Republic Services, Inc.

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I would like to welcome everyone to Republic Services' fourth quarter and full year 2024 conference call. John VanderArk, our CEO, and Brian DelGaccio, our CFO, are on the call today to discuss our performance. I would like to take a moment to remind everyone that some information we discuss on today's call contains forward-looking statements, including forward-looking financial information which involve risks and uncertainties and may be materially different from actual results. Our SEC filings discuss factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The material that we discussed today is time-sensitive. If, in the future, you listen to a rebroadcast or recording of this conference call, you should be sensitive to the date of the original call, which is February 13, 2025. Please note that this call is property of Republic Services, Inc. Any redistribution, retransmission, or rebroadcast of this call in any form without the express written consent of Republic Services is strictly prohibited. Our SEC filings, our earnings press release, which includes gap reconciliation tables and a discussion of business activities, along with a recording of this call, are available on Republic's website at republicservices.com. In addition, Republic's management team routinely participates in investor conferences. When events are scheduled, the dates, times, and presentations are posted on our investor website. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to John. Thanks, Erin.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. The Republic team finished the year strong. We delivered world-class service and innovative solutions for our customers and executed our strategy to profitably grow the business. As a result of the team's efforts, we delivered adjusted EBITDA, EPS, and free cash flow that exceeded our full-year guidance. During 2024, we achieved revenue growth of 7%, generated adjusted EBITDA growth of 12%, expanded adjusted EBITDA margin by 140 basis points, delivered adjusted earnings per share of $6.46, and produced $2.18 billion of adjusted free cash flow. We continue to be well-positioned to capture new opportunities and create long-term value for our stakeholders through our differentiated capabilities, customer zeal, digital, and sustainability. Regarding customer zeal, our focus on delivering world-class essential services continues to support organic growth and enhanced customer loyalty. Our customer retention rate remains strong at more than 94%. We continue to see favorable trends in our Net Promoter Score due to the value of the offerings and quality of our service delivery. Fourth quarter organic revenue growth was driven by solid pricing across the business. Average yield on total revenue was 4.4%, and average yield on related revenue was 5.3%. This level of pricing continued to exceed our cost inflation and helped drive 110 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion during the quarter. Organic volume on total revenue declined 1.2% in the quarter. Volume losses were concentrated to shedding underperforming contracts in the residential business, and continued softness in construction and certain manufacturing end markets. Turning to our expanding digital capabilities, we continue to advance the implementation of digital tools to improve the experience for both customers and employees. Deployment of MPower, our new fleet and equipment management system, is underway. MPower is designed to increase maintenance technician productivity and enhance warranty recovery. Deployment of the new system is anticipated to be completed by the end of 2025. We estimate MPower will deliver $20 million of annual cost savings once fully implemented. We continue to benefit from innovative technology on our recycling and waste collection routes. We utilize cameras to identify overfilled containers and recycling contamination, which is enabled by our RISE digital platform. This technology generated more than $60 million in incremental revenue in the first year of operation. Moving on to sustainability. We believe that our sustainability innovation investments in plastic circularity and renewable natural gas position us for continued growth and long-term value creation. Development of our polymer centers and blue polymers joint venture facilities continues to move forward. Construction is complete at our Indianapolis Polymer Center and equipment commissioning underway. This operation is co-located with a Blue Polymers production facility that is expected to be completed by mid 2025. We expect earnings contribution from the Indianapolis Polymer Center in the second half of this year. Construction on the Blue Polymers production facility in Buckeye, Arizona is underway. This facility will complement our Las Vegas Polymer Center. We expect the completion of this facility in late 2025. We continue to bring decarbonization solutions to the market that will unlock value for our stakeholders, including the communities we serve. The renewable natural gas projects we're developing with our partners continue to advance. Two projects came online during the fourth quarter, and another project came online in January. We expect a total of seven new RNG projects to come online in 2025. We continue to advance our commitment to fleet electrification. We had 52 electric collection vehicles in operation at the end of 2024. We expect to have more than 150 EVs in our fleet by the end of this year. We now have 22 facilities with commercial scale EV charging infrastructure. We expect to have approximately 30 facilities with charging capabilities by the end of 2025. As part of our approach to sustainability, we continually strive to be the employer where the best people want to work. In 2024, our employee engagement score remained high at 86, and turnover rates continue to trend lower, with full-year turnover improving 150 basis points compared to the prior year. Our comprehensive sustainability performance continues to be widely recognized as Republic Services was named the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the ninth consecutive year. With respect to capital allocation in 2024, we invested $358 million in strategic acquisitions and returned $1.18 billion to shareholders, which includes $490 million of share repurchases. Our results clearly demonstrate our ability to create sustainable value, and our strategic investments strengthen the foundation to continue to grow our business. In 2025, we expect to deliver profitable growth while continuing to invest in the business to drive lasting value. More specifically, we expect full-year revenue in a range of $16.85 billion to $16.95 billion. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $5.275 billion to $5.325 billion. We expect to deliver adjusted earnings per share in a range of $6.82 to $6.90. Generate adjusted free cash flow in a range of $2.32 billion to $2.36 billion. Our pipeline supports continued acquisition activity in both recycling and waste and environmental solutions. We expect to deploy at least a billion dollars of investment in value-creating acquisitions in 2025. Our 2025 guidance includes the financial contribution from acquisitions closed to date. I will now turn the call over to Brian, who will provide details on the quarter and year. Thanks, John.