Waste Connections, Inc. (WCN) Q1 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

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, ...