Casella Waste Systems, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Casella Waste Systems, Inc. First Quarter 2026 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. To ask the question during the session, you will 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 11 again. Please revise that today's conference has been recorded. I'll now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Jason Mead, Senior Vice President of Finance and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us on the call. Today, we'll be discussing our first quarter, 2026 results, which were released yesterday afternoon. This morning, I'm joined by Ned Coletta, President and Chief Executive Officer of Casella Waste Systems, and Brad Helgeson, our Chief Financial Officer. After a review of these results and an update on the company's activities and business environment, we'll be happy to take your questions. But first, please note that various remarks we 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 factors section of our most recent 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 on 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 any date subsequent to today, May 1st, 2026. Also during the call, we'll be referring to non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures are 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 filed on form 8K with the SEC. And with that, I'll now turn it over to Ned to begin today's discussion.

Good morning and thank you everyone for joining us today. We are very pleased with our performance in the first quarter and the strong start it provides for 2026. Our team executed well across the business delivering solid financial results and margin expansion that exceeded our budget while also advancing our strategic priorities. We combine disciplined positive pricing, steady core operations, and meaningful acquisition activity to position the business for a strong year. Importantly, the momentum we are seeing is broad-based. It reflects the consistency of our operating model and the continued focus of our teams on execution, safety, and customer service. Revenues for the quarter were $457.3 million, or up 9.6% year over year. Growth was driven by contributions from acquisitions and the base business, with strong pricing across our collection and disposal lines, and continued strength in our resource solution segment, particularly in national accounts. Pricing continues to perform well and remains a core driver of our results. Solid waste pricing was up 5.1% overall including 5.3% in the collection line of business and 4.7% in disposal. From a volume perspective, the quarter played out largely as we expected, with slightly negative volumes mainly due to the challenging winter weather across our footprint. Despite these headwinds, total landfill tons were up year over year, including increases in both MSW and C&D volumes, with C&D volumes actually up 13% year over year at the landfills. These results reflect the strength of our sales pipeline, all of our internalization efforts over the last year and a half, and our unique landfill asset positioning in the Northeast. Further, we are well positioned for the seasonal upswing in volumes that we see in the spring, and we've seen positive trends through April. On the cost side, our fuel recovery program worked effectively in a quarter. with floating fees fully offsetting the increase in fuel costs across our business. This continues to be an important component of our ability to manage risk and produce stable and predictable operating results. As we've emphasized, our focus remains on disciplined execution at the operating level. Our teams continue to make progress on route optimization, fleet efficiency, and automation, and we're seeing those efforts translate into our results. Adjusted EBITDA increased 12.3% year-over-year, and we delivered 50 basis points of margin expansion in the quarter. Safety is our first priority in our operations every day, and we continue to invest in safety initiatives, including the expansion of our triage programs to minimize the cost associated with workers' compensation claims and the implementation of the LITICS in-cab AI technology across our entire fleet in 2026. The LIDIC system is helping our drivers with real-time coaching to reduce unsafe behaviors. This leads to lower incidents and strengthens our overall safety culture. These efforts have resulted in better safety performance with our key OSHA metric, TRIR, improving by 20% year over year. We have also attracted several excellent new leaders to Casella, over the last several months, including Chris Raines as our new Chief Revenue Officer joining in March. We're excited to have these accomplished executives join our team, adding key skills to our already strong leadership team. In the Mid-Atlantic, we've made significant progress on our integration efforts. We've migrated nearly all customers to our new lead-to-cash system and integrated customer payment portal. And we are on track to complete the remaining migration by the end of next week. This is an important milestone as it allows us to shift our focus from systems migration to the exciting work of recognizing operational synergies through route consolidations, automations, and facility consolidations. As guided, we're on track to cut $5 million of operating costs in 2026 and another $10 million over the next two years. From a technology and efficiency standpoint, we continue to make steady progress. On the customer side, we've been investing in key platforms to improve customer experience, including the launch of our new payment portal last month and the planned rollout of the new Casella app in the second quarter. We also continue to develop our e-commerce capabilities. These efforts are focused on improving the customer experience while also yielding cost efficiencies. At the same time, we remain focused on reducing G&A costs, and we are on track with our previously announced $15 million in targeted G&A savings over the next three years. As mentioned last quarter, these savings will come in three phases, with the first phase yielding in the second half of 2026 as we implement credit card convenience fees. The second phase will come in 2027 as we eliminate redundant systems costs. And the last phase will come throughout 27 and 28 as we automate back office functions and take out costs. Across these initiatives, we're also focusing on AI-enabled tools and investing in data infrastructure to support further capabilities. Over time, we expect these investments to generate additional leverage across our back office and yield additional efficiency gains. We continue to make great permitting progress on our expansion efforts at the Hakes and Highland landfills in New York. With the Hakes permit expected by the third quarter of 2026 and the Highland permit expected by the first quarter of 2027. As we've previously mentioned, we're working to more than double the annual permit at Highland from 460,000 tons a year to a million tons a year, while also working to add 60 years of capacity. At the Hakes C&D landfill, we're permitting a 10-plus year expansion. Additionally, we completed the new rail transfer station at the McKean landfill in the last month, allowing us now to accept materials from both gondolas and intermodal containers, including internalized MSW volumes from Massachusetts later this year. Our McKean landfill is a great rail option for the Northeastern waste that does not have access to local disposal. As a reminder of how 30% of the waste that's generated in the Northeast needs to be exported given the lack of disposal capacity in our markets. The McKean landfill is proximate to dense populations in the Northeast and is one of only a few rail surf landfills that can service the market given the capital intensity and logistical complexity. Acquisitions remain an important component of our growth strategy, and we've had a strong start to the year. We have completed four acquisitions so far in 2026, representing approximately $150 million of annualized revenues. This includes the Star Waste acquisition, which closed on April 1st and adds approximately $100 million of annualized revenues. These transactions continue to align well with our strategy of building density within our existing footprint. Star Waste is an excellent example of that approach, with strong overlap in Massachusetts and clear opportunities for integration and operational improvements. Our teams are making great progress on integration with an early focus on safety, onboarding our new team members, and aligning integration plans. At the same time, our acquisition pipeline remains very strong, and we have a number of tuck-in opportunities in later stages that fit well within our existing markets. Overall, we feel very good about our execution year to date, and we believe we have a solid outlook for the remainder of the year, including adjusted free cash flow growth of roughly 14% at the midpoint of guidance. Our business proved its resiliency in the quarter as we beat our budget expanded margins by 65 basis points in the base business, and fully recovered rapidly rising fuel costs. I want to thank our employees for their continued focus on safety, service, and execution. With that, I'll turn it over to Brad to walk through the financials in more detail.