Waste Connections, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Waste Connections third 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 on Thursday, October 28, 2021. I would now like to turn the conference over to Worthing Jackman, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning. I'd like to welcome everyone to this conference call to discuss our third quarter 2021 results and provide a detailed outlook for the fourth quarter and updated outlook for 2021, as well as some early thoughts about 2022. I'm joined this morning by Marianne Whitney, our CFO. As noted in our earnings release, we delivered another top-to-bottom beat in the period on continued strength in solid waste pricing, higher recycled commodity values, and improving E&P waste activity, along with acquisitions closed during the period. More importantly, quality of revenue drove both sequential margin improvement in the period and 60 basis points year-over-year adjustity with that margin expansion in the quarter, overcoming an estimated 40 basis points impact from margin dilutive acquisitions and hurricanes. This puts us firmly on track to exceed the increased full-year 2021 outlook we provided in August and deliver year-over-year margin expansion again in Q4. Strong execution, proactive acceleration of solid waste pricing to address inflationary pressures, and outsized contribution from acquisitions already position us for double-digit growth, underlying solid waste margin expansion, and strong free cash flow conversion in 2022. Before we get into much more 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 October 27th earnings release and in greater detail in Waste Connections filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Securities Commission's 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 pre-cash flow. Please refer to our earnings releases for 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 Warden.