Ned Coletta: Yes. So, we don’t take a lot of tons at our landfills per se by spot price. We definitely have pretty long-term strategic relationships with various haulers, or we have our own flows of waste, but we take advantage on the other side. We do a lot of work with the burn plants in the Northeast, and we’ve been able to renew some great contracts across our footprint and also take advantage of some of those lower spot prices. And we’ll always be in the camp of if we can bring waste at the right price point to a third-party site and maybe take advantage of a price point like that save our long-term landfill capacity for later, we’ll make that decision. We — there’s so much tension long term.
John Casella: Historically also, Michael, as you know, we — we’re more than happy to fill that spot capacity and would enter into those agreements to fill that spot capacity for the incinerators in the wintertime. And we have a little bit of that ongoing. But it could be more significant in terms of our ability to help stabilize that through the course of the winter.
Ned Coletta: Yes, Brad had a number in his script. It’s actually important there. So Brad, our average price per ton at the landfills was up, I think, close to 10%,10% in the quarter. So I mean, that just shows — and that’s the average across our tons going in and third party tons.
John Casella: It’s the function of how we’re managing the disposal and the mix of wastes going in, right, so…
Ned Coletta: We’re not lowering for spot pricing there.
Michael Hoffman: Okay, that’s good to know. And then I think we can all agree that probably inflation is going to end at a higher low than it was the prior 15 years. And none of that should frighten you because you can price. The more important comment and it’s a question at the same time, there’s no risk to unit prices and you can manage your underlying cost of inflation and you can price accordingly. So whether we stay with structurally higher, you’re going to be able to price it through and there’s no risk to unit price.
John Casella: That’s correct.
Michael Hoffman: Okay. A – John Casella No risk.
Michael Hoffman: No risk. And then just to be clear on the [Multiple Speakers]
John Casella: Particularly, with our book of business — particularly with our book of business, because of the small amount of municipal contracts that we have, we have the capability to offset inflation.
Michael Hoffman: You have a high percent that is open market access to price.
John Casella: Right.
Michael Hoffman: And then the landfill liner failure is not a slope failure, like…
John Casella: It was not a liner — Michael, it was not a liner failure. So when you cap a facility, you put a cap over the top of the existing waste and then synthetic cap, and then on top of that goes the soils, and that’s where the veneer failure was. It wasn’t a failure of a liner. It was just simply a failure of the cap, the synthetic cap, the dirt over the synthetic cap slid.
Michael Hoffman: Right. And just to be very clear [Multiple Speakers] yes, but there is a peer company out there that had a true slope failure, advanced disposal had one several years ago. This is not a slope failure, just to be clear for everybody, it’s not disrupting revenue, blah, blah, blah. Okay.
John Casella: No, not at all. Didn’t disrupt the operations of the facility.
Michael Hoffman: Okay.
John Casella: And there was no action from a regulatory standpoint.
Michael Hoffman: Okay. And then lastly, the New York City, I think we have to talk about that in two different types of waste. There’s a commercial waste, which is what the franchising is about and then there’s residential. What are you most sensitive to as an opportunity? Because I think that commercial volume pretty much had homes before they were franchised. And maybe there’s a little bit movement, but for the most part, it all had a home where the residential volume seems like there’s more opportunity to take advantage of where they want to move that.
Ned Coletta: Yes. As we’ve said before, I mean, we’ve had a number of commercial customers coming out of the city to our sites in New York for years, Michael, and those flows are pretty steady. And several of those partners have won contracts in this wave as well. So we don’t see anything that’s a major plus or minus here for Casella in our interactions. There’s maybe a little bit of new rail capacity. It’s getting looked at in the city. That could be an opportunity, but that’s about it from our vantage point.
Michael Hoffman: Okay. Thank you very much.
Ned Coletta: Thank you, Michael.
John Casella: Thanks, Michael.
Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Adam Bubes from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Adam Bubes: Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I think you mentioned the acquired businesses in 2023 have come in at slightly lower margin pre-synergies than the existing standalone business. Can you just elaborate that — on that a little more? How much lower are margins coming in? And can you just update us on progress integrating Twin Bridges and GFL assets, any major surprises?
Brad Helgeson: Yes. Hi, Michael, it’s Brad. So I mentioned that they’re coming in at a lower margin. I’m really talking a slightly lower margin to the tune of, I think it weighed 5 basis points on margins in the fourth quarter. So I think really we view this as very quickly an opportunity as we start to integrate the businesses, continue to integrate the businesses and capture the synergies. This will become a margin tailwind pretty quickly.
