Waste Management, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the WM's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. And please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, David Eagle, Senior Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Lori. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. With me this morning are Jim Fish, President and Chief Executive Officer, John Morris, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Davina Rankin, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. You will hear prepared comments from each of them today. Jim will cover high-level financials and provide a strategic update. John will cover an operating overview, and Davina will cover the details of the financials. Before we get started, please note that we have filed a Form 8K this morning that includes the earnings press release and is available on our website at www.wm.com. The Form 8K, the press release, and the schedules of the press release include important information. During the call, you will hear forward-looking statements, which are based on current expectations, projections, or opinions about future periods. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Some of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in today's press release and in our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-K. John will discuss our results in the areas of yield and volume, which, unless stated otherwise, are more specifically references to internal revenue growth or IRG from yield or volume. During the call, Jim, John, and Davina will discuss operating EBITDA, which is income from operations before depreciation and amortization. Any comparisons, unless otherwise stated, will be with the first quarter of 2021. Net income, EPS, operating EBITDA margin, and SG&A expense results have been adjusted to enhance comparability by excluding certain items that management believes do not reflect our fundamental business performance or results of operations. These adjusted measures, in addition to free cash flow, are non-GAAP measures. Please refer to the earnings press release and tables, which can be found on the company's website at www.wm.com, for reconciliations to the most comparable gap measures and additional information about our use of non-gap measures and non-gap projections. This call is being recorded and will be available 24 hours a day, beginning approximately 1 p.m. Eastern Time today until 5 p.m. Eastern Time on May 10th. To hear a replay of the call over the Internet, access the WM website at www.wm.com. During a telephonic replay of the call, dial 855-859-2056 and enter reservation code 3365157. Time-sensitive information provided during today's call, which is occurring on April 26, 2022, may no longer be accurate at the time of a replay. Any redistribution, retransmission, or rebroadcast of this call in any form without the express written consent of WM is prohibited. Now I'll turn the call over to WM's President and CEO, Jim Fish.

Thanks, Ed, and thank you all for joining us. The first quarter of every year sets the tone for the rest of the year, and our strong first quarter results really set us up for success in 2022. We delivered exceptional core price and yield results, grew profitable volumes, and managed our costs. The result was double-digit growth in revenue, operating EBITDA, and cash from operations. In fact, our cash from operations was the highest we've ever generated in a quarter, allowing us to return half a billion dollars of cash to our shareholders. Our operating EBITDA margin of 27.6% was ahead of our plan, even in the face of record inflation and the delayed approval of the alternative fuel tax credits. So we executed extremely well in the first quarter and achieved better results than we anticipated, positioning 2022 to be another great year for WMU. addition to the strong start in the first quarter we see signs that the economy is trending positively several of the key leading performance indicators within our business such as special waste volumes construction and demolition volumes and new business formation pointed to continued strong economic economic activity and business performance for the balance of the year the positive economic activity combined with WM's diverse resilient nature of our business, and nearly 75% of our revenue that is annuity-like gives us confidence to reaffirm the full-year outlook we provided in February. As we progress through the year, we remain committed to executing on our strategic priorities of providing the best workplace, advancing technology and automation that differentiates WM and reduces costs, and leveraging our sustainability platform for growth. Turning to our sustainability and technology investments, we're excited about the future. We see the opportunity to further our sustainability leadership by expanding recycling capacity, automating recycling processing, and increasing the renewable energy generated from our landfill network. We opened a new recycling facility in the first quarter, and we're on track to bring online another fully retrofitted MRF in the second quarter, along with the next WM-built renewable natural gas plant. These projects are expected to generate excellent returns that are superior to those of solid waste acquisitions. Regarding technology, last quarter you heard us discuss cost-saving opportunities for automation and optimization, which involves creating a competitive advantage for WM by differentiating the customer experience while reducing our labor dependency on certain roles. Through our focus on digital technology, we anticipate reducing 5 to 7,000 positions over the next four years. In this tight and expensive job market, it makes complete sense to use technology to reduce our dependency on certain high turnover jobs. In addition to tackling this attrition, technology produces a significant amount of data that we view as a valuable asset. John has referred to our trucks as rolling data centers and we're using that data and analytics to create a sustainable competitive advantage. Currently, we're piloting the full end-to-end optimization of our roll-off routes, which will be the first of its kind in the industry. Early efficiency results in our pilots are very encouraging, and our plan is to have our roll-off routes fully optimized by mid-23. Finally, While we use automation and data to our advantage, we will invest in training and upskilling of our existing employees to ready them for higher skilled future roles. To sum it up, we've set the bar high in our first quarter with our results and we're confident in our ability to deliver strong performance throughout the remainder of 2022. I want to thank the entire WM team for their hard work and dedication. I know that they continue to work to deliver on our commitment to our customers, our communities, and our shareholders. And we very much appreciate that. I'll now turn the call over to John to discuss our operational results for the quarter.