Casella Waste Systems, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Casella Waste Systems first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Charlie Wohlhutter, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Liz. Good morning and thank you for joining us on the call today. Today we will be discussing our first quarter 2024 results, which were released yesterday afternoon. Here with me are John Casella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Casella Waste Systems, Ned Coletta, our President, Brad Helgeson, our Chief Financial Officer, Jason Meade, our Senior Vice President of Finance and Treasurer, and Sean Steeves, our Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Solid Waste Operations. After a review of these results and an update on the company's activities and business environment, we will be happy to take your questions. But first, 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 on file with the SEC. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent our views only as of today. and should not be relied upon as representing our views in 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, April 26, 2024. 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. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, to the extent they are available without unreasonable effort, are included in our press release file on Form AK with SEC. And with that, I will now turn it over turn over the call to John Casella to begin our discussion.

Thanks, Charlie, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2024 conference call. I'll begin today's remarks with highlights of our first quarter and then have Brad and Ned go into more details on our results and a strategic overview. But first, I'd like to take a minute to credit several of our team members who exemplify our core values and who have been recognized for their service. They put service to our communities first while operating in a safe and responsible manner. We are fortunate to have four drivers earn Driver of the Year recognition by the National Waste and Recycling Association through their focus to enhance safety and be a strong representative of the solid waste industry. They are Curtis Rhodes, Sean Dutton, John Michaud, and Cesar Guerrero. Our longtime market area manager, Bill Myers, in Northern New York was named Citizen of the Year by the United Way of the Adirondack region for his community engagement. They lead by example and inspire the rest of us to make our own positive contributions to the customers and communities we serve. Shifting to the results. As you saw in our earnings release yesterday, we hit the ground running to begin 2024. Our business is performing at a high level Revenues were up nearly 30% year over year, while we drove adjusted a bit of growth of over 40%. This resulted in 150 basis point margin improvement, which demonstrates the strong execution of our operating strategies and the successful ongoing integration of some of the largest acquisitions in the company's history. It's truly impressive and speaks really well of our entire team. On that note, acquisition integration has been among our key priorities, as you know. The hard work our team has done is very evident as we grow. Their commitment and dedication to be of service to each other, our customers, and the communities we serve shows. The senior team and I are very proud of the culture. This is the foundation that's positioned us well for another exciting year of growth and performance. Looking now to a few of our key strategies in the performance of operations. Beginning with the landfills, as we expected in the first quarter, volumes were down with lower C&D and special waste tonnages. To be clear, this is not a sign we're experiencing weaker construction activity or a signal from the economy. In fact, roll-up collection volumes were up 1.4% in the quarter, followed by commercial collection volumes up nearly 1%. C&D disposal dynamics are being influenced by a large landfill in the northeast that is projected to close at the end of this year. We anticipate that C&D disposal market will readjust following the closure. Regardless, we continue to focus our operating programs at the landfills as well as our quality of revenue. Our average landfill price per ton stat is often a good metric to measure our improvement in quality of the inbound waste stream. For third consecutive quarter, the increase was double digits on a percentage basis. Turning to the collection side of the business, we've executed well and have a lot of positive momentum as we advance our strategies across this business line. Our investment in automated side loaders, routing technology, and real-time data intelligence are providing nice benefits. We are capturing labor, safety, and productivity enhancement as we steadily roll out these programs across our collection fleet. As part of the efforts, we aim to keep our costs low for our customers. Our ongoing fleet automation plan is attracting larger and more diverse labor pools and creating a safer work environment for our frontline workers. We experienced favorable trends in our turnover and TRIR safety metric in 2023, and we aim to repeat this in 2024 with incentives aligned up and down the organization. In terms of routing initiatives, we completed a number of routing projects in the first quarter. This is a reflection of our focus on driving synergies in the business. Sean Steeves and his team are applying these operating gains with analytics to help make more informed decisions for better service accuracy, efficiency, and quality. These positive contributions are showing up in the numbers. Collection adjusted a bit of margins improved more than 200 basis points year over year in the first quarter, excluding acquisitions. We've already begun deploying these programs into the mid-Atlantic region with more opportunity ahead of us. We're highly focused on service excellence and new customer integration. As we grow the business and onboard new customers, these efforts will help enable our success in customer retention and satisfaction. In the resource solutions part of the business, performance in this segment was strong in the quarter with year-over-year adjusted a bit of growth and margin improvement. The growth was widespread. Yes, improvement in the recycling commodity prices was a tailwind. However, we experienced a greater contribution in the quarter from our strategic investments. Namely, our upgraded Boston MRF is firing on all cylinders with the results that delivered strong incremental adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter. Modernization of our Willimantic MRF will kick off later this year, which will be a similar investment in further enhancing the recycling capabilities we provide. On an overall basis, whether it be full upgrade of the processing equipment or selectively replacing certain pieces of equipment, we are constantly looking for ways to improve our operating efficiencies better end product quality, and enhance recovery across our sustainability infrastructure while generating solid returns. In terms of the national account business, customer demand for our professional services remains quite strong, and we grew a bit in this line of business for the quarter. This sales strategy is moving to our mid-Atlantic region where we see opportunity over time to grow various customer segments. And finally, we really like the growth runway that we see ahead for our entire business. Our core operating strategies are working well and providing us with opportunity to drive further value. We have a number of organic development projects to come. And of course, our M&A pipeline remains robust with exciting opportunities. Now I'll turn it over to Brad to go through the results.