As far as anything transformational, Tony, I mean, look, I guess you would never say never because then you regret it if you do something. But, it’s as close to never as I think I can come in saying, look, we are we are a core solid waste company. That’s what we are and that’s what we want to be. That’s our competency. And we’ve got a lot of runway in that space. We know it well. And I think we know how to perform fairly well in it. And that’s going to be what we do for the indefinite and sustaining future. We’ll look at things. And certainly if regulation or something drives, local governments to look to exit certain things and those are good assets, absolutely we’ll entertain that. This is a business, as I said, we know well. But we’re not looking to pivot into something differential due to lack of opportunity in our core business.
It would only be because we thought it had similar characteristics in terms of financial performance and defensibility and a growth opportunity. And if we saw that, we’d take a hard look at it.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Toby Summers from Truist Securities. Please go ahead with your question.
Jack Wilson: Yes. Hey, good morning. This is Jack Wilson on for Toby. Can we maybe dig into those weather headwinds you were seeing and sort of what distinguished those from normal seasonal weather patterns?
Ron Mittelstaedt: Sure. I’ll start. So, look, weather’s nothing new. It occurs every year, whether we like it or not. It occurs most harshly in the first quarter, of course, here in North America. But we had in January in both the West Coast and parts of what we call the Mid-South and the Southeast, a very extreme weather and in particularly very high, very low, frigid temperatures that shut down our ability to run. We had markets that we could not operate in for one to two weeks at all. Facilities completely shuttered, employees home, and nobody could run because the Department of Transportation within those states and areas, such as Oregon is a great example, disallowed transportation. That was not deemed something safety, fire or police or other.
That is abnormal. OK, we can handle cold weather. We can handle snow. But when we’re told by authorities that we’re not to be on the road, that’s not something we violate., Alaska, we’re the largest player in Alaska. And if you would think anywhere is used to significant weather, it’s Alaska. And we had over 60 inches of snow in a five day period in Alaska, shut down Alaska for 12 days that we could not run. So those are examples of what we’re referring to, that the weather was prohibitive in that it just closed geographic areas.
Jack Wilson: OK, thank you for that color there. And then just one quick follow up. If you do achieve that one third of sort of in-house up-skilled role fills, is it possible to quantify sort of the margin impact that might have?
Ron Mittelstaedt: No, I, I would say no. The answer is I don’t think it’s. What I would say is it’s part of how we believe there’s, 100 basis points plus, as we’ve said, in incremental margin improvement from these employee initiatives. And then I think there’s just things that are too difficult to quantify in your consistency of your service quality, your ability to price and retain more price, your ability to pursue event jobs because you’re fully staffed that right now you can’t pursue. There’s just a lot of it, of those kinds of things. And just the ability to have a stronger overall company because of, a balance in everybody’s life. So, what that exact margin impact is, we would only be guessing right now.
Operator: And our final question today comes from James Schumm from TD Cowen. Please go ahead with your question.
James Schumm: Hey guys, good morning. Morning. Nice quarter. Nice quarter. Could you give an update on the Chiquita Canyon landfill? How are expenses tracking relative to your expectations? And do you expect to have to revise cost estimates higher, perhaps due to relocation or other ancillary charges?
Ron Mittelstaedt: Yes. So, I would tell you that Chiquita is tracking about where we would think at this point. It may be a little ahead, but that’s actually a good thing in a way because it means we’re, perhaps making more headway a little faster than we had planned. We don’t believe right now that what we’ve, presented and accrued in terms of the $160 million is going to change or change significantly., what we do, just so you’re aware, and this is not something new, we’ve done it every year for 26 years, is once a year we review our closure and post-closure accruals based on engineering estimates. And as we have told you, this is a closure cost to our Chiquita landfill because it’s in a closed section of the landfill. So, we will review that cost once a year, and if there are changes to it, we will make them.
If they’re material, we’ll communicate them. We don’t expect they would be material. And that is not anything different than we do at every one of our landfills and have for 26 years. So, it’s just a larger, more public issue that is more well-known because of everything surrounding Southern California and this type of event. But, Chiquita is tracking about where we thought it would be at this point in time.
James Schumm: Okay, great. Thanks, Ron. And I recognize that we’re only a few weeks into April, but wanted to know how Q2 is tracking relative to normal seasonal expectations thus far. Is there any color you can provide there?
Mary Anne Whitney: As we said, the way we’ve got it serves that sort of normal seasonal ramp. And probably too early to say, but nothing to suggest it’s outside of anything extraordinary. It certainly hasn’t been weather or anything else that would cause us to change our thinking on the quarter. But, we’ll look forward to letting you see how the quarter plays out.
Operator: And, ladies and gentlemen, with that, we’ll conclude today’s question and answer session. I’d like to now turn the floor back over to Ron Mittelstadt for any closing remarks.
Ron Mittelstaedt: Okay, well, if there are no further questions, on behalf of our entire management team, we appreciate your listening to and interest in the call today. Mary Anne and Joe Box are available today to answer any direct questions that we did not cover that we are allowed to answer under Regulation FD, Regulation G, and applicable securities laws in Canada. Thank you again. We look forward to connecting with you at Waste Expo, upcoming investment conferences, or on our next earnings call.
Operator: And, ladies and gentlemen, with that, we’ll conclude today’s conference call and presentation. We thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.
