Waste Connections, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the WAIS Connections Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ron Middlestock, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Okay. Thank you, Operator, and good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to this conference call to discuss our first quarter results and to provide a detailed outlook for the second quarter. As many of you know, I was reappointed recently to the role of CEO, which I had held from the company's inception 25 years ago until July 2019. when I transition to Executive Chairman. I am pleased to have this opportunity to reconnect with so many of you that I have enjoyed working with over the years. I am joined this morning by Mary Ann Whitney, our CFO, and several other members of our senior management team. Looking at Q1, record solid waste pricing growth, strong operational execution, and continuing acquisition activity provided a strong start to the year. While we recognized on our February earnings call that Q1 would be a difficult year-over-year comparison given the precipitous decline in resource recovery values during the second half of 22, results in the period were further affected by extraordinary weather-related impacts to solid waste roll-off activity and landfill volumes, particularly on the West Coast. Underlying adjusted EBITDA margins were in line with our expectations, but acquisitions completed since the year-ago period or 30 points dilutive to reported margins, or more than 20 basis points higher than we had expected, given the disproportionate weather-related impacts on the West Coast acquisitions. Continued visibility on pricing, improving trends in labor availability and retention, and recent normalization of weather patterns position us to deliver the full-year outlook we provided in February. And as we also noted then, any additional acquisitions, Reduction of inflationary pressures or increases in values for recycled commodities or renewable fuel from the low levels we've seen since late last year would provide upside to this outlook. No improvement in those values was factored into our outlook. 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, Ron, 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 April 26 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 Rob.