. We had a tough year-over-year comparison. Two, we're not losing these tons to a competitor in the market. Our special waste soils and pipeline remains very strong. However, we have experienced project delays as customers continue to gauge the economy and when to initiate projects. And three, we have finally seen special waste volumes click up over the last several weeks as anticipated projects kicked off. However, in the spirit of conservatism, we're guiding for special waste volumes to be down both sequentially and year-over-year in the fourth quarter. As expected, our resource solutions revenues were down 5.9% year-over-year, with our average commodity revenue per don down roughly 28% year-over-year on lower cardboard and mixed paper pricing, lower metals pricing, and lower plastics pricing. This decline in commodity prices was partially offset by a 10.9% growth in processing fees. Industrial and multi-site retail revenues were nearly flat year over year, with pricing gains offsetting slight volume declines. Adjusted EBITDA was $89.6 million in the quarter, up $14.6 million year over year, with $14 million of the growth derived from acquisitions. Solid waste adjusted EBITDA was $82 million in the quarter, up $14.9 million year over year, with collection and disposal adjusted EBITDA both up year over year. Lower special waste and soils volumes at the landfills weighed on our adjusted EBITDA by roughly $2.6 million. This partially offset very strong performance in the collection line of business. Resource solutions adjusted EBITDA was $7.6 million in the quarter, down $200,000 year over year. Lower year-over-year commodity pricing was offset by strong performance at the Boston recycling facility, with adjusted EBITDA up $1.3 million year-over-year at the facility. As John mentioned, we completed the full equipment upgrade in late June, and the facility is now operating at pro forma levels. Adjusted EBITDA margins were 25.4% for the quarter, flat year-over-year. Once again, our pricing programs fully offset cost inflation in the quarter with consolidated price as a percentage of total revenues of 5.8%, partially offset by a 4.8% headwind from inflation. Or this is 100 basis point positive spread between price and moderating inflation. Further margin bridging items include a 45 basis point headwind from lower special waste volumes in soils at the landfills, a 35 basis point headwind from rising fuel costs net of our fuel recovery fees, a 15 basis point headwind from the July flooding in Vermont and parts of New York and New Hampshire, and a five basis point headwind from acquisitions. Our fuel recovery fees under recovered rising fuel costs by approximately $2.6 million during the third quarter. as fuel prices increase sequentially throughout the quarter, and our surcharge program calculation lags in a rising environment. Cost of operations in the quarter was up $36 million year over year, or down 30 basis lengths as a percentage of revenues, with approximately $37.7 million of the increase from acquisitions. General and administrative costs in the quarter were up 6.8 million year-over-year, or up four basis points as a percentage of revenues. Depreciation and amortization costs were up 15.2 million year-over-year, with 13.5 million of the increase resulting from the recent acquisition activity. We do expect heightened DNA for the first few years after each acquisition, as we rapidly depreciate or amortize many of the assets acquired. To give some further perspective, DNA associated with the acquisitions was actually 24.2% of acquired revenues in the quarter as compared to DNA at 11.5% of revenues in the remainder of the business. On a dollar basis, we expect acquired DNA to drop roughly 20% by year two and roughly 50% by year five. So this will resolve in the next several years. It was another strong M&A quarter for our team. On September 1st, we completed the previously announced acquisition of Twin Bridges, including hauling, transfer, and recycling assets with approximately $70 million of annual revenues. As John mentioned, our team has been busy working through the integration of the newly acquired businesses including the work with the GFL mid-Atlantic operations. We continue to make very good progress against our integration plans, and most importantly, we have achieved our operating and financial targets through this initial period with each transaction. As of September 30th, we had $1,058,000,000 of debt, $219.1 million of cash, and liquidity of $491.4 million. Our consolidated net leverage ratio was 2.89 times. Our average cash interest rate was 4.5%, and we had fixed interest rates on approximately two-thirds or 66% of our debt. We are maintaining significant liquidity and balance sheet flexibility to continue to support our M&A and organic development pipeline. While adjusted free cash flow started the year light due to working capital and capital expenditure timing differences, these headwinds were resolved through the second and third quarters as expected. Adjusted free cash flow now is at $96 million year-to-date through September or up $14.3 million year-over-year and on track to hit our increased fiscal year 23 guidance range. Given the expected contribution from acquisitions closed year-to-date and continued pricing above our cost inflation, partially offset by the recent weakness in landfill special waste volumes, we increased our revenue, adjusted EPA DA, and adjusted free cash flow guidance ranges for fiscal 2023 again this quarter. The revised guidance range assumes a conservative view of special waste for the fourth quarter, with volumes forecasted to be down again. As part of our updated 2023 guidance ranges, we increased our adjusted EBITDA guidance range by $3 million at the midpoint. With an increase of $8 million for the newly acquired operations, offset by a $5 million decrease in our core business associated with the lower special waste volumes at the landfills. Our internal rate of inflation is currently running at 4.8%. We expect to outpace this inflation and increase adjusted EBITDA margins by roughly 70 basis points in total for fiscal 2023. We are forecasting solid waste price to be up 6% to 6.5% and the volumes to be down slightly in the fourth quarter. As you may have recognized, we did lower our net income guidance ranges for 2023 with the reduction associated with the recent acquisition activity most notably the changes in our depreciation and amortization. We have conservatively increased our fiscal year adjusted free cash flow guidance range by $2 million, with all of this increase associated with the newly acquired operations. While we expect continued operating cash flow growth, inflationary pressures on capital expenditures and higher interest rates have partially offset this growth. Looking forward to 2024, we're exiting 23 in great shape and continue to grow margins and cash flows into next year. We expect roughly 14% rollover revenue growth as a percentage of our total revenues from acquisitions already completed in 2023. We expect organic pricing of roughly 5% to 5.5%, adjusted EBITDA growth of roughly 20% year over year, margin expansion of 30 to 40 basis points year over year, and continued adjusted free cash flow growth in a target range of 10 to 15%. And with that, I'll turn it back to the operator for questions.

Thank you. Please stand by while we compile our questions. At this time, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. You're allowed to ask two questions and a follow up. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while I compile our questions. Our first question comes from Adam Bubs from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Your guidance seems to imply for 4Q margins of 22.8%, which translates to down, you know, 260 basis points sequentially from 3Q. Historically, it looks like you folks have stepped down around 430 basis points Q3 to 4Q. So it looks like this guidance implies margins that are trending better than normal seasonality. Can you just help us think about the different moving pieces, 3Q to 4Q, that might be pushing margins ahead of the normal seasonal cadence?

Yeah, so if we look to last year, we had a larger step down than typical. We had some headwinds in the business into the fourth quarter, most notably into December. Right now, we've actually seen some business trends that they were improving from September to October, which is a little bit different than our normal seasonality. As we mentioned earlier, landfill tonnages, we had some of the largest days of our entire year in October from a landfill tonnage standpoint. So we are seeing some slight changes to business seasonality. We also have a couple of new contracts rolling on in the fourth quarter in our resource solutions business that gives some positive tailwind. And one other factor is our recycling business. Last year, we still had negative year-over-year comps into the fourth quarter. We expect a positive tailwind this year. And then the Boston recycling facility is firing on all cylinders right now, and we expect a really positive contribution from that project into the fourth quarter. So you're right. Probably the seasonality is not quite as much of a step down, but we have some trends that are showing a lesser step down into the fourth quarter.

And then if I assume you hit 4Q margins and trend margins in line with normal seasonality off of Q4 through 2024, I'm getting to somewhere in the range of margins up 70 basis points 2024 just based off normal seasonality. Meanwhile, price cost seems to be accelerating. There's certain operating costs operational initiatives in the business. I think you mentioned 30 to 40 basis points year-over-year. Can you just walk me through if I'm missing any moving pieces there?

Yeah, so we haven't finished our budgeting for the year. We usually don't give a lot of visibility in this quarter on the next year, but we thought just with the acquisitions and the moving pieces, it was important to give a quick snapshot at them. So there still is work to be done on our side As you're well aware, we have a lot of flexibility with most of our collection pricing programs. So we're taking the temperature of where inflation is, trying to set up the right pricing programs into next year. Sean and his team have an excellent slate of operating efficiency programs scheduled for next year, and we're deep into budgeting for our new business unit. So, you know, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Great opportunity, I think, to expand margins again into next year, and we'll give more visibility in the coming months on where that will be.

Terrific. And then last one from me. At the start of the year, I think you had expected to have two R&G facilities coming online by the end of 2023 or 1.3 million MMBTU. The industry has obviously had some issues with project delays since. So just wondering if there's any update on those two facilities in terms of timing.

Yeah, good question. So in both cases, we've partnered with third parties who are investing the capital, building the facilities, and bringing them online. Our one facility associated with our North Country landfill in New Hampshire is close to commercial operations. It's still, they're working on a couple of details to get it online, and we hope that will be online in either the fourth quarter or first quarter. So that is a negative headwind this year. We had expected that to start to give a positive contribution in the third and fourth quarters. Our second project partnered with at our facility in Juniper Ridge in Maine is also a little bit delayed. We had expected that to come online in the fourth quarter, and that's probably, you know, first half of 24. So your perspective is right. You know, we're probably running about six months behind on these projects. Once again, you know, we're not driving the boat there. It's our third parties, and I think they've had some issues sourcing certain components and bringing these online exactly on time. Not huge delays, though, but a little bit of a headwind in our guidance as well. We'd expect about a million and a half dollars of contribution in the second half of the year. So that's, you know, something that's been a headwind for us as well.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Hoffman from Stifel. Please go ahead.

Hi. The other question I have with regards to the guidance is that you did have this disruption because of all the storm debris and the like. Is there any benefit of it coming back through as just like you saw in the hurricanes years ago?

You know, I think it's fair to say, Michael, that there's not significant benefit. Keep in mind that, you know, we really didn't talk that much about it because net-net, it's probably somewhat neutral. I think the real question is, you know, how long will it take those businesses to come back up into operation? We still have a lot of businesses that have not recovered and not back in operational from a commercial standpoint. So that's been a little bit of a headwind. But net-net, obviously, we received more tons to the landfill from the damage, offset by the lack of commercial activity.

So net-net... With high expenses in the period as well, John, with being down, especially in Vermont, for several days.

Sure, yeah. I mean, high expenses in terms of bringing in the priority response team from other areas to handle the issues. Our Montpelier operations, obviously, were underwater. for a week and shut down completely. And we brought people in from other areas of the company to service those customers and get ourselves up and operational. Not only in, you know, obviously that was not only in Montpelier, but Waterbury, Berlin, Ludlow, Londonderry, Weston, you know, large portions of Vermont. Smaller activity in upstate New York and smaller activity in Pennsylvania as well. But net-net, a few more tons to the landfills, but offset by lack of commercial activity. Okay. That helps.

And then it's not a confusion. I just want clarity more than anything. So in the press release, you talk about transfer and disposal price at 5.9. You shared on the call 7.4. So there's sort of two pieces to this. You know, given the supply imbalance or this you know the availability of disposal capacity imbalance the likelihood that boston's disposal rates go up a lot in 24 shouldn't we see incremental improvement in the landfill side of the price and then what's the drag in the blend of transfer and disposal that it would have pulled the whole thing down to five nine and sort of yeah well below your collection number

Yeah, so sometimes percentages are our friends and sometimes they're not. And in this case, a lot in our business is done on a dollar basis. So if you think about the transfers, you know, in certain markets we're at $80 to $90 a ton gate rates. And we're passing through a dollar increase to cover dollar-based cost increases. And say you have a $4 increase on an $80 tip, you're at 5%. Now you get to a landfill and you have $4 on a $40 tip rate, same $4, you're, you know, 10%. So a lot of what happens in the market, especially on the disposal side, transfers and landfills are more, you know, dollar-based increases. And as you get to this really high transfer rates, Michael, in our footprint because there's so much transportation that's occurring between transfer stations and landfills. The percentages are a little bit lower, but we're still getting the dollars, and that's the important part of it. And then to your point, we really haven't seen New York City fully ever recover from COVID, and that's been a reduction in tons across the entire Northeast across this period. We expect additional facility closures in the next couple of years, which will continue to put some pressure on the market. But where we sit right now, we're still seeing good pricing in the marketplace, even with economic activity maybe slowing a little bit, and then the special waste coming off. We're not seeing any sort of competitive actions to reduce pricing. We're seeing everyone in the market hyper-focused on getting adequate returns in this complex regulatory environment.

Okay. And then a good get on Brad, well-regarded. I've spent a lot of time with him over the years in his role at Covanta and prior to that as a banker. Where is he going to be located?

He's coming to Vermont.

Oh, very good.

Yeah. There is a lot of people that really like Vermont, Michael.

Come on. Well, he's got a family and kids and all that, and he's been entrenched in New Jersey a long time. I was like, good for you. It's not that Vermont.

There will be a transition period where he'll be back and forth for a period of time.

Yeah, but our business extends down his way as well. And it's exciting for our entire team here. It's exciting for me from a balance standpoint. And there's a lot we're working on here as a team from, you know, organic and acquisition development standpoint. And we have a lot of great opportunities in front of us. So to have another strong team member join us is exciting. Outstanding. Yep.

Very good. Thank you.

Thank you, Michael. Thanks, Michael.

Please stand by while we compile our next question. Our next question comes from Tyler Brown from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, guys. Hey, Tyler. Hey, I don't know if Brad is out in TV land or not, but, you know, just really looking forward to working with him again. But I am a little bit confused on that. So was weather and EBITDA headwind in the quarter? EBITDA dollars?

So... Yeah, it was. So we gave it a margin bridge on a 15 basis point headwind from the flooding. You know, so that's the one aspect we looked at. In dollars, Jason, it's several hundred thousand dollars. Not all that material. Yeah, so headwind. You're right there, Tyler.

Okay.

All that material.

Okay. Okay. If we come back to volumes, and I'm specifically interested in collection volumes, so I think you said they were down maybe 2%. You called out resi. But can you talk about how volumes are trending in small container and large container? Are you seeing any weakness there?

So in the small container, a little bit. It was like down 0.4%. But nothing all that material. And the trend there has been stable throughout the year. Roll-off, we're down 1%. But once again, a lot of work there to improve margins. Our margins were up actually 400 basis points in that line of business year over year. So we're really focused on quality of revenue and pushing adequate pricing in that line of business. So that's one that... really showing the right direction okay and then did i hear you correctly did you say that twin bridges would add eight million in the quarter yeah so um we've had a couple other small acquisitions and in total between twin bridges and the other small acquisitions were an eight million dollar contribution um not just in a quarter but from you know, our last guide to the end of the year. So Twin Bridges, we brought online on September 1st. So we have about a third of the year and we expected about $18 million of EBITDA through the first year. And we're tracking at that. We have about six, six and a half million in our guide from September to the end of the year. And then we have a couple of smaller acquisitions that are contributing as well. So it's eight million in total. Okay, yeah. And in our mid-Atlantic regions tracking, sorry, mid-Atlantic's tracking right to pro forma in Alaska.

Okay, perfect. That's helpful. A couple little, when does the highland expansion go into effect?

We're in permitting right now. I mean, I think the biggest threshold issue is behind us in terms of the host community agreement, and now it's just a matter of getting through the regulatory environment with New York DEC, Tyler. I think that it's probably months away, probably another quarter or two to get through the process. But we don't anticipate any surprises there. Like I said, the most difficult and most important aspect is to get through the host community agreements, which are done.

Okay, and so my last one here. So when we think big picture about the building blocks for next year, so we obviously have the GFL rollover, the Twin Bridges and others rollover. There may be some acquisition synergies in there. I'm curious if you're including that in your number. You have the Boston restart, organic growth, but then more when we think about 25 is when potentially something from Highland or McKean, those would be additive probably further down the road.

Yeah, that's a great perspective. Highland, really that becomes more material as the Allied Niagara landfill closes up in the Buffalo market. Our asset is about 45 miles from the Buffalo marketplace and will really help to serve that need in that market. And when we look to McKean, it's going to be a slow ramp, as we've said before, just from The construction is going extremely well. The infrastructure is nearly built, and we expect to be in a position where we can be online early spring. But things like rail cars, our containers, the like, are definitely slowed down. But from our vantage point, this is a long, long-term play, and we've always planned on ramping up slowly, and you'll start to see a little impact in 2024, more material impact into 2025.

Yeah, okay, perfect. Well, thank you, guys.

Thanks, Tyler.

Thank you. Please stand by. And our next question comes from John Windham from UBS. Please go ahead.

Hey, great. Thanks for taking the questions. I'll echo the sentiment. Congratulations on the hiring of Brad. It's a really good hire. Maybe in line with that, Ned, I'd ask maybe can you expand a little bit on how you think about your priorities after transitioning? The CFO role, is it more as integration or further expansion? Just any thoughts you have on how you think about your next year. Thanks.

Yeah, thanks, Sean. So I've been balancing a lot of hats in the last year, and when Ed Johnson retired in July of 2017, 2022 we reshuffled some responsibilities across the board with our senior team and you know from my vantage point when brad hits the ground i want him to be successful and give him what he needs to transition successfully and now i'll continue to focus on on development projects we have a couple key organic development projects as you're aware that we're looking to bring to completion i'm spending a lot of time on the systems side of the house as well There's a lot going on there both from the integration of our acquisitions and also forward looking. And then I've been working deeply with the resource solutions team, landfill teams to help drive value in their business units and partnering with Sean and his team as well on the operating front. So there's a lot of ground to cover and I suspect I won't be bored.

I can't imagine you being idle, Ned. And then one other question. I'd just love to get your sort of general thoughts on the interest rate environment within the market, and less on yourself. You obviously have a lot of fixed rate debt, but I'm just wondering what you're seeing and hearing from maybe the vulnerability to higher interest rates from some of these smaller regional players. Thanks for that.

Yeah, so I'll start with that question. Maybe Jason can hop in and talk a bit about our balance sheet. So it's a good point where, you know, we talk to a lot of small companies, we buy a lot of smaller companies, and they really are always financing the next piece of equipment or the next piece of growth with new debt. And so they've really seen a composition change to their ability to grow And we expect this to result in a return profile going up in the marketplace. So what it means, like when we bid on municipal work, if you look to if there are private bidding, their cost of capital to enter that bid is going to be higher now than it was a year ago. Whereas we've done an excellent job hedging and entering into fixed price agreement and our balance sheet is very stable and we have a lot of flexibility. So we actually view this as a point of advantage. We're also hearing from some smaller private companies that EOs may be accelerating their view of when they might want to sell because their cost of capital and cost to replace equipment has gone up. So from our vantage point, we're in a great stable place, and it probably creates more opportunity for us.

It really does. I mean, I think it's really consistent with what we have laid out from a growth perspective. And not only are we moving forward to make sure that we have the resources in place from a practical standpoint, particularly as it relates to freeing net up, in terms of being more involved from an operating standpoint. It's really exciting because of the opportunities that we have in front of us. As we've indicated, not only do we have the opportunities over the top of our existing franchise in the Northeast, but now we obviously have those opportunities in the Mid-Atlantic as well. So, really exciting time. And not only are people still seeing, you know, we have invested substantially in HR to try to fill all of the seats. those pressures are still out there. Inflation, disposal costs, labor issues, those are all issues affecting most of the independents that we're aware of up and down the Eastern seaboard, and particularly in the Northeast and in the Mid-Atlantic.

And John, just to tack on, this is Jason. So as Ned mentioned, from a risk mitigation perspective, We have about $415 million in interest rate swaps that help hedge out our interest rate volatility risk. And we're close to 70% fixed rate debt today across our balance sheet. So we've done a really nice job there, and that's something that we focus heavily on and will continue to do so.

I mentioned this stat earlier, but our average interest rate was 4.5% in the quarter, which is pretty notable.

Really appreciate your time, Chad. Thanks for that.

Thank you.

Thank you. Please stand by for our last question. And our next question comes from Stephanie Moore from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning.

Thank you. Good morning. I wanted to touch on, maybe you could talk a little bit about your recycling operations. You know, clearly a best in class in the Northeast in your footprint. I think there's some kind of in the background, some potential changing legislation as it relates to recycling, maybe following the path of what we've seen in Canada with extended producer responsibility. So just would love to get your thoughts on how you might are tackling or potentially be involved in what could be some changing legislation in some of the states in your footprint. Thanks.

So I think part of what we obviously track from a government relations standpoint is the potential for changes from a recycling standpoint and producer responsibilities, et cetera. And I think that we're seeing various degrees of effort and every one of those efforts, we would be in the middle of that trying to make recommendations to improve whatever path municipalities and or state governments want to potentially move down. I think that it's, you know, it's certainly on the agenda. It's certainly something that is in the legislatures across the Northeast, not all of them, but several of them. And it's certainly something that we follow and keep significant track of.

Great. Thank you. And then just on M&A, you know, it's been a tremendous year of M&A, 2023. you know, as you think of 2024, you know, what's your view in terms of kind of pace at M&A? You know, would it still kind of look to be opportunistic and what the, you know, the pipeline kind of drums up? Or are you, you know, like, you know, maybe kind of optimizing some of the deals you did this year? We'd love to give your thoughts about just M&A in 2024. Thanks.

Yeah, I think that we have plenty of opportunities, but I think you're right in terms of the amount of M&A that we have done this year will we'll be continuing to integrate into the beginning of 2024. Got work to do there, significant work to do there. So obviously we want to get those businesses tucked in, get them completely on board from a cultural perspective. So there's a lot of work ongoing right now. There'll be a lot of work continuing into the first quarter. But again, I think that our acquisition program will probably be more towards the second quarter to the end of the year. But nonetheless, significant opportunities for us to continue to grow from an M&A standpoint. But we do have work that needs to be done from an integration standpoint. As Ned said, we're also doing a significant amount of work from an IT perspective as well.

And John, I mentioned this number earlier, but we expect about 14% revenue growth year over year from the acquisitions we completed in 2023, because they came on in the second and third quarters, the vast majority. So there's quite a bit of tailwind there already as well, Stephanie, but besides new deals happening.

Great. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I am showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back over to John Casella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for closing remarks.

Thanks, everybody. Thank you for being a part of the call today. We look forward to talking to you in February for our next call. Thanks. Have a great day.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.