Republic Services, Inc. (RSG) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2023

April 27, 2023 5:00 p.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Republic Services First Quarter 2023 Investor Conference Call. Republic Services is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol RSG. Please note, this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Aaron Evans, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Aaron Evans - VP, IR

I would like to welcome everyone to Republic Services first quarter 2023 conference call. Jon Vander Ark, our CEO; and Brian DelGhiaccio, our CFO, are joining me as we discuss our performance.

I would like to take a moment to remind everyone that some of the information we discuss on today's call contains forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties and may be materially different from our actual results. Our SEC filings discuss factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The material that we discuss today is time sensitive. If in the future, you listen to a rebroadcast or rerecording of this conference call, you should be sensitive to the date of the original call, which is April 27, 2023. Please note that this call is the property of Republic Services, Inc. Any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call in any form without the express written consent of Republic Services is strictly prohibited.

I want to point out that our SEC filings, our earnings press release, which includes GAAP reconciliation tables and a discussion of business activities, along with the recording of this call, are available on Republic's website at republicservices.com. I want to remind you that Republic's management team routinely participates in investor conferences. When events are scheduled, the dates, times and presentations are posted on our website.

With that, I would like to turn the call over to Jon.

Jon Vander Ark - CEO

Thanks, Aaron. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us.

We started the year strong and are pleased with our first quarter results. Our performance reflects our ability to grow across our business while enhancing profitability. We remain well positioned to capitalize on additional growth opportunities in the marketplace by providing the most complete set of products and services to customers.

During the quarter, we delivered revenue growth of 21%, including 11% from acquisitions, generated adjusted earnings per share of $1.24 and produced $496 million of adjusted free cash flow. We continue to believe that investing in acquisitions is the best use of free cash flow to create long-term value. We invested $224 million in acquisitions during the first quarter. All transactions were in the recycling and solid waste space. Our acquisition pipeline remains supportive of outsized levels of activity in both recycling and solid waste and environmental solutions businesses. We continue to see opportunity for well over $500 million of investment in value-creating acquisitions in 2023.