Waste Management, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to WM Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on the 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 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to your speaker host, Ed Eagle, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Olivia. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our third quarter 2024 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 8-K that includes the earnings press release and is available on our website at www.wm.com. The Form 8-K, the press release, and the schedules for 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. We'll also be providing an updated outlook for 2024. This outlook does not include transaction and advisory costs incurred in connection with the acquisition of Stericycle, nor post-closing financial contributions related to the planned acquisition of Stericycle. 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 files at the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Qs. 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. Net income, EPS, income from operations and margin, operating EBITDA and margin, and SG&A expense and margin 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 GAAP measures 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 October 29, 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.

Okay, thanks, Ed, and thank you all for joining us. Our quarterly results once again reflect robust operational performance in our collection and disposal business, as well as our success executing on our strategic priorities. We're pleased to report another quarter of double-digit operating EBITDA growth, positioning us well to deliver about $6.5 billion for the full year, near the upper end of our guidance. Our cost optimization efforts and disciplined pricing programs together are increasing the spread between price growth and our cost to serve, and our sustainability investments are providing margin accretive growth. As we'd anticipated, the third quarter set a new record for operating EBITDA margin at 30.5%, a year-over-year expansion of 90 basis points. This consistent growth underscores our commitment to delivering exceptional value to our shareholders. We remain focused, on furthering our cost optimization efforts in our collection and disposal business and improving frontline retention. John will share more about the headway we're making here. Our teams are also hard at work integrating acquisitions in key markets and have closed nearly $800 million of solid waste acquisitions through the first nine months of the year with a strong pipeline of additional deals. We continue to progress towards closing the acquisition of Stericycle, which will add a complimentary medical waste platform to our business and expand our suite of service offerings. During the quarter, Stericycle shareholders approved the merger agreement. We received clearance from all international regulators except for Canada, which is progressing. We're also advancing our integration planning, which has confirmed our confidence in the value of the Stericycle acquisition. We look forward to welcoming Stericycle team members to the WM team this quarter. Turning to recycling, during the quarter, we completed eight projects across our network, including six automation upgrades and new facilities in New York and Florida. Our team's focus and execution has been excellent with two of the projects completed in the quarter beginning operations ahead of plan. We've now completed 24 of the 39 projects in the growth program, which have added 1.5 million tons of annual recycling capacity across North America. Our automated recycling facilities are consistently delivering lower labor costs per ton and higher blended value on our commodity sales compared to our legacy plants, which translates into better operating EBITDA margins. In the renewable energy business, we remain on track to commission four new renewable natural gas projects in the fourth quarter, adding to our DFW plant, which we brought online earlier this year. With these five projects, along with the two we completed prior to 2024, we will have seven of the 20 planned projects online by year end. There are an additional 12 projects in active construction, and the final plant will begin construction in early 2025. The seven projects are expected to contribute approximately 6 million MMBTUs of annual production in 2025. Next year is anticipated to be a pivotal year of contributions from renewable natural gas investments. and we're committed to scaling this unique opportunity to create long-term value for the environment and shareholders alike. We came into this year expecting strong execution across several fronts, and through the first nine months, we've delivered results that exceeded our own high expectations. As we look ahead to 2025, we anticipate continued growth in our solid waste business, increased contributions from our sustainability growth investments, and the successful integration of the stair cycle business to come together to create a significant step change in revenue, earnings, and pre-cash flow. I want to thank our dedicated team whose hard work and commitment make all of this possible. And now I'll turn the call over to John, who will provide a deeper dive into our operational results for the quarter.