Waste Management, Inc.

good day and thank you for standing by welcome to the wm fourth quarter 2023 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 please press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced to withdraw your question please press star 1 1 again please be advised that today's conference is being recorded i would like to hand the conference over to your speaker today ed eggo Senior Director of Investor Relations.

Thank you, Josh. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our fourth quarter and full year 2023 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'll 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 in our 2024 outlook. Before we get started, please note that we have filed a form 8K 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 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 prior year period. net income, EPS, income from operations and margin, operating EBITDA and margin, SG&A expense, and prior period operating 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 our earnings press release and tables, which can be found on the company's website at www.wm.com, for reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures and and additional information about our use of non-GAAP measures and non-GAAP projections. This call is being recorded and will be available 24 hours a day beginning approximately 1 p.m. Eastern time today. To hear a replay of the call, access the WM website at www.investors.wm.com. Time-sensitive information provided during today's call, which is occurring on February 13, 2024, 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.

All right. Thanks, Ed, and thank you all for joining us. The WM team delivered a remarkably strong finish to 2023, driving fourth quarter operating EBITDA 15% higher. This accelerated earnings growth led to full-year operating EBITDA that exceeded the high end of our most recent guidance range, by nearly $25 million and achieved the midpoint of our original expectations from the beginning of the year. Our strong financial results for both the quarter and the year were powered by our collection and disposal business. This performance starts with disciplined organic revenue growth that exceeded our expectations. And once again, our success in managing the middle of the P&L really stands out in our results as our teams continue to make progress in optimizing our cost structure with the help of technology and automation. When you combine our revenue performance with the improvement in operating costs, we saw a widening of our price to cost spread and increased profitability. Operating EBITDA margin reached a record 29.9% in the fourth quarter, and full year margin expanded 90 basis points to 28.9%. As 2024 kicks off, we're confident that our continued focus on optimizing our cost structure and executing on sustainability growth projects sets us up for another year of outsized growth. We anticipate operating EBITDA growth of 7.7% at the midpoint of our guidance, which translates to more than $450 million, of which $115 million comes directly from our sustainability growth investments. We remain excited about the economic and environmental benefits of expanding our renewable natural gas and recycling platforms. Our execution is tracking well, and we expect to commission five new renewable natural gas facilities by the end of the year, reaching 30% of our run rate renewable natural gas volume growth. We're also on track to complete automation upgrades at 10 recycling facilities and add three recycling facilities in new markets in 2024. Turning to capital allocation, you'll hear from Devine on this topic in more detail, but I want to stress our confidence and our ability to continue to allocate capital to all of our priorities. This includes investing in our high-return sustainability growth projects, acquiring accretive businesses, and returning cash to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. Our tuck-in acquisition pipeline is robust, and there are some indications that 2024 could have heightened activity in this regard. We're committed to a disciplined approach to acquiring companies, ensuring that any deals we pursue yield appropriate returns, particularly given the high returns in our sustainability opportunities. In closing, I want to thank the entire WM team for another great year. We were just at the WM Phoenix Open last week, and I've said before, we work hard for this event to create a representation of the bigger company with a central focus on people and the environment. We've been the title sponsor for 15 years now, and the tournament's been recognized as the largest zero-waste sporting event in the world for 12 years running. It makes me proud to see the WM team out there making waste diversion operations run smoothly and demonstrating our sustainability leadership so well. I look forward to working with this great team in 2024 as we continue to drive growth by executing our operating plans and progressing our investments in technology, automation, and sustainability. I'll now turn the call over to John to discuss our operational results.