Waste Connections, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Waste Connections Q1 2025 earnings 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 a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star and then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ron Mittelstadt, 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. I'm joining this morning by Mary Ann Whitney, our CFO, and several other members of our senior management. As noted in our earnings release, we're extremely pleased by the strong start to 2025 as price-led organic solid waste growth and continued acquisition activity drove a top-to-bottom beat in the quarter, positioning us well for the full year. Exemplary operational execution supported core solid waste pricing of 6.9% and drove better-than-expected results as we overcame incremental volume weakness from protracted weather events across many markets, to exceed our outlook and deliver adjusted EBITDA margin of 32%. Our industry-leading results are indicative of the durability of our unique approach to market selection, our decentralized operating model, and the resulting projectability from our commitment to excellence. To that end, we also saw continued improvement in employee retention for the 10th consecutive quarter, along with record safety performance during the period. 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 in our April 23rd 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-debt measures to evaluate and monitor the ongoing financial performance of our operations. Other companies may calculate these non-debt measures differently. I will now turn the call back over to Ron.