Jon Windham: I can’t imagine you being idled, Ned. And then one other question. I just wanted to get your general thoughts on the interest rate environment within the market and less on yourself you obviously have a lot of fixed rate debt. But I’m just wondering what you’re seeing and hearing from, maybe the vulnerability to higher interest rates from some of these smaller regional players? Thanks a lot.
Ned Coletta: Yes. So, I’ll start with that question, and John I think can hop and talk a bit about our balance sheet. So it’s a good point where we talk to a lot of small companies. We buy a lot of smaller companies and they really are always financing the next piece of equipment and the next piece of growth with new debt. And so they’ve really seen a composition change to their ability to grow. And we expect this to result in a return profile going up in the marketplace. So, what I mean is when we bid on municipal work if you look to their private bidding their cost of capital to enter that bid is going to be higher now than it was a year ago whereas we’ve done an excellent job hedging and entering into fixed price agreements.
And our balance sheet is very stable and we have a lot of flexibility. So, we actually view this as a point of advantage. We’re also hearing from some smaller private companies that may be accelerating their view of when they might want to sell because their cost of capital or cost to replace equipment has gone up. So, from our vantage point we’re in a great stable place and it probably creates more opportunity for us.
John Casella: It really does. I think it’s really consistent with what we have laid out from a growth perspective. And not only are we moving forward to make sure that we have the resources in place from a practical standpoint particularly as it relates to freeing net up in terms of being more involved from an operating standpoint it’s really exciting because of the opportunities that we have in front of us. As we’ve indicated not only we do have the opportunities over the top of our existing franchise in the Northeast, but now we obviously have those opportunities in the Mid-Atlantic as well. So, really exciting time. And not only are people still seeing we have invested substantially in HR to try to fill all of the seats and those pressures are still out there inflation disposal costs labor issues. Those are all issues affecting most of the independents that we’re aware of up and down the Eastern Seaboard and particularly in the Northeast and in the Mid-Atlantic.
Jason Mead: And John just to tag on, this is Jason. So, as Ned mentioned from a risk mitigation perspective we have about $415 million in interest rate swaps that help hedge out our interest rate volatility risk. And we’re close to 70% fixed rate debt today across our balance sheet. So, we’ve done a really nice job there and that’s something that we focus heavily on and we’ll continue to do something.
Ned Coletta: I mentioned to Tyler earlier but our average interest rate was 4.5% in the quarter which is pretty notable.
Jon Windham: Really appreciate your time. Thanks for that.
Operator: Thank you please standby for our last question. And our next question comes from Stephanie Moore from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Stephanie Moore: Hi, good morning. Thank you.
Stephanie Moore: Good morning.
Stephanie Moore: I wanted to touch on — maybe you could talk a little bit about your recycling operations clearly a best-in-class in the Northeast in your footprint. I think there’s some on the background on potential changing legislation as it relates to recycling maybe following the path of what we’ve seen in Canada with extended producer responsibility. So, I just would love to get your thoughts on how you might are tackling or potentially be involved in what could be some changing legislation in some of the states in your footprint? Thanks.
John Casella: So, I think part of what we obviously track from a government relations standpoint is the potential for changes from a recycling standpoint and producer responsibilities et cetera and I think that we’re seeing various degrees of effort. And every one of those efforts we would be in the middle of that trying to make recommendations to improve whatever path municipalities and/or state governments want to potentially move down. So, I think that it’s certainly on the agenda it’s certainly something that is in the legislatures across the Northeast not all of them but several of them and it’s certainly something that we follow and keep significant track of.
Stephanie Moore: Great thank you. And then just on M&A it’s been a tremendous year of M&A in 2023. As you think of 2024 what’s your view in terms of pace of M&A? Would it still look to be opportunistic and what the pipeline drugs up? Or are you looking to maybe optimizing some of the deals you did this year? I would love to give your thoughts about just M&A in 2024? Thanks.
John Casella: Yes, I think that we have plenty of opportunities. But I think you’re right in terms of the amount of M&A that we have done this year we’ll be continuing to integrate into the beginning of 2024. We’ve got work to do there significant work to do there. So, obviously, we want to get those businesses tucked in get them completely on board from a cultural perspective. So, there’s a lot of work ongoing right now. There will be a lot of work continuing into the first quarter. But again I think that our acquisition program will probably be more towards the second quarter to the end of the year but nonetheless significant opportunities for us to continue to grow from an M&A standpoint But we do have work that needs to be done from an integration standpoint. As Ned said, we’re also doing a significant amount of work from an IT perspective as well.
Ned Coletta: And John I mentioned this number earlier but we expect about 14% revenue growth year-over-year from acquisitions we completed in 2023 because they came on in the second and third quarters so the vast majority. So, there’s quite a bit of tailwind there already as well as Stephanie but besides new deals happening.
Stephanie Moore: Great. Thank you so much.
John Casella: Thank you.
Operator: I am showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back over to John Casella Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for closing remarks.
John Casella: Thanks everybody. Thank you for being part of the call today. We look forward to talking to you in February for our next call. Thanks. Have a great day.
Operator: Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.
