Waste Connections, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Waste Connections second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press the 1 followed by the 4 on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star 0. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, Thursday, August 5th, 2021. I would now like to turn the conference over to Worthing Jackman, President and CEO of Waste Connections. Please go ahead.

Perfect. Thank you, Operator, and good morning. I'd like to welcome everyone to this conference call to discuss our second quarter of 2021 results, an updated outlook for the full year, and to provide a detailed outlook for the third quarter. I'm joined this morning by Marianne Whitney, our CFO. As noted in our earnings release, broad-based strength drove an across-the-board beat in the second quarter. Revenue and adjusted EBITDA in Q2 increased 17.5% and 23% respectively over the prior year period, primarily as a result of continued improvement in solid waste pricing and volume growth and strength in recovered commodity values. These trends drove year-to-date adjusted EBITDA margin expansion of 110 basis points and adjusted free cash flow of over 585 million, up 18.5% year-over-year, and given expected continuing momentum and margin expansion from these trends, position us to raise our full-year outlook for revenue, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, and adjusted free cash flow. 2021 also has the potential to be another outsized year of acquisition activity. Year-to-date, we have signed and closed 14 acquisitions with total annualized revenue of approximately $115 million, including $75 million of franchise operations in California, Nevada, and Oregon expected to close later this year. We continue to see record amounts of seller interest driving elevated acquisition dialogue and, as communicated throughout the year, expect closings related to most of this activity to be more weighted to the second half of the year, which would provide further upside to our increased outlook for the year and strong rollover growth in the 2022. Before we get too much more into detail, let me turn the call over to Mary Ann for our forward-looking disclaimer and other housekeeping items.

Thank you, Worthing, and good morning. The discussion during today's call includes forward-looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. Actual results could differ materially from those made in such forward-looking statements due to various risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ are discussed both in the cautionary statement included in our August 4th earnings release and in greater detail in Waste Connections filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Securities Commissions or similar regulatory authorities in Canada. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. as there may be additional risks of which we are not presently aware or that we currently believe are immaterial, which could have an adverse impact on our business. We make no commitment to revise or update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances that may change after today's date. On the call, we will discuss non-GAAP measures such as adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income attributable to waste connections on both a dollar basis and per diluted share, and adjusted free cash flow. Please refer to our earnings releases for a reconciliation of such non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures. Management uses certain non-GAAP measures to evaluate and monitor the ongoing financial performance of our operations. Other companies may calculate these non-GAAP measures differently. I will now turn the call back over to Worthing.