Operator: Our next question comes from Noah Kay from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead with your question.
Noah Kaye: Thanks. Hey, Ron, we talked last quarter about the $5 billion or so now fitting the market model for M&A and the internalization opportunities around the Northeast. Given your comments around this year potentially being one of the busiest ever, and in recognition of what you have done already, I was wondering if we could get some more color either around the regional mix that you see those opportunities in and what the profile of the types of acquisitions you are looking at?
Ron Mittelstaedt: Sure. Well, I would say first off, Noah, we have got opportunities in all of our solid waste regions. We have five regions in the US. and one in Canada, as. We have active LOIs signed and discussions going in all of those regions. They are all what I would consider our traditional solid waste companies, collection companies, integrated companies, companies with transfer stations, etc. I am not necessarily saying there is an incremental weighting to some geography or the other. It’s probably a little bit more in our competitive footprint right now. Of course, our competitive footprint is a little larger. Franchise transactions and the exclusive models take a little longer, although we have several signed as well.
It’s pretty balanced, which is what gives us the confidence to say that we have an opportunity at perhaps a record year other than the year we did a public merger. This is, as I said, all core key solid waste business. Certainly, we are focused on improving our utilization of our Arrowhead asset and incremental tonnage through that asset that we acquired in August of 2023. There are definitely transactions that will boost that. Those can come from the mid-South all the way up through the Eastern seaboard. We have a busy plate, a lot going on. I think over the next couple of quarters, hopefully, some of that will become clearer for everyone.
Noah Kaye: Thanks, Ron. I was just reflecting on your comments to start the call about where you and the business sit a year later since you are coming back. I guess the question is, too certain to declare victory, but you have made a lot of progress already on things like employee retention and turnover reduction. Where are your incremental focus areas at this point for operational improvement within the business?
Ron Mittelstaedt: Well, first off, thank you. I would say all our local teams in our regions have made the improvements. We just get to talk about them. Look, we’re going to continue doing that. When I first got back, I said, I think on this call one year ago this week, if you’re going to follow one thing, follow turnover because it drives everything. It drives incremental improvement in cost. It drives safety. It drives customer satisfaction. It drives our ability to pursue incremental volumes of all types that we otherwise might not be able to if headcount is too open. It will help us get better across the board. That’s going to continue to be a huge focus and continuing to maintain and drive down, particularly voluntary turnover.
That’s a focus. We have a huge focus on risk. As, we’ve always had a huge focus on price. That’s not going to change. As we continue to get, I’ll call it healthier in how we’re performing both operating-wise and financially, then we’ve got the ability to step on the pedal on growth, both organically and inorganically. I would tell you that a year ago, we really couldn’t afford to do that because we were just trying to get through the quarters with the amount of open positions, etc, that just puts strain on the entire organization at every level. The focus isn’t going to change other than I think you’ll continue to see us have more opportunity for growth. We don’t talk about it. That’s not our style. We’ve got all kinds of different things we’re working on, utilization of AI in a number of different areas, but we don’t come out and put benchmarks to that.
We’ll let the margin talk about that when we complete them. Certainly, we have room for technology improvement in our operating platform over the next several years.
Operator: Our next question comes from Bryan Burgmeier from Citi. Please go ahead with your question.
Bryan Burgmeier: Morning. Thank you for taking the question. Ron, I know it’s only been three months since you’ve closed the secure acquisition, but I think in the last call, you mentioned the company is running about 22 of the 29 acquired facilities and some of them maybe come back online this year. Is there any update there? I guess I’m just curious what exactly is being assumed in guidance now. If it’s too soon to say, I totally understand. Maybe that’s a better item for July or October.
Ron Mittelstaedt: Yes. Okay. Well, thanks, Brian. Number one, the guidance does not assume any incremental opening of those seven shuttered facilities. I believe that prior to year end, we will open up to two of those. I think we’ll understand that better come July, but I think we will open potentially two of the seven that are shuttered right now before year end or maybe right at year end, so, maybe not contributing anything to ’24, but certainly some rollover into ’25. And then we will continue to evaluate the other five of the seven, and you’ll see various openings occur throughout ’25 and into ’26. I ultimately believe that we will probably open six of the seven incremental ones that we acquired.
Bryan Burgmeier: Got it. Thanks for that detail. And last question for me, maybe just for Mary Anne, and apologies if I missed this. Can you remind us what your guidance is assuming right now for recycled commodity prices and RIN prices and then where waste connections stood with those items in 1Q?
Mary Anne Whitney: Thank you. I’ll turn it over. Sure. So, for 1Q, OCC was $130 a ton and RINs averaged $3.10. You did see OCC tick up a little higher over the course of the quarter and it ended closer to $140. So, we always mark to market. So, basically the assumption is they’re around current levels. That’s what is included in the guidance for Q2.
Operator: And our next question comes from Tony Kaplan from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead with your question.
Hillary Lee: Hi, guys. This is Hillary Lee on for Tony. Great quarter. Congrats. I just wanted to talk about margin a little bit, kind of going back to Kevin’s question. It looks like, with the rest of the year potentially being evenly distributed, it could possibly reach 34% by the back half of the year. So, just wondering, what would need to happen for you guys to get to that threshold or, what could hold you back?
