Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Mary Anne Whitney: And the only thing I’d add to that Toni, would be that, we’d say there’s really been no change, no discernible change in any of the trends we’ve seen. If you think about it, roll off polls have been in that flat to kind of up a point or two landfill volumes have been flattish to down a little bit all year long. I look at January numbers, they’re not materially different. Maybe January’s a little better than December was. There’s always a little noise in the winter, but the key is that, that we haven’t seen any market change really for the last year or so.

Toni Kaplan: Great. And I was hoping you could talk about your sustaining ability within sustainability. My question really is, do you see sustainability as being a bigger part of your strategy in the future? I know you gave the EBITDA benefit and the CapEx, but just broadly, I guess maybe just talk about your differentiators versus peers in the sustainability area?

Worthing Jackman: Well, first off, we’ve always noted that, you know, our discussion of sustainability efforts have been core to who we’ve been for 25 years. It’s just we’re, we’re speaking more about it these past few years and telling our story, right? So I think we’re — I think we are getting a little bit better at being more transparent about what’s been going on through these years. Obviously, our take and view on investment in it is a balanced view of projects we own versus projects we partner on. And again, that approach as we talked about is the dollar for dollar return of EBITDA for CapEx dollar deployed in the aggregate, but it doesn’t change who we are. I think our, the discussion about sustainability really is one of reminding folks that sometimes the pendulum swings from execution all the way over to from five-year out promises on sustainability and what it might deliver.

I think we’re proud to focus on both what we’re doing quarter in quarter route, year in, year out, how our folks step up to, we’ve talked about, again, some of the most challenging operating environments we’ve seen these past few years, and we’re proud to talk about the year and now. And so I think we’ve over 25 years, if you want to define standing ability, I think it’s that performance you’ve seen over 25 years and, and hopefully that pendulum that swings from execution to sustainability and really swung hard to the sustainability side from just a conversation on the market. Hopefully that’s drifting back more to a more balanced view of both execution and sustainability. If people can hear us we’re calling the operator to check in on what’s happened to the call, but can’t hear anyone.

That’s interesting. Well, I could ask myself questions and we could. I could interview myself. Yeah, we’re trying to correct this. They can hear us. Evidently we can’t hear them. Not a bad idea. If you have a question, just email Mary Anne and myself, and we’ll read the question and answer it.

Operator: Pardon me, this is the operator. Are you ready for your next question?

Worthing Jackman: Yes, Nick, thank you. If you could let the next question come through.

Operator: Yes, that’s Kevin Chiang – CIBC. Please go ahead.

Kevin Chiang: Thanks and good morning. Maybe if I could just talk about the M&A pipeline, if I look at maybe the average size of the deals, they steadily increased the past few years and really saw Mark jump in 2022. And I’m just wondering, it sounds like we should expect another outsized year in 2023, but, the composition of that pipeline changed at all i.e. are you seeing larger companies for sale? Are you seeing maybe the pipeline getting bigger in terms of — in terms of what you’d look at as a tuck in acquisition, be interesting just given some of the trends we’ve seen in terms of kind of the average size per deal the past few years?

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