Waste Connections, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Waste Connections, Inc. second quarter 2024 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, today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ron Mittelstadt, President and CEO.

Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to this conference call to discuss our second quarter results and an updated outlook for 2024 and to provide a detailed outlook for the third quarter. I'm joined this morning by Marianne Whitney, our CFO, and several other members of our senior management. As noted in our earnings release, solid operational execution supplemented by incremental acquisitions and increased commodity values drove an across-the-board beat in the second quarter, positioning us for an increase to our full-year outlook. Revenue in adjusted EBITDA increased in the quarter by 11.2% and 16.4% respectively, as price-led organic solid waste growth and 100 basis points sequential improvement in volume was augmented by accretive acquisitions. We are extremely pleased by the continued strength of our operational execution during the quarter, including sequential improvement in employee retention, as we maintain the strategy that has served to differentiate our results and which positions us for continued outsized growth. Given the strength of our performance in the first half of 2024, the momentum from continuing trends and contributions from recent acquisitions, We are raising our full year 2024 outlook to approximately $8.85 billion in revenue and approximately $2.9 billion in adjusted EBITDA, or 32.8% adjusted EBITDA margin, exceeding our initial outlook and up 130 basis points as compared to the prior year. 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.