Waste Management Q1 2025 Earnings Report

Waste Management EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $1.67
• Consensus EPS: $1.59
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.08
• One Year Ago EPS: $1.75

Waste Management Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $6.02 billion
• Expected Revenue: $6.14 billion
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$125.71 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +16.70%

Waste Management Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2025
• Date: 4/28/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Tuesday, April 29, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 10:00AM ET

WM, Inc., formerly known as Waste Management (NYSE:WM), is an environmental services company that provides waste collection, transfer, disposal and recycling services. The company serves residential, commercial, industrial and municipal customers, helping manage everyday refuse as well as certain specialized waste streams.

Its operations include curbside and commercial waste collection, transfer stations, recycling facilities, landfills and waste-related energy services. WM also develops renewable natural gas and electricity projects that capture landfill gas for use as an energy source. Through these activities, the company supports waste reduction, resource recovery and environmentally responsible disposal.

Founded in 1968, WM primarily serves customers across the United States and Canada. The company changed its corporate name from Waste Management, Inc. to WM, Inc. in 2022 while retaining the NYSE ticker symbol WM.

Waste Management Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Strong Q1 performance: operating EBITDA grew 12% year-over-year, driven by solid collection and disposal results, and management reaffirmed full-year guidance.
• Sustainability businesses delivered over 20% EBITDA growth as automated recycling plants nearly doubled margins and eight new RNG facilities are on track for 2025 completion.
• WM Healthcare Solutions integration generated $16 million of synergies in Q1, with a clear path to $250 million of annual run-rate synergies by 2027 and early margin expansion of 20 bps.
• Accelerated M&A: WM expects over $500 million of solid waste tuck-in acquisitions in 2025, up from its typical $100–$200 million, fueled by a robust pipeline and strategic targets.
• Q1 headwinds included unusually severe winter weather in the Southeast and Gulf Coast, flat workday-adjusted volumes, and a 30 bps margin drag from expiring alternative fuel tax credits.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the WM Q1 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press * 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press * 11 again. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Ed Egl, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Ed Egl, VP of Investor Relations at WM]

Thank you, Livia. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our Q1 2025 Earnings Conference Call. With me this morning are Jim Fish, President and Chief Executive Officer; John Morris, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; and Devina Rankin, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. You'll hear prepared comments from each of them today. Jim will cover high-level financials and provide a strategic update. John will cover an operating overview, and Devina will cover the details of the financials. Before we get started, please note that we have filed a Form 8-K that includes the earnings press release and is available on our website at www.wm.com. The Form 8-K, the press release, and the schedules of the press release include important information. During the call, you will hear forward-looking statements, which are based on current expectations, projections, or opinions about future periods.

[Ed Egl, VP of Investor Relations at WM]

All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Some of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in today's press release and in our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. John will discuss our results in the areas of yield and volume, which, unless stated otherwise, are more specifically references to internal revenue growth or IRG from yield or volume. During the call, Jim, John, and Devina will discuss operating EBITDA, which is income from operations before depreciation and amortization. References to WM legacy business are total WM results, excluding the WM Healthcare Solutions segment. Any comparisons, unless otherwise stated, will be with the prior year period.

[Ed Egl, VP of Investor Relations at WM]

Net income, EPS, income from operations and margin, operating EBITDA and margin, operating expense and margin, and SG&A expense and margin have been adjusted to enhance comparability by excluding certain items that management believes do not reflect our fundamental business performance or results of operations. These adjusted measures, in addition to free cash flow, are non-GAAP measures. Please refer to the earnings press release and tables, which can be found on the company's website at www.wm.com, for reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures and additional information about our use of non-GAAP measures. This call is being recorded and will be available 24 hours a day, beginning approximately 1:00 P.M. Eastern Time today. To hear a replay of the call, access the WM website at www.investors.wm.com. Time-sensitive information provided during today's call, which is occurring on April 29th, 2025, may no longer be accurate at the time of a replay.

[Ed Egl, VP of Investor Relations at WM]

Any redistribution, retransmission, or rebroadcast of this call in any form without the express written consent of WM is prohibited. Now I'll turn the call over to WM's President and CEO, Jim Fish.

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

Okay, thanks, Ed. Thank you all for joining us. The WM team again delivered quarterly results that exceeded our expectations. The one thing I'm most proud of over the past few years is that we've truly become a predictably strong performer on a quarter-in and quarter-out basis. Once again, I'm pleased to report that we had a strong start to the year with Q1 results exceeding our expectations on several fronts. Total company operating EBITDA grew by more than 12% in the Q1 compared to the Q1 of 2024, driven by solid operational performance in the collection and disposal business, meaningful contributions from WM Healthcare Solutions, and increases in our sustainability businesses, largely related to our growth investments.

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

Our momentum so far, as well as our demonstrated operational execution and the strength and resiliency of our business model, gives us confidence in our ability to achieve all of our financial guidance we outlined last quarter. Our focus remains on growing customer lifetime value while leveraging technology to optimize our cost structure, delivering on our strategic investments in sustainability, and extracting increased value from our acquisition investments. At a time when the U.S. workforce is aging and shrinking, moving quickly to deploy technology to supplement our workforce could prove to be a significant differentiator for WM. At the same time, the leadership position we've taken with our very profitable sustainability investments is positioning the WM brand to be synonymous with sustainability and is not easily matched by our competitors. Of course, we continue to identify opportunities to scale the core business through acquisitions.

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

We have a very robust pipeline of tuck-in opportunities and anticipate another outsized year of solid waste M&A. Turning to our sustainability businesses, in Q1, combined operating EBITDA from recycling and renewable energy grew by over 20% year over year, keeping us on track to meet full-year targets. Automated recycling facilities delivered nearly double the operating EBITDA margin compared to our non-automated facilities. We added two new facilities in California and Texas with seven more next-gen recycling plants scheduled to come in 2025. In renewable energy, growth was fueled by new RNG plants we brought online in late 2024 and strong pricing for natural gas and renewable electricity. We're currently advancing construction on eight additional RNG facilities that are all on track for completion this year. The strategy is working as our investments in sustainability are delivering strong, high-return growth.

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

During the Q1, we also made significant progress in our integration of WM Healthcare Solutions into the broader WM organization. Our new customers are excited by the expanded level of environmental expertise that WM brings to their organizations, including an industry-leading reporting and analytics platform and an unmatched asset network that will help healthcare industry customers manage and track their waste streams more efficiently. We continue to focus on identifying and capturing synergies and are on track to achieve $250 million of annual run rate synergies in 2027. We're very pleased with the progress we've made in a short period of time and are excited about the long-term value we're creating. In closing, I want to thank our employees for their dedication and hard work. Your efforts drive our success, and we're grateful for your commitment.

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

Looking ahead, I'm excited about the opportunity to share more about our strategic priorities and long-term vision at our upcoming Investor Day in June. We hope you'll join us in New York or tune in to the event via the webcast. I'll now turn the call over to John to discuss our operational results.

[John Morris, President, COO at WM]

Thanks, Jim. Good morning. The Q1 further demonstrates the consistent progress being made in our core collection and disposal business. Through our focus on customer lifetime value and optimization of our cost to serve, we again grew both operating EBITDA and margins in the quarter. Q1 operating EBITDA for the collection and disposal business was up almost 5%, and margin expanded 10 basis points. We achieved this growth in what we knew would be the most challenging quarter from a comparison standpoint. This success is particularly impressive when you consider the impacts of tough winter weather in our Southeast and Gulf Coast regions during the quarter and the expiration of the alternative fuel tax credits. Revenue has once again grown across all lines of business, driven by collection and disposal yield of 4% and core price of 6.5%, with churn remaining stable at around 9%.

[John Morris, President, COO at WM]

We continue to achieve solid pricing across all of our revenue streams. Commercial collection, transfer stations, and landfill core price were particularly strong in the quarter as we continue to leverage data-driven decision-making to offer pricing that reflects the value of our service, the strength of our asset network, and our commitment to providing differentiated customer solutions. Regarding volumes, our Q1 collection and disposal results were flat on a workday-adjusted basis. Positive landfill and commercial collection volumes were offset by our strategic exit from low-margin residential business, as well as continued economic pressure on the temporary segment of our industrial business. While the California wildfire cleanup positively impacted our special waste volumes in Q1, these gains were largely offset by impacts of winter weather events I mentioned earlier.

[John Morris, President, COO at WM]

Overall, we remain confident in our volume outlook for 2025 because our special waste pipelines remain strong, service intervals remain positive, and we expect fire volumes in Southern California to continue through at least the end of the Q3. Turning to operating costs and margin, Q1 marked our sixth consecutive quarter with operating expenses as a percentage of revenue below 61%. We delivered operating expenses at 60.5% of revenue, which is a 40 basis point improvement from Q1 of 2024. Our commitment to the operating fundamentals of the WM Way continues to drive margin improvement. The Q1's performance was driven by focusing on frontline retention and the use of automation and technology to drive efficiency and operating improvements.

[John Morris, President, COO at WM]

The investments we have made in our people, including human-centered leadership, coaching, and facility upgrades, continue to deliver improved driver retention, with Q1 seeing an 80 basis point improvement compared to the prior year period. When retention improves, it benefits safety, customer service, and efficiency. We also continue to create an optimized cost to serve with the ongoing adoption of automation and technology, including routing and resource planning tools. Cost optimization focuses combined with targeted contract renegotiations and the intentional shedding of low-margin customers in the residential line of business continue to deliver strong results. This is evident in our Q1 operating EBITDA margin in the residential line of business, which grew more than 130 basis points, achieving 20% for the first time in six years.

[John Morris, President, COO at WM]

We remain confident in our ability to execute our plans and achieve our full-year targets, including operating EBITDA of between $7.45 and 7.65 billion. In closing, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to our employees for their unwavering dedication over the last quarter. Their hard work and commitment to excellence have been instrumental in our success. I'll now turn the call over to Devina to discuss her 2025 financial results in further detail.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

Thanks, John, and good morning. We're pleased with our strong start to 2025, which is particularly evident when looking at the drivers of our Q1 operating EBITDA margin results. WM's legacy business achieved 30% margin for the fourth consecutive quarter. This is an increase of 40 basis points compared to the Q1 of 2024, and the improvement was driven by a 50 basis point contribution from favorable price-to-cost spread in the collection and disposal business, which is due to our success in optimizing and flexing our cost structure. We also saw a positive 20 basis point contribution from our recycling automation projects. These margin expansion contributions were partially offset by a 30 basis point headwind from the expiration of alternative fuel tax credits that benefited the prior year period.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

Total company margin was 20.5% in the quarter due to the 150 basis point impact of the addition of the WM Healthcare Solutions business. With our focus on optimizing this business, including through synergy capture, we've expanded the margin of WM Healthcare Solutions by 20 basis points in only one quarter's time. There is a clear path to additional cost optimization, and we are on track to achieve our full-year expectations. As Jim mentioned, we're pleased with the progress we have already made as we begin to integrate and optimize the medical waste and secure information destruction businesses within WM's comprehensive set of offerings. As in other parts of our business, we're committed to using technology to make processes and people more efficient.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

We've got a cross-functional team engaged to optimize the ERP system as a tool to improve all elements of the customer journey, from onboarding to service delivery, and then from billing to cash collection. The team's off to a great start, and we're encouraged by their early progress. Turning to cash flow results, operating cash flow was $1.21 billion in the Q1. This is a decrease compared to the Q1 of 2024, but it is in line with expectations as we had a planned increase in cash interest payments due to additional debt issued last year to fund the acquisition of Stericycle. We also had a headwind from working capital due in part to particularly strong customer receipts at the end of 2024. We remain confident in our outlook for cash flow from operations for the full year.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

Capital expenditures totaled $831 million in the quarter, with both capital spending to support the base business and our investments in sustainability growth in line with expectations. Given tariff and trade negotiations, it's worth mentioning that we are particularly well-positioned to complete our sustainability growth investments at targeted capital investment levels because we've been deliberate in procuring the equipment needed for these projects ahead of time. We're also well-positioned for fleet replacement, with Q1 of 2025 being a particularly strong quarter for truck deliveries. Q1 free cash flow of $475 million is also on plan, and we're on track to achieve our full-year free cash flow outlook of between $2.675 and 2.775 billion. In the Q1, we returned $336 million to our shareholders through dividends.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

Share buybacks currently paused as we focus on getting back to targeted level of leverage through a combination of earnings growth and debt reduction. That said, we continue to focus on identifying tech and acquisitions in our core business, and we currently expect to close on more than $500 million of solid waste acquisitions in 2025. This is a nice step change relative to our typical $100-200 million of tech and acquisitions each year, showing our continued confidence in identifying attractive transactions at the right price. Our leverage ratio at the end of the quarter was 3.58 times. When considering our earnings outlook, disciplined approach to allocating capital, and the healthy acquisition pipeline I mentioned, we expect leverage will be approximately 3.15 times at the end of 2025.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

In closing, I want to extend my sincere thanks to the entire WM team for all of their hard work thus far in 2025. Our continued ability to deliver strong operational and financial performance puts us on track to achieve all of our financial guidance, and this is a testament to the team's dedication, focus, and talent. With that, Livia, let's open the line for questions.

[Operator]

Lee, please unmute and take a minute to ask the question. You will need to press * 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, simply press * 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the candidate roster. Now, first question coming from the lineup, Bryan Burgmeier with Citi, he'll let us know open.

[Bryan Burgmeier, Equity Research Analyst at Citi]

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Maybe to start, a question for Devina. I was wondering if you could shed maybe a little bit more light on your outlook for 2Q. I know you don't normally give kind of quarterly guidance, but just trying to think through, I suppose, the normal seasonality for healthcare, considering that's a new business. And then if you have any detail on maybe the quarter-over-quarter kind of margin improvement for solid waste relative to normal seasonality, that would be helpful.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

Sure. Great question. What I would tell you is there's not anything that we're seeing from a seasonality perspective that is really unusual, with the exception of the impacts of the California wildfires. In terms of what will drive margin expansion, what I mentioned is that the solid waste business contributed 50 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion in the quarter. When you consider that that's overcoming 30 basis points from the alternative fuel tax credits, you're looking at an 80 basis point year-over-year expansion in margins for traditional solid waste businesses. You combine that with the strong execution on recycling automation of another 20 basis points, and that shows you 100 basis points of margin expansion from the base business.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

When we look forward to Q2, we're really optimistic that we'll see another step change in margin on a year-over-year basis and normal seasonal uptick in the operating margins of the business. When I think about the healthcare solutions business particularly, it's not so much seasonality in the revenue outlook that we're looking at. It really is continued momentum in synergy capture and the realization of incremental value from optimizing the cost structure of that business that will start to accelerate as we approach the Q2. We think that Q3 will be our strongest quarter from a margin perspective, and that really will show momentum behind the traditional business combined with value capture running at more peak levels for full realization over the course of the year of that $85 million-$90 million in total synergies for the Stericycle business in 2025.

[Bryan Burgmeier, Equity Research Analyst at Citi]

Got it. Got it. Thank you for that detail. Maybe a question for John. You're just curious how kind of yield in the solid waste business in Q1 compared to your expectations. It just seems like the spread maybe between core price and yield is widening a little bit. If you can shed any light on kind of what's taking place there, maybe it's kind of just a function of mix or region, but any detail you had would be great. Thank you. I'll turn it over.

[John Morris, President, COO at WM]

Yeah, Brian, I think it dropped down 400 basis points in the quarter. What I would tell you, what I would point to is that if you look at our core price performance, it was really strong across all lines of business, and it translated to margin expansion. There were some anomalies in there on the yield conversion. I mentioned some of the California wildfire volume, which is hitting special waste, which runs all through volume. There was a little bit of pressure from some of the industrial business that was a little softer in the quarter. What I will tell you is, even though that trend was negative, it was better quarter-over-quarter. We are seeing some sequential improvement. That is part of why we feel confident to make some comments about how we feel going into Q2.

[John Morris, President, COO at WM]

The yield conversion, it's one data point, but I think margin and core price performance is really where we're focused.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Kevin Chiang with CIBC, he'll let us know. Open.

[Kevin Chiang, Analyst at CIBC]

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe I'll ask a yield question as well. I did notice, I guess, a year-over-year increase in your commercial yield was effectively flat from the growth rate you saw on the Q4. Resi, though, was down about a Resi and Industrial were down a little bit, maybe 100, 150 basis points sequentially from the Q4. Just wondering if you'd call it anything specific in the commercial pricing strategy that yielded relatively better performance on a sequential basis.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

What I'd point out, I would say that our pricing strategy is strong across all three of those lines of business. It really is a mix difference that John was mentioning that has led to some of the variability, and that's about unit differences, particularly in the industrial business, as we've seen some variability in temporary roll off. We see that as being largely weather-related. When we think about 2024 and the trends we were seeing, we were seeing some softness in industrial hauls in 2024, but had some enthusiasm about the fact that we had cycled through the worst of those trends and were looking for some moderation in those levels in the current year. When we look at March and April in particular, we're happy to say that those trends are proving to be more consistent with our expectations coming into the year.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

The extreme winter weather that we saw in February in particular really is something that had more of an outsized impact on Q1, but we're moving past that. The other thing that I would mention on commercial conversion of core price to yield that was particularly interesting for us, and it did have some impact on industrial as well, is some unexpected losses from large national accounts, customers that experienced bankruptcies and therefore some store closures that we hadn't anticipated in our guidance.

[Kevin Chiang, Analyst at CIBC]

Okay. That's super helpful. Maybe just my second question. It looks like healthcare or Stericycle revenue was down year-over-year. I know you don't adjust everything the same way Stericycle did, but maybe you can just speak to the volume and pricing trends you saw in the quarter versus last year, appreciating that you didn't own the business there. Was there any purposeful shedding as you looked to improve the revenue quality within Stericycle or improve the overall margin performance within the healthcare business?

[Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions at WM]

Certainly, Brian. This is Rafael. I'll take that one. I just want to remind the group that over the course of the quarter, we did shed our Spain and Portugal businesses, and that actually accounts for the majority of the draw on the revenue basis. Actually, the revenue story is not a bad one for us. Actually, the regulated medical waste business is actually slightly up. We're actually ahead about 1% in regulated medical waste stops, for example. That churn in the national and hospital channels is actually right at 3%, consistent with what it's been. Despite some of the ERP challenges that Devina actually referenced, we're making good headway in putting forward the plan to resolve. We haven't seen an uptick there. We feel pretty confident on the revenue side.

[Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions at WM]

On the secure information destruction side, we did see a little bit of a dip there, but again, confidence on the fact that it's not structural. It really had to do with a little weakness on the event work, what we call the purges there. We have got a good plan to kind of connect our sales and operating folks a little bit better there to perform better on time on that and recapture those volumes.

[Kevin Chiang, Analyst at CIBC]

That's great color. I appreciate it. I'll get back into the queue. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Tyler Brown with Raymond James, he'll let us know open.

[Tyler Brown, Associate Vice President at Raymond James & Associates]

Hey, good morning.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

Good morning, Tyler.

[Tyler Brown, Associate Vice President at Raymond James & Associates]

Hey, Rafa, just on that, how much synergy capture was in the $95 million of reported EBITDA in Q1? I know this is splitting hairs, but I think you guys said the updated synergies are $80-100 million from up to $100 million. Are you messaging anything with that?

[Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions at WM]

Not really. Look, we really are feeling very comfortable with achieving that midpoint of the range right now. We produced about $16 million in value capture in Q1, dropping straight into the P&L. That is going to, of course, continue to generate benefits. I will tell you, a lot of that came from our first execution on rationalization of SG&A for us, particularly on the sales coverage side. I could tell you that the reason for the confidence on delivering is that if we just but execute on a little bit more of the planned sales coverage optimization there, and we execute on our internalization goals, which, by the way, contributed very little in Q1, that is probably—or not probably, that is definitely because we are waiting for contracts to expire. We have to put in line equipment and so forth.

[Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions at WM]

That's going to start paying dividends towards the latter part of Q2 and on through the back half of the year. We feel very comfortable with achieving the guidance.

[Tyler Brown, Associate Vice President at Raymond James & Associates]

Okay.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

Tyler, just really quickly, what I would tell you is we wanted to be clear with the investor community that our targeted execution on value capture for the year is $90 million. Our midpoint of a range is always our best estimate of the outcome. Approaching $100 million, we felt like was a little more vague than what would be beneficial. We wanted to give you clarity that the range is $80-100 million. We think $90 million is the most likely outcome.

[Tyler Brown, Associate Vice President at Raymond James & Associates]

Okay. Perfect. We love clarity. Devina, and I do not know if Tara is in there as well, but I think you guys were expecting, call it $190 million of incremental EBITDA from RNG and recycling. This is my view. Does it feel like maybe that is a little bit behind schedule in Q1? I guess a couple of questions. One, are you still confident in that number? Maybe my read is wrong. Two, I think you addressed this upfront, but at this point, you do not expect any RNG CapEx related delays or increased spend due to tariffs. Would that be correct?

[Tara Hemmer, Senior VP, Chief Sustainability Officer at WM]

Yeah. I am in the room, Tyler. I'll take the back half first. We are very confident because we had most of our equipment delivered well in advance of even any of these tariff discussions happening. No impacts related to project schedules related to tariffs or related to capital costs. Related to your question about the performance of the business, we are performing according to plan. If you look at the recycling line of business, it contributed about $11 million in EBITDA performance from those gross projects. That was the majority of the benefits that we saw in recycling. We're delivering on what we said we would deliver: 30% improvement in labor, 20-plus % improvement on operating costs. I mean, just having visited our Baltimore recycling plant, these are transformative assets that are delivering volume improvements to communities that need it.

[Tara Hemmer, Senior VP, Chief Sustainability Officer at WM]

On the RNG side, we brought a lot of plants on at the back half of 2024. What you're seeing in our results is some improved performance related to pricing, also a lot of volume coming online. Some of that was offset by some operating costs in startup that was planned.

[Tyler Brown, Associate Vice President at Raymond James & Associates]

Okay. Okay. It sounds like it's largely tracking.

[Tara Hemmer, Senior VP, Chief Sustainability Officer at WM]

Yeah.

[Tyler Brown, Associate Vice President at Raymond James & Associates]

Real quick. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Devina, just real quick, the 30 basis point drag in CNG, that's going to be every quarter of the year based on what we know today. Is that right?

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

That's correct. Thirty basis points for the full year was included in our guidance for EBITDA margin for 2025.

[Tyler Brown, Associate Vice President at Raymond James & Associates]

Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you for the clarification. Thank you, guys.

[Tara Hemmer, Senior VP, Chief Sustainability Officer at WM]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Trevor Romeo with William Blair, he'll let us know open.

[Trevor Romeo, Analyst at William Blair]

Hi, good morning. Appreciate you taking the questions. One I had on M&A, I guess. If I heard you right, Devina, it sounds like you're now expecting $500 million or so of solid waste acquisitions, which is up from last quarter. One, I guess, is the full $500 million included in your guidance now? Two, we'd just love kind of a qualitative update on what kind of opportunities you're seeing. Are you finding in this type of environment with some additional economic uncertainty, is there more willingness to sell from some of these smaller companies?

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

Sure. I'll take the first part of the question, then turn it over to John in order to address the second part. What I would tell you is when we came into 2025, a lot of this pipeline had developed, but we were in DOJ review processes. We were in contract negotiation processes. The pipeline was available to us, but we did not have it fully. path to close was not as clear to us as it is today. We are really happy with the progression of the transactions that we have in our pipeline. With the benefit of where those things stand, we are able to say that those transactions are in the upside of our guidance relative to midpoint. We had contemplated those, and they stand today.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

What I would say is incremental tuck-in acquisition revenue, dependent on the timing of close, could now be in the ballpark of $80-125 million. That's up from about $35-80 million in our original guidance and midpoint.

[John Morris, President, COO at WM]

Trevor, I would just add to what Devina said. I think a few things. One, there is certainly some uncertainty out there. I think the other challenge as you see is labor, right? The cost of labor and scarcity, I think, is certainly something that's pressuring some of the organizations we're looking at. Lastly, I would say in some of the markets, the value of our network, we talk about that a lot, our ability to move material in and out of markets is becoming more and more prevalent and more challenging. I think in some cases, the long-term outlook for disposal options is probably pushing some folks to the forefront in terms of now being ready to sell. As Devina said, the pipeline is strong. We did about $800 million last year.

[John Morris, President, COO at WM]

As we said, we've got a good runway between here and the end of the year to close some more of these deals.

[Trevor Romeo, Analyst at William Blair]

Great. That's super helpful. Thank you both. For my follow-up, maybe another one for Rafa, I guess, on the healthcare solutions business. It's still early, but just wondering if you could share any anecdotes you've had from conversations with customers about sort of the combined value proposition, any early wins or new opportunities. We'd kind of love to hear what customers are saying and how that's tracking.

[Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions at WM]

Yeah. Absolutely, Trevor. I actually participated in an entire West Coast swing recently and talked to several of the very large hospital networks there. I think Jim referenced it in his script, but a lot of folks excited about the increased ability to help them in their sustainability journey, about being able to provide sort of that best-in-class reporting and analytics tool, that platform that's going to help them manage their waste a lot better. Frankly, I've been surprised about how patient, pleasantly surprised, how patient the customer base is. That has a lot to do with the fact that it is WM stepping into the shoes as the owner and having the ability to provide that increased level of confidence. I could tell you that a lot of the conversation has also centered around the fixes to the ERP.

[Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions at WM]

We've communicated very transparently that this was about analyzing the entire customer journey and having work streams that would facilitate not only the collections and the billing side, but also the delivery of the service. A lot of excitement there. We've not framed at the moment what the cross-sell opportunity looks completely. We're still working on the playbooks, and we're waiting to have the right fixes on the ERP. Again, I'll remind the group, if you look at sort of the shared wallet customers that we have right now, where we have solid waste that WM had and regulated medical waste or secure information destruction services that Stericycle had, that's only about 17% of the total customer book. That doesn't even include customers that neither of us have.

[Trevor Romeo, Analyst at William Blair]

All right. That's great. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Sabahat Khan with RBC Capital Markets. You'll let us know, open.

[Sabahat Khan, Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets]

Great. Thanks and good morning. I just wanted to get a bit more color on the residential margins and the journey there. It sounds like it's something you've been working on for a while. Can you just maybe talk about how those discussions are going, if there's more volume to shed, or is it more from a pricing perspective that you want to maybe drive those margins higher? Maybe where we are in that journey with the margins there now in and around 20%. Thanks.

[John Morris, President, COO at WM]

I think a good question. I think us getting back over 20% for the first time in six years has been a good milestone. I give the team a lot of credit. There's been a lot of work done to do that, both on the revenue quality side and the operating expense side. I would tell you, I think for 2025, we're going to see probably the same level, give or take, 50 basis points of volume. That'll be negative. We have always said we want the residential line of business to compete with the others in terms of margin and return. While we've made a lot of progress, we still have some work to do there. I think for 2025 and probably into early 2026, we're going to see some additional negative volumes.

[John Morris, President, COO at WM]

When you're shedding 3-plus % volume, revenue and EBITDA are both up, it's still the right path for us to continue down.

[Sabahat Khan, Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets]

Great. And then just one quick one. I think, Devina, you mentioned earlier that some of the larger lifting on the synergies related to the Stericycle side is going to be in and around Q2 and Q3. If we think about the EBITDA flow-through of that business, should we expect that Q2 or Q3 to be the biggest quarter? And then just associated, if you can just talk about some of the initiatives you are planning on undertaking midyear that are going to drive that. Thanks.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

Sure. When we think about value capture, it really is a second half of 2025 ramp for us. Some of the actions will start in the Q2 that will bring a lot of that to bear really beginning in the Q3. What I would tell you is it's the things that you have heard Rafa talk about, whether it's sales coverage optimization efforts or back office streamlining. As an example, some of what we're doing in the back office includes migration of systems so that we have one platform for our human capital and all of those processes. That will unlock some incremental value for us that starts late in the Q3. A lot of it has to do with streamlining our back office processes.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

We think that some of the technology steps that we're taking that come in Q3 will really start to create some momentum in long-term value capture in the SG&A part. I'll remind everyone that we started with this business above 24% SG&A in the Q4 of 2024. We got 70 basis points of expansion in that margin sequentially in a single quarter, which is a great result. We know that there's more to come on our pathway to getting them to 15% at the end of that three-year period that we've got targeted for the $250 million value capture.

[Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions at WM]

Maybe I will add, this is Rafa about it. I'll add one more point. It's not just about value capture in the back end of the year. It's also about process discipline, operational discipline. We also just were able to put online our McCarran incinerator as of the end of Q1. We are now taking in about 70% of our total incinerator waste generation in the West Coast. As you can imagine, that's saving us an enormous amount of transportation for disposal costs. We expect that by the end of the year, we'll be internalizing 100% of that waste. The other aspect of that is the process discipline around fleet management, the reduction of spare ratios. Those were not optimal in Q1, but that's because we were framing and laying down the groundwork to be able to start doing that in Q2 and beyond.

[Sabahat Khan, Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets]

Great. Thanks very much for the color.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. You'll let us know, open.

[Toni Kaplan, Executive Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Thank you so much. I want to start out with a broad question, basically looking at the company and how resilient it is versus prior downturns. I wanted to get your updated thoughts on that overall and also maybe specifically how you would expect the sustainability business as well as the new healthcare business to perform in a potentially slower macro environment. Thanks.

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

Great question, Toni. This is Jim. I would tell you part of the reason we're so happy with the sustainability investments and the healthcare investments is that they do provide a level of diversification that we may not have had as much of with just a solid waste company. We like the growth trajectory of both. It tends to be viewed as a bit higher than solid waste. At the same time, this business, whether it's this company or whether it's this industry, is very resilient to economic downturn. We don't see an economic downturn. Maybe I'll re-emphasize a couple of John's comments about volume for the quarter. We weren't sure how much that we were really impacted in January and February by weather versus are we seeing an economic downturn.

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

I think the answer to that question came in our volumes for March and April, which turned back up nicely. That led us to believe that truly January and February truly were just two very bad weather months. I know the other guys have talked about it on their calls as well. When you get 6 inches of snow in Houston, Texas, and I've lived in Houston for 18 years, I've never seen that kind of weather here. It stayed on the ground. I mean, it's not snowing at 32 degrees. It's snowing at 21 degrees. It feels more like Denver, Colorado than Houston. It spread all the way over to Louisiana. Those areas in the south that do not normally anticipate weather shutdowns saw quite a bit of that.

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

The encouraging part about that was for the quarter was that we saw our volumes turn back up in March and then through the first three weeks of April. I think we are, to your question though, I think we're insulated from, we're not recession-proof as an industry, but we're certainly recession-resistant. Again, not that we see a recession on the horizon, but to the extent that something does turn down, I mentioned in my kind of first statement, we seem to meet the expectations that we provide quarter-in and quarter-out, regardless of what the economic climate is or the political climate or what have you. It is part of why this business, this company, and this industry have done as well as they have. There's my sales pitch for the industry.

[Toni Kaplan, Executive Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Great. As a follow-up, wanted to ask, Devina, you mentioned you're in good shape on the fleet for this year, but maybe how should we think about potential impacts, assuming that tariffs are implemented? Maybe it's more of a 2026 CapEx kind of question, but any stats or anything you can provide on cost of fleet and how an impact of higher tariffs might be on your business? Thanks.

[John Morris, President, COO at WM]

Yeah, Toni, this is John. I think Devina made the comment early on. We're in really good shape from a truck delivery standpoint. We've front-loaded the schedule, and we've got about a third of our trucks already delivered and on the ground. For the balance of 2025, we do not see very little cost pressure there. Heavy equipment, same story. We're in pretty good shape through 2025. We've worked with the supply chain group to really put a ring around what we thought that tariff impact could be, and it's low, low single digits in a few buckets just because we got out in front of it. As Tara mentioned, most of our recycling and RNG assets are already committed to for 2025. We're in really good shape for 2025. To Jim's point earlier and with Devina, if it rolls into 2026, we might have to revisit it.

[John Morris, President, COO at WM]

Right now, as we sit here in 2025, we feel good about our position.

[Toni Kaplan, Executive Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Thank you.

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

Single digits, you mean like in the millions, not $7?

[John Morris, President, COO at WM]

Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Noah Kaye with Oppenheimer. You'll let us know, open.

[Noah Kaye, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co]

Thanks for taking the question, folks. Hopefully, you had a chance to look at the EPA release from yesterday around PFAS. It seemed like the language was pretty conciliatory or even constructive around trying to protect passive receivers and really adhering to polluter pays. I wonder if you had a chance to review that, your thoughts on that, and what it may mean for the industry and solid waste landfills.

[Tara Hemmer, Senior VP, Chief Sustainability Officer at WM]

Our team is still looking at it, Noah. We've been very clear all along that passive receiver exemption would be positive for the industry and is warranted for a number of different reasons. We still believe that PFAS is more broadly an opportunity for WM when you think about special waste and other industrial waste that could come in, and we still believe that.

[Noah Kaye, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co]

Thanks. A bit of housekeeping. Just want to make sure I got it on that one Q synergies number for WMHS. Rafa, you said $60 million of value capture. Is that annualized? Are we talking $15 million of synergies capture in the quarter, or can you give me the real number?

[Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions at WM]

Those are $16 million of synergy value that's actually dropped into the bottom line in Q1. Does that help?

[Noah Kaye, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co]

Yeah, 16, one six, right?

[Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions at WM]

One six.

[Noah Kaye, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co]

Okay, great. I assume sorted office paper prices being modestly impacted the secure information destruction line. Maybe you can confirm or qualify that, but then just talk to us about the game plan for reducing commodities exposure or really raising the baseline for profitability on that side. Obviously, it's something this company has a lot of experience with.

[Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions at WM]

Yeah, absolutely, Noah. What I can tell you is, yes, there was an impact on the commodity side. A little bit of an impact, as I referred to earlier, also on the volume side, primarily from the event work being down a little bit. We've discovered that that was mostly a bit of a breakdown between the sales and operational channel for delivery of on-time service. We've now corrected that, and actually, we are expecting to be at or slightly above budget on that front in the month of April and beyond. In terms of what Stericycle had done previously on trying to limit exposure, they had begun to move to a fee-for-service kind of model, but it had some constraints, some limits depending on the fluctuation of the commodity. We, of course, as you pointed out, have experience driving a full fee-for-service model.

[Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions at WM]

It is early days, but we're beginning to explore on how we're going to be able to do that. Obviously, as we begin to offer services that are part of a broader suite, it'll enable us to do that more readily.

[Noah Kaye, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co]

All right. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Konark Gupta with Scotiabank. You'll let us know open.

[Konark Gupta, Managing Director, Senior Equity Analyst at Scotiabank]

Thanks, and good morning. Just a quick question on revenue cadence for the full year. The Q1 seasonality was pretty much in line with what you had last year, despite some of the headwinds you talked about from weather, etc. As we look forward from a 360-degree perspective, how should we think about pricing and volume? This should be kind of roughly offsetting each other into decelerating pricing and accelerating volume. Some of the other initiatives you have, like recycling, ramping up, and Stericycle as well, should we follow the seasonal patterns we saw last year in revenue, or should we see some sort of abnormal seasonality in some of the quarters?

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

Yeah. What I would say is the only item that would cause any unusual seasonality is the impact of the LA wildfires, which I mentioned earlier. We do think that the Q2 is a peak quarter for that. When you step back and think about normal seasonality, we tend to see more Q3 being peak levels for volumes. That is the only outlier. When we look at overall revenue guidance for 2025, really, we always start with the discipline that we have in executing our core price programs. We talked about those being in the range of 5.8%-6.2% for 2025, and we remain confident in achieving that guidance.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

On the volume front, we had flat volumes in the collection and disposal business in the Q1, but we remain confident in our ability to approach the midpoint of our volume guidance of 0.25%-0.75% for the year. When you add to that rollover acquisition contributions combined with the incremental tuck-in spending that I mentioned earlier, we really are optimistic that our revenue guidance in total remains intact. There is some small noise associated with our recycling brokerage revenue, and that is down relative to expectations. I'll remind everyone that that has very low margin and flow-through to EBITDA. It's something that we do to bolster the strength of our recycling business overall.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

As Tara has mentioned, we're on track for recycling and renewable energy, both in terms of getting our new facilities online and seeing the profitability and flow-through of those facilities provide the returns that we anticipated. All in all, nothing significant in the recycling business, either from a seasonal perspective other than year-over-year comparisons on commodity prices, which we expected to be more pronounced in the first half of the year than the second half of the year.

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

Just one add there, and it's on the price side. We've said this since way back in 2022, which was the peak of CPI, but we've been expecting price to come down as CPI was coming down. Of course, 9.1% was the peak back in 2022, and now we're down around 2.5%. Exactly what we said would happen has happened. What we also said was that we anticipated that price would come down slower than cost has come down, and hence margin growth. That's exactly what you've seen over the last two years with this company as we've grown margin. Some of it has just been what John Morris has talked about, which is a lot of technology being brought to bear on the OPEX side.

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

Some of it is the fact that we're maintaining price at a slightly higher level than cost in terms of increases, and therefore, you get some margin accretion.

[Konark Gupta, Managing Director, Senior Equity Analyst at Scotiabank]

That's great for the banks. Kind of quickly follow-up on Stericycle. Congrats on achieving some of the synergies early on here, but it seems like SG&A improved by 70 basis points sequentially, but the Stericycle margin itself was up only 20 basis points from Q4. Is there any puts and takes behind the gap and why the margin did not expand to the full 70 basis points?

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

Sure. That had to do with two things, and it was disposal costs and fleet costs. This is about our strategic steps that Rafa mentioned earlier in order to optimize this business and some of the realization of the long-term value creation that we know that we'll get as we internalize the fleet, use our practices with the WM way, think about internalizing disposal volumes. Those things are going to really start to pay dividends as we get more into the second half of the year into 2026. That is one of the things that muted the overall expansion of margin for the business from Q4 to Q1.

[Konark Gupta, Managing Director, Senior Equity Analyst at Scotiabank]

That's great. I appreciate the time. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Tobey Sommer with Truist. You may let us know when open.

[Tobey Sommer, Managing Director at Truist Securities]

Thanks. Many of my questions have been answered already. I wanted to ask you from a high level, what are the learnings that you have, Stericycle? You've given us an awful lot of details, but sort of what's the biggest sort of couple of surprises from when you started looking at the transaction a while ago to where you sit today?

[Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions at WM]

Maybe I'll start, and maybe Jim can put a button on it or what not. This is Rafa, Tobey. I don't know that there's been a huge surprise that we've encountered. We anticipated that there was going to be a significant amount of opportunity on the SG&A side. We just didn't know how much. We've been very pleased with how quickly we've been able to optimize, for example, the sales coverage on the secure information destruction side of the business and how readily our workforce there has moved to use our tools and our processes to actually deliver on that. That's been really good. Also, the resiliency of the network of Stericycle is really, really strong. Frankly, the customer base, while they had experienced some issues with the ERP, continue to do so, although we'll be much more transparent about the way forward.

[Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions at WM]

They just find that having that kind of comprehensive ability to cover all of their waste streams on the regular medical waste side, including their RxPro, their hazardous waste, incinerator waste, all of that just provides a tremendous amount of resiliency. Those are things that we expected, but we've been able to confirm. The other aspect I would highlight is that as we move forward with McCarran into the network, providing some capacity there, we're going to be able to expand our RxPro initiatives, which is that sort of co-mingle service where it facilitates for nurses and practitioners co-mingling regulated medical waste with biohazardous waste for incineration. That waste actually provides better margin. As we increase capacity in our incinerator network, that's going to be dropping to the bottom line. Jim, anything from you?

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

I think you said it all. The only thing I would say is you're always coming into an acquisition like this looking for what are the negatives that we didn't foresee. To Rafa's point, we haven't found any of those, which is good. What we are seeing is that Rafa gave me a figure earlier in the week that I think, Rafa, you're talking about you've talked to some hospitals, and what they've talked about is they're all talking about adding capacity, the ones that he's spoken to. I think what we're seeing is that this is even a bigger affirmation of our kind of strategic approach to the business when we came into it, which is this has a stronger growth trajectory than does solid waste.

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

Not to take anything away from solid waste, but we were looking for something that had an even stronger growth trajectory. While you may not see it in the Q1 that we own the business because we're in the process of cleanup, you will definitely see this over time. That affirmation is very important to us.

[Tobey Sommer, Managing Director at Truist Securities]

Appreciate that. As my follow-up, could you comment on whether or not we should anticipate ongoing and incremental international divestitures as you look at your portfolio?

[Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions at WM]

Yeah. Look, I think I've been asked that question a number of times already. We are actually very happy to observe and see the trajectory of our U.K. and Ireland business there. There's plenty of opportunity to improve the performance of that business, and it's actually already performing better than it did last year. It gives us a very interesting perch from which to observe what is happening in the solid waste business as well. We have a much smaller piece of business in Western Europe, in France, in Germany, that frankly, we're looking at what's the best way to optimize the performance of that business, and we'll consider how that fits within the overall portfolio later on.

[Tobey Sommer, Managing Director at Truist Securities]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Jerry Revich with Goldman Sachs. You'll let us know, open.

[Jerry Revich, Senior investment leader, head of US Machinery at Goldman Sachs]

Yes. Hi. Good morning, everyone.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

Good morning.

[Jerry Revich, Senior investment leader, head of US Machinery at Goldman Sachs]

Hi. I just want to ask, on the legacy business, the costs were really impressive in the quarter, backing out the alternative fuel tax headwind. Inflation was in the low threes on what looks like your toughest cost comp of the year. Is it fair to think about inflation as the comps get easier actually slowing, considering the comments you made about having your costs locked in as it relates to tariff and other moving pieces, Devina?

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

Yeah. Everything we're seeing, Jerry, I actually think you framed it really well. We were very pleased with our Q1 operating expense margin, and we knew that Q1 was going to be a particularly tough quarter for us on a year-over-year basis. When you have a headwind like we did from the winter weather volumes, taking margin, accretive volume out of the equation, we're even that much more impressed, which gives us confidence going into the Q2. I agree with you.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

I think that when we look forward to achieving our overall margin objectives for 2025, which are to be at the upper end of our long-term range of 50 to 100 basis points in margin expansion in traditional solid waste, we feel good about the traction that we made in the Q1, and we think we're well positioned to continue to build on that for the remainder of the year.

[Jerry Revich, Senior investment leader, head of US Machinery at Goldman Sachs]

Super. Can I ask, Tara, in terms of what we're seeing on voluntary market pricing for landfill gas, looks like that's steady in the low 20s even as D3 RIN prices have come down. Is that consistent with what you're seeing in your business and any views on the biofuel task force and what that could mean?

[Tara Hemmer, Senior VP, Chief Sustainability Officer at WM]

Sure. We're tracking very closely what's happening with the renewable fuel standard, and we do still believe that there's broad bipartisan support for that continuing when we have conversations with Congress. On the voluntary market, as you can imagine, there's a lot of uncertainty in many different markets, not just this market. The pricing that we've seen has been in the low 20s, a little bit of a holding pattern on buyers right now, but we expect that to pop back once the administration comes out with their new RVO as they're somewhat interrelated. Just a little bit of color.

[Jerry Revich, Senior investment leader, head of US Machinery at Goldman Sachs]

Thank you.

[Tara Hemmer, Senior VP, Chief Sustainability Officer at WM]

One other piece of color, Jerry, that I think would be helpful for the group. We have, for 2025, locked in about 75% of our volume, which is up from what we had described in our last call. Our $0.25 change in RIN pricing now only represents about $5 million. I think that should give you some confidence on our ability to take care of off-takes.

[Jerry Revich, Senior investment leader, head of US Machinery at Goldman Sachs]

Sorry, can I just ask a clarification? Based on the royalty disclosures that you folks made and the pricing updates, it looks like your volumes were up about 50% in the quarter year-over-year. Is that about right? Just as we think about relative to the full-year targets.

[Tara Hemmer, Senior VP, Chief Sustainability Officer at WM]

Yes. Yes. When you look at volume that was monetized, it's an even better number when you look at how much RNG we actually generated and produced, which should give you some confidence in the trajectory for the year. We generated a 75% increase in volume from our RNG plants. You will start to see that carry through. It's one of the reasons why we expect more performance really backloaded to the back half of the year as we get more momentum on those plants coming online.

[Jerry Revich, Senior investment leader, head of US Machinery at Goldman Sachs]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of David Manthey with RW Baird. You'll let us know, open.

[David Manthey, Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co]

Yeah. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for clarifying on the spot versus forward RINs. That was the question I was going to ask. My other question, is there anything relative to tariffs that could impact OCC or other materials in your commodity basket? We should be thinking about pricing as we go forward.

[Tara Hemmer, Senior VP, Chief Sustainability Officer at WM]

Sure. This is something that we're obviously tracking closely. We think that depending upon what happens with tariffs, it could have a positive impact on some of our non-fiber. If you think about aluminum and steel as more of that is domestic. On the OCC and fiber side, the thing that we're really tracking more closely is what could happen with retaliatory tariffs because we do ship materials to other markets in Southeast Asia and India. Again, our team, our brokerage team, does a fantastic job really making sure that we have a wide variety of markets that we can tap into. That includes domestic, and it includes a whole host of markets across the entire world. We are in a good spot.

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

I'm not sure, Tara, whether it was precocious or just luck, but the fact that not that long ago, five years ago, all of our OCC was going to China.

[Tara Hemmer, Senior VP, Chief Sustainability Officer at WM]

To China. Yes.

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

Virtually none of it is going to China. Whether it was luck or whether it was intentional, we'll take it.

[Tara Hemmer, Senior VP, Chief Sustainability Officer at WM]

Yeah. Our brokerage team, I can't say enough positive things about them. It's a true differentiator for WM.

[David Manthey, Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co]

We'll chalk it up to good foresight. Thank you.

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

Appreciate it.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of James Schumm with TD Cowen. You'll let us know open.

[James Schumm, Analyst at TD Cowen and Company]

Hey, thanks, and good morning, everyone. Devina, so it's clear on the SG&A opportunity getting down to 15% after three years. Is there anything structurally different about Stericycle such that you would not be able to get SG&A down to more of your corporate level of 9% or 10% over maybe several years? What's the ultimate destination here and the timing there?

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

Yeah. It's a great question. The 9.5% call it for WM Total Company that we've talked about would definitely be the ultimate goal. We've also talked about if you think about Stericycle and the WM Healthcare Solutions business more like one of our geographic areas where ultimately we should have a corporate back office for WM Healthcare Solutions just the same way that we have a back office that serves our Florida area. That means that the roadway should be to an even lower SG&A as a percentage of revenue. For context, those businesses operate in sub-5% territory. Structurally, the one thing that is fundamentally going to be different for those two businesses is that they run on their own ERP system, and they won't be integrated for some time for the foreseeable future into the WM ERP system. There will be two distinct systems.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

That is the one structural difference that I think is important. As we've evaluated all other elements, we really do think that total path to realizing an optimized cost structure should exist, and we're working hard to get there.

[James Schumm, Analyst at TD Cowen and Company]

Got it. Thank you. Just on the longer-term outlook for the Stericycle or healthcare or really Stericycle businesses, I mean, their outlook was longer-term revenue growth of 3-5% on the top line and EBITDA growth of 13-17% annually. I know those were their targets, but they were in your slides. Are those something that we should look at, or how are you guys thinking about that?

[Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions at WM]

We do not think that there is anything wrong or different with those targets. Obviously, the first opportunity that we are taking on is the reduction of the operating expenses and the SG&A. On the cost side, you will be getting to see that show up a lot sooner. We have talked about the fact that we are still framing the cross-selling opportunities. We think those are going to be vast. I kind of framed for you a little bit of what the shared wallet looks like today. I think to look at it a little bit differently, if you look at the percentage of revenue from our collection and disposal business that comes from the same customer base, it is about 5%, low single digits. A lot of opportunity there.

[Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions at WM]

I think it's important also to remember that some of what has inhibited sort of the top-line growth here has to do with the ERP implementation. While it should be facilitating better delivery of the service, it actually took them backwards. Now we're kind of unraveling and solving foundationally for that. That's going to unlock a lot of opportunity. I'll give you one interesting example. As we kind of develop the contract data mart for the WM Healthcare Solutions business, we've now added every single customer with over $50,000 in annual revenue. We're seeing a vast opportunity, over 1,000 contracts, almost $200 million in revenue that has lagging PIs or overlooked PIs, for example.

[Devina Rankin, CFO at WM]

Jim, one thing that I just want to clarify really quickly is in terms of confirming or clarifying what our long-range outlook, both for top-line and EBITDA growth of the business in the next three to five years, we plan to really outline that at the investor day. At this point in time, we do not want to confirm or adopt the previous Stericycle EBITDA growth. We will instead give you specifics about what we see that being in the next three to five years when we are together in June.

[James Schumm, Analyst at TD Cowen and Company]

Okay. Great. Understood. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Stephanie Moore with Jefferies. You'll let us know open.

[Stephanie Moore, Senior Vice President Equity Research at Jefferies]

Hi. Thank you. Just one for me. I wanted to touch on maybe the progress you're making on the labor force. I know it's been a multi-year initiative all in the backdrop of what's been a pretty challenging labor force or labor environment. If you could talk a little bit about where labor turnover stands today, an update on your journey of kind of optimizing labor, I believe, through attrition and the implementation of technology. Kind of give us an update on the labor journey, and then maybe at the same token, what technology or any other technology you've rolled out to help you achieve your targets. Thanks.

[John Morris, President, COO at WM]

Yeah. Stephanie, this is John. A couple of questions there. One, specifically, to date, we've reduced about 2,600 roles or the need to refill 2,600 roles. That's important because what we've done is done this, as Jim has said, I've said, Devina said at different points. We've done this through natural attrition. For 2025, we look to have the same repeat to the tune of about 940 roles that we won't replace as we go through 2025. The majority of that's going to come through the efforts of the Tara's team and automating some of the recycling facilities. Another large contingent will come from the continued automation of our residential business. Those are two of the big buckets.

[John Morris, President, COO at WM]

I think when you look further out about what we're doing with technology, I won't bore you with all the details, but there's a lot going on. For instance, in fleet planning and scheduling, we're bringing some technology to bear that's going to allow us to more efficiently move our assets in and out of the repair facilities to improve efficiency, reduce labor dependency. We're using technology to help augment some of the skill gaps as we upskill some of these employees and using technology, for instance, to be able to help our technical folks work collectively across the network to be able to make some of the repairs. I would tell you we're very excited about what's going on on the technology front that's going to further augment this effort around reducing labor dependency.

[Stephanie Moore, Senior Vice President Equity Research at Jefferies]

Great. Thank you so much.

[Operator]

Thank you. I am showing no further questions on the Q&A queue at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Jim Fish, President and CEO, for any closing remarks.

[Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM]

Okay. Thank you all for your questions this morning. The themes we really wanted to convey today, I think we did a good job of getting them across. We wanted to convey that we were consistent with our performance and have been for quite a long time, and that did not change this quarter. We are certainly on track for our guidance for the year. We were encouraged by what we saw in terms of volume in March and April after a couple of pretty tough months in January and February. Relatively little impact in 2025. Single digits, John, right, on tariffs. We are definitely on track for our sustainability investments and our WM Healthcare Solutions. Hopefully that all came across. Thank you all for joining us this morning. Look forward to seeing you in June, hopefully at our New York City Investor Day.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• John Morris, President, COO
• Tara Hemmer, Senior VP, Chief Sustainability Officer
• Rafael Carrasco, President, WM Healthcare Solutions
• Devina Rankin, CFO

Analysts

• Bryan Burgmeier, Equity Research Analyst at Citi
• Ed Egl, VP of Investor Relations at WM
• David Manthey, Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co
• Jerry Revich, Senior investment leader, head of US Machinery at Goldman Sachs
• Toni Kaplan, Executive Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley
• Sabahat Khan, Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets
• James Schumm, Analyst at TD Cowen and Company
• Jim Fish, President, CEO at WM
• Konark Gupta, Managing Director, Senior Equity Analyst at Scotiabank
• Tyler Brown, Associate Vice President at Raymond James & Associates
• Kevin Chiang, Analyst at CIBC
• Trevor Romeo, Analyst at William Blair
• Stephanie Moore, Senior Vice President Equity Research at Jefferies
• Tobey Sommer, Managing Director at Truist Securities
• Noah Kaye, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co