Waste Management, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the WM First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After this 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 automated 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 first speaker today, Ed Eagle, Vice President of Investillations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Olivia. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2025 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. 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 with 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. References to WM Legacy Business are total WM results, excluding the WM Healthcare Solutions segment. Any comparisons, unless otherwise stated, will be with the prior year period. Net income, EPS, income from operations and margin, operating EBITDA and margin, operating expense and margin, and SG&A expense and margin 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. 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 April 29, 2025, 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. The WM team again delivered quarterly results that exceeded our expectations. The one thing I'm most proud of over the past few years is that we've truly become a predictably strong performer on a quarter in and quarter out basis. So once again, I'm pleased to report that we had a strong start to the year with first quarter results exceeding our expectations on several fronts. Total company operating EBITDA grew by more than 12% in the first quarter compared to the first quarter of 2024, driven by solid operational performance in the collection and disposal business, meaningful contributions from WM Healthcare Solutions, and increases in our sustainability businesses largely related to our growth investments. Our momentum so far as well as our demonstrated operational execution and the strength and resiliency of our business model gives us confidence in our ability to achieve all of our financial guidance we outlined last quarter. Our focus remains on growing customer lifetime value while leveraging technology to optimize our cost structure, delivering on our strategic investments in sustainability, and extracting increased value from our acquisition investments. At a time when the U.S. workforce is aging and shrinking, moving quickly to deploy technology to supplement our workforce could prove to be a significant differentiator for WM. At the same time, the leadership position we've taken with our very profitable sustainability investments is positioning the WM brand to be synonymous with sustainability and is not easily matched by our competitors. Of course, we continue to identify opportunities to scale the core business through acquisitions. We have a very robust pipeline of tuck-in opportunities and anticipate another outsized year of solid waste M&A. Turning to our sustainability businesses, in Q1, combined operating EBITDA from recycling and renewable energy grew by over 20% year-over-year, keeping us on track to meet full-year targets. Automated recycling facilities delivered nearly double the operating EBITDA margin compared to our non-automated facilities. We added two new facilities in California and Texas with seven more next-gen recycling plants scheduled to come in 2025. In renewable energy, growth was fueled by new RNG plants we brought online in late 2024 and strong pricing for natural gas and renewable electricity. We're currently advancing construction on eight additional RNG facilities that are all on track for completion this year. The strategy is working as our investments in sustainability are delivering strong, high-return growth. During the first quarter, we also made significant progress in our integration of WM Healthcare Solutions into the broader WM organization. Our new customers are excited by the expanded level of environmental expertise that WM brings to their organizations, including an industry-leading reporting and analytics platform and an unmatched asset network that will help healthcare industry customers manage and track their waste streams more efficiently. We continue to focus on identifying and capturing synergies and are on track to achieve $250 million of annual run rate synergies in 2027. We're very pleased with the progress we've made in a short period of time and are excited about the long-term value we're creating. In closing, I want to thank our employees for their dedication and hard work. Your efforts drive our success and we're grateful for your commitment. Looking ahead, I'm excited about the opportunity to share more about our strategic priorities and long-term vision at our upcoming Investor Day in June. We hope you'll join us in New York or tune in to the event via the webcast. I'll now turn the call over to John to discuss our operational results.