Waste Connections, Inc.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Waste Connections, Inc. Q4 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a 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 and then one on a touch-tone telephone. To draw your questions, you may press star and two. Please also note today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to Ron Mittelstadt, President and CEO. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to this conference call to discuss fourth quarter results and our outlook for both the first quarter and full year 2025. I'm joined this morning by Mary Ann Whitney, our CFO, and several other members of our senior management. As noted in earnings release, Q4 provided a solid finish to a year of extraordinary accomplishments for Waste Connections, both financially, with double-digit growth in both revenue and adjusted EBITDA, and operationally, with accelerating improvements in employee engagement and retention, along with the integration of record levels of private company acquisitions, which totaled approximately $750 million in annualized revenue in 2024. Most importantly, our continued focus on human capital resulted in multi-year lows for employee turnover, now down over 1,000 basis points from 2022, with the associated improvements in operational execution providing momentum for another year of outsized margin expansion in 2025. Price-led organic solid waste growth, along with improving commodities and ongoing acquisition activity, should position us at or above the high end of our range of potential outcomes. with normalized adjusted free cash flow in excess of $1.55 billion. 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 discuss both in the cautionary statement included in our February 12th 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.