Casella Waste at Waste360 Summit: Strategic Growth and Challenges

On Monday, 05 May 2025, Casella Waste Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CWST) participated in the Waste360/ Stifel Investor Summit. The discussion highlighted Casella Waste’s strategic growth through mergers and acquisitions, its commitment to company culture, and the challenges posed by regulatory environments. Despite facing operational hurdles, the company remains optimistic about its future economic outlook.

Key Takeaways

• Casella Waste celebrates its 50th anniversary, focusing on people and culture as key to success.
• The company is expanding its footprint through strategic acquisitions in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.
• Regulatory challenges impact landfill capacity and expansion efforts.
• Casella Waste reports positive volume trends in April and May, following a slow start to 2024.

Company Culture and Workforce

Casella Waste emphasizes the importance of its people and culture in maintaining service quality. The company has invested in training and development programs, including a CDL school with 350 to 370 graduates, reducing driver turnover by up to 75%. Regular meetings with new managers and values-based interviews are part of their strategy to foster a positive workplace culture.

M&A Strategy and Geographical Expansion

Casella Waste’s growth strategy involves moving beyond tuck-in acquisitions to pursue larger opportunities. The company has recently acquired businesses in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware, aiming to enhance its presence along the Eastern Seaboard. This expansion focuses on filling geographic gaps and increasing internalization within its existing footprint.

Operational Challenges and Equipment

Obtaining trucks and equipment remains a significant challenge, with delays of up to 18 months. Casella Waste is addressing these shortages through rental programs and partnerships with manufacturers. The company is also pushing for more forward-looking approaches from manufacturers, particularly regarding electric vehicles.

Regulatory Environment and Disposal

Casella Waste faces a challenging regulatory environment, with permitting processes taking up to seven years and costing millions. Despite these hurdles, the company is focusing on maintaining valuable landfill positions and managing waste across state lines. Currently, Casella Waste disposes of 6 million tons annually, filling only 3.5 to 4 million tons.

Economic Outlook

Despite a slow start to 2024 due to a harsh winter, Casella Waste observed strong volume growth in April and May across all business segments. The company has consistently grown its free cash flow by 15 to 20% annually over the past decade, with organic growth around 10 to 12%. Casella Waste remains focused on investments with favorable cash returns, undeterred by potential economic slowdowns or tariff impacts.

Conclusion

For a deeper understanding of Casella Waste’s strategic insights and future plans, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript.

Full transcript - Waste360/ Stifel Investor Summit:

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: We’re on a march. Good morning. Good morning. Oh, we’re alive. Okay.

Good morning, everybody. If you can all take your seats, we’ll get started. I’m Michael Hoffman. I’m the president and CEO of the National Waste and Recycling Association. So you sort of sit here and go, I thought he retired.

I did, but, my longtime twenty five year associate, Brian Butler, was very fortunately to be hired by our first panelist, Casella, and then Stifel called me up and said if I could come out of retirement to do this. So this is our thirteenth and over fourteen years during the investor summit. Safety is a paramount conversation in the waste industry. So if something should happen and we have an alarm to go out, all of those exit signs, you can head to any of those, find the staircase, is right behind you, go down, find the first exit out, and either go over to the Fontenblue or out towards the parking lot. That’s your safety.

I wanna thank our partners at Informa Markets Waste three sixty, Mark, Laura, and Julia for all the efforts they put in behind this to get us here. And it’s this is a jam packed day. As all of you know me, we just go. I actually get two breaks this year because John McNamara from Stifel is gonna do two out of the 14 panels. But we’re gonna sit down, get going, and every thirty minutes for the next six hours, hope you enjoy it, and we’ll talk at the end.

Alright. Hi, John.

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: Morning, Michael.

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: How are you doing, Ned? Morning.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: So we have Casella Waste up here with us. John Casella, CEO, Ned Coletta, president. Happy anniversary. Thank you. Fifty years.

Business has been in in in, business for fifty years. You go downstairs in the, registration area. There’s a hall of fame wall, and John is a hall of famer with his brother. And there’s a picture, I think it is from fifty years ago, the two of you together.

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: No. No. No. Not quite? It was maybe forty years ago.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: Oh, okay. Okay. It’s a younger skinnier version of him anyway. So just to put that in perspective. Sure.

So when you think of the fifty years and you sit here today and reflect on it, what stands out?

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: It’s a great question, Michael. I think that, when you look back on fifty years, what are the consistent themes and what are the issues that, give you sustainability as an organization, and it’s clearly about people. It’s not about the trucks. It’s not about containers. It’s not about software.

It’s really about people and how you can create a culture where people wanna come to work, enjoy each other, and really do what’s necessary to provide the kind of service that the communities that we serve need and do that in a manner that’s safe. We often say at the safety meetings, you know, we’re proud of our people because they provide that service as an asset to the community as opposed to a liability. So it it’s it’s clearly the, you know, the, most important factor. If your people are happy, your customers will be happy, people and customers happy, your shareholders will be happy. And it’s really clearly in that order in our view after fifty years.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: So culture is not something you just wake up and say we’re doing. Culture is about living it. In fact, some would say that you know culture is right because you actually don’t have to talk about it. And in fact that it becomes a way of life. How do how do you how do you get that to happen?

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: It’s really it’s really a challenge for us, not so much for those folks who have been with us for twenty or thirty years, and there’s a lot of them. But when you’re growing the way we are, we added 1,000 people last year. So I often say it’s a journey with no destination. You just have to keep working on it, and you do have to keep communicating about the culture, what the expectations are, and the core values really stand as the boundaries for people to act. If they’re acting within the core values, then they can’t do anything wrong.

It may be a mistake, but if it’s within the core values, it’s a license, if you will, to act. But with the growth that we’ve had, it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge to keep that culture. It’s probably one of our biggest challenges. We talk about it.

We train for it. We onboard people for it. But it’s a challenge when you grow in the way we are to keep that culture and not allow bureaucracy to creep in and the culture to be impacted.

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: Right? One of the remarkable things we do along those lines, we host meetings, John and I, once a month with all of our new managers to sit down, talk about our value system. And remarkably, we actually interview every single manager coming into the company to make sure they align with, how we want people to be treated and they see the world the same way as us from a value system standpoint. And I suspect at some point that will be harder to do, but we always make time to do it today because one bad choice leads to a lot of negative consequences.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: Well and and when I think about the fifty years, you’ve been there about a third of it.

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: Yeah. Twenty years.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: Yeah. And and how do in that twenty years, what have you seen as that that that journey? What are what are the things that stand out? And and and I and I spend time on this for the room. We’re a people business.

There are the and it’s a direct workforce is 80 to 85%. They’re, you know, they’re not really going into an office per se. They’re, you know, getting in into their depot, changing into a uniform, getting a truck, and then they’re gone. So they know, you’re you’re not you’re not supervising him all day long, you know, and creating that is that’s why I’m spending the

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: That’s a it’s a great question. When I became CFO in December, John and I pivoted strategy at that point in time, and we had four major strategies. The first one was right people, right roles, and that was all of our focus for eighteen months. And, we really got back to the basics of what the company had done very successfully, having well balanced teams in each of our local operations. We wanted entrepreneurial leaders.

We wanted some level of independence. And that allowed us and allows us today to to really drive that culture and success down through the business. And we really still focus on that today.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: So what you measure is what you manage.

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: One of the other things I was gonna say, Michael, is that, you know, when you think about our business, the price of entry is to provide the service on time, safely, get that job done. And the question is, what do you what do you do as a while? What do you do above and beyond? How do you take care of your customers? What are the things that you can do that can set you apart in the marketplace?

And, you know, our our people are thinking about that, constantly. We’re encouraging them to think about that. What what more can we do for our customers, in terms of creating a a differentiating factor?

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: Okay. So m and a has been a big part of the model. The very first time you’re sitting on this stage at the investor summit, you’re about 400,000,000 in revenues. And today, you’re pushing towards 2,000,000,000. Let’s talk about a couple of things.

You know, there was the M and A strategy sort of was reinvigorated about six, seven years ago in a gradual pace, but but really sort of had the point of acceleration. Are there gaps at this point when you think of the model, when you look at what you’ve got? Or are you in a position now of really truly focusing on execution?

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: Yes. If flash back a couple of years ago, we were looking at our acquisition strategy. We’re really focused on tuck in acquisitions where we could overlay gaps in our map in the Northeast. But we started to say to ourselves, we can’t just be boxed in this one marketplace. We need to have new nodes of growth into other market areas.

And about two years ago, we bought Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware from GFL, and it opened up a whole new growth trajectory for us. We could start to look at new fill in opportunities between the businesses we bought and also new adjacencies. So from our vantage point today, there’s even more opportunity than we’ve ever had as an organization to continue to fill in some gaps in the map, overlay with great tuck ins, drive internalization, and look for adjacencies. But as John always says, we’re not looking for this opportunity to jump to, you know, California or Texas. That’s not our strategy.

We’re looking for those adjacencies.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: So, Steve, do we think of it as, you know, you know, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland is an obvious way to think about it that that if you were

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: Clearly clearly, we’ve indicated that our perspective is up and down the Eastern Seaboard is really the opportunities for the future. Not looking necessarily to travel across the country at this point in time. We’ve got tremendous opportunities over the top of the existing, Northeast and Mid Atlantic and then plenty of opportunity, heading south as well.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: And your your original, what I’ll call the legacy business to frame it in the context of this big move out of New England was really landfill disposal. You had a landfill and a and a post collection strategy that makes you stand out because you’re in a low 20% of the market in where you operate. Your next move as an is emphasized around that disposal piece. So where is that balance?

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: Think that it’s a fair perspective that in the Northeast, the disposal capacity is a real factor from a competitive perspective in terms of the supply and demand equation, not necessarily the case in the Mid Atlantic. As Ned indicated, a great opportunity for us to expand, but it’s a different market in terms of in that market, there’s 12 disposal facilities and we don’t own a disposal facility and collection operations can be very successful in that market. Very definite

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: It’s almost like being landfill neutral because you have options. Yes.

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: Exactly. And what’s remarkable is we actually make more free cash flow in our hauling businesses, in our recycling facilities than we even do in our landfills. They’re very capital intensive. And as we look into the Mid Atlantic and other markets, as John said, we can be very successful converting cash and having high margins and and creating value without the disposal capacity if you have the right market dynamics.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: Right. When you think about day to day day to day operations, your labor is always first and foremost because this goes back to your culture. It’s about people. Can you talk a little bit about how you have approached that recruiting retention in that direct workforce?

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: Sure. I mean, I think that, you know, we all I mean, the whole transportation industry suffered through COVID. And at a given point in time, we had hundreds of openings for drivers, and that’s when we, going back four years now, established CDL school and really took a look at our policies that we had in place too because our policies from a driver standpoint caused for drivers to be 21 before we could start and really inconsistent with the opportunity in terms of those individuals coming out of high school that were going on to the trade. So we changed it to 18. We revamped our safety program, and we really, at that point in time, really looked at career development for drivers, mechanics to fill those seats, and the CDL school is approaching three fifty or three seventy grads at this point in time.

This past year, we started our preventative maintenance, one for major repairs. That school is up and operational. We probably have 50 to a hundred people through that school as well. And, you know, we also during that period, over the last four or five, years, we’ve really looked at the HR department, and now we’re revamping our training programs. Again, all training kind of went away during COVID, and we’re bringing the training programs back at this point in time, and it’s going to pay huge dividends on a go forward basis.

We’ve cut our openings in half over the last few years, not without adding a lot of resources from an HR perspective because what happens is when a division is short on drivers, you’ve got the ops supervisor, maybe the ops manager, route supervisors out in trucks taking care of customers, and they’re not doing their job. So we’ve put HR people in the field to present and really get on all of the opportunities in terms of all of the applicants that we get immediately, to bring them in, and put them in front of hiring managers, quickly. So a lot of water over the dam, a lot of resources. Ned reminds me in terms of the resources that we put into HR and into the schools, but it’s paid huge dividends. And the most important thing for our organization is to fill those seats.

There is nothing more important than filling those seats because if you have tremendous number of openings both from a driver and a mechanic perspective, you’re putting tremendous pressure on the entire organization and it’s also, putting tremendous pressure on safety as well.

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: John, you forgot the most important part of that. We have our graduate number 300 sitting next to us from

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: Oh, that’s exactly right. Yes.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: Yeah. That is true. So I went through the Casella training program in December, and I will share with you in the room and those of you in the services business, I don’t know I don’t have a magic number on what the right sizes of your company that you should do this, But but I would tell you two things out of the experiences. I have a total different appreciation for what it takes to drive on these trucks because I drove for about ten hours all over Vermont roads in snowstorms.

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: But You did send them up on the mountain to do a little work group in areas.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: You It was you get in a cab over and do that, and it changes your blood pressure. But the other, you’re changing people’s lives. Yeah. I get a little emotional when I think about this, but you’re changing people’s lives. So and and I’m gonna tell the story and ask the question in the same breath.

Your sourcing of this is internal people, generally speaking. It’s helpers. It’s you’ve gone down into that local operating level, and and they’ve observed somebody who’s got a great attendance record, a good work ethic, and you’re giving them a shot at coming in and doing this. And we have four people in the class and myself. Two of them were helper drivers.

They were gonna be fine. But one of the gentlemen was in his forties. He’d been a laborer his whole life. And there’s no question. You’ve changed this man’s life.

So question for you, though, is what’s the retention rate of having done that internally versus you’ve gone out into the market and recruited somebody?

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: It’s really pretty pretty spectacular. I think when you provide that kind of opportunity for someone, and even with newer folks, if they get through the first year, they’re in all likelihood going to be a twenty or thirty year employee. No no question about it. It’s a very different perspective that they have. You’re really creating a career with no debt.

And, you know, we even talk about that in terms of some of the advertising that we’re we’re doing now, the power of hard work, across the footprint, trying to attract as many people as we can coming out of high school.

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: And that turnover can be as much as 75% lower from graduates see the school.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: So, I have to do a shameless plug for the National Waste and Recycling Association. So we actually have a program that we’re working with another organization where we can get your driver all the way through the what I’d call that classroom side of it for about $600. So but you gotta be a member, so join. Alright. There’s a shameless plug.

Moving back into operations equipment. You know, there was a period COVID shortage of everything. Where are we on your ability to to fulsomely do your capital spending as you need to support your business for normal operating returns?

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: It’s still really challenging. It’s a dance each year. We we have a number of trucks we wanna put on the road from automation standpoint or rear load to front load conversions and we can’t get off those trucks. Especially as we’re buying businesses, we love the opportunity in the first couple of years to really move to automated side load trucks, Corrado trucks, front load and it typically takes us about three times as long as we’d like to to get those trucks on the road. We run a lot of secondary routes where we split body trucks to waste and recycling And, it’s very hard to get those vehicles, those bodies still.

It can be as much as fifteen to eighteen months if

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: you Well, there’s not that many people actually make that anymore. Exactly. And is the backlog chassis or bodies?

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: Both. Both. But Yeah. Bodies a little harder

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: for us. Ned’s right. Are a little better now.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: Little better. Split body issue in that context?

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: Just in general, we, about ten to twelve years ago, really started to focus on two to three manufacturers and really standardizing our entire fleet. You can always find a truck, but whether it’s to your spec and really meets your needs is is a big question. So we we’ve built some new relief valves into our system with rental programs that meet our company specs that really help us to accelerate and flex faster.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: Okay. And and when you think about so you need the truck first, but are are we okay on the container side? You know, where how’s that?

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: That’s fine. We’ve got some great manufacturers that we work with that are positioned throughout our footprint. They all meet the same quality specs, and we can get containers rapidly.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: So if you were delivering a message to the supply chain specifically in trucks and bodies, what what would it be that you would that might help them be able to be better able to service and supply the industry? Because you’re you’re this is not a unique comment. I’ve heard it

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: a lot. Well, I I think they need to be more forward looking. We we’ve almost been in a crisis mode in a few of our states with manufacturers have not taken some of these regulations as seriously as they need to and they haven’t met the thresholds for electric vehicles. We were innovators. We bought a Mac electric truck, a battle electric truck.

We’ve been trying to work through these issues. But in states like Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, they’ve all been looking to electrify fleets quickly. Right. And, we’ve been struggling in the last twelve months with this new hurdle where in certain instances, we can’t even buy diesel trucks because the manufacturers haven’t met the specifics. So this is a wrinkle that I think everyone in the industry needs to be focused on where this is coming, the r and d, the cost points need to come down, and the regulators are definitely ahead of the industry.

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: So one of the other things I think it is, you know, really come to the floor is co collection in terms of split body units. I mean, more flexibility, more manufacturing capability there would be really helpful. Right now, in some cases, the lead time is what eighteen months to twenty four months on a split body, to be able to get it on the chassis. So more innovation, more movement, more manufacture of coke collectors.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: And and to be clear, the split body plays a very good role in markets where there’s a lot of windshield time between pickups. Right?

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: That’s exactly right.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: That’s the idea.

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: Other rural markets, secondary, tertiary markets. It’s critical component because you don’t wanna go down that route with two different vehicles.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: So I I have to ask this question. The one of the things that stunned me in the first few months that I took over this new role is the percentage of the population who has access to curbside recycling who does not believe that the recycling is real. And how so the split body customer is is sometimes the worst in that context because they go see, I told you they’re putting them both in the same truck and they kinda wanna go back in the back. See that little middle thing in the middle? Know?

How do you how are you dealing with

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: that customer communication? Clearly from an education perspective, you know, the videos that we do will show the videos, particularly in the communities that we’re running split bodies because we’ll get those calls. We’ll run those advertisements where people can see the flap going back and forth. So it really is an education process on getting with the community and, you know, engaged from a education standpoint.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: Right. So I’m probably gonna You’re right.

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: There’s still I mean, it’s kind of amazing today because we do such a good job as an industry from a recycling perspective that still we still have a lot of work to do from an education standpoint.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: Oh, it’s it’s huge. And, you know, I’m probably gonna do this all day long, I apologize to the room. I’ll shamelessly promote. But so if you’re coming to the gala tonight, you’re gonna hear this really exciting announcement about a PSA and a relationship licensing relationship we’re gonna have that will talk about batteries and battery recovery, but also really drive the message home about recycling is real. Yes.

Regulatory. Let’s talk about the from a regulatory standpoint, you you have this terrific disposal position. You had the vision, not without challenge, but the vision sixteen years ago to see this coming, made real commitments financially to do it, and you’re in this enviable position in the marketplace. But it’s a market that’s constantly under pressure up there. Talk a little bit about what’s going on and where do you think the play sort of settles in the combination of predominantly New Hampshire and New York at this point.

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: I think that it’s clear that the regulatory environment is not getting easier. It’s getting more difficult. I think that, unfortunately, people all want their waste picked up, but it seems like every permit that we go for to expand capacity and just to handle the same tons that we’re handling for the next five years is getting harder and harder from a regulatory standpoint. And part of that is driven by social media, a very different atmosphere from a social media perspective with regard to permitting. It used to be we’d keep our head down and go through the process and we’d get our permits, notwithstanding the fact that we usually go through the courts.

And in New Hampshire, I think most of the permits that we’ve gotten went all the way to the Supreme Court. So from a regulatory standpoint, it’s a real challenge. I think that, we’re going through that process, and our team’s doing a great job. But there’s no question that it’s a hugely challenging process. Some of the last permits that we got took seven years, and through the course of that process, millions of dollars in consulting, legal, and engineering, etcetera.

And at the end of the process, there’s no guarantee that you’re gonna get a permit. So it’s a really challenging process, but our team is doing a great job of getting through it. We’re going to add capacity to our Highland facility. We’re going to double that capacity probably in the next year or so. As you know, we brought McKean on.

We have 30,000,000 cubic yards capacity there, which is a real safety valve for us in the Northeast for all of our facilities. So, really excited about McKean, up and operational. Ned, you may talk about a little bit of activity there in terms of additional tons going in, which is really helpful to get the team up to speed from an operating standpoint.

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: Yeah. We’ve never looked at McKean as an opportunity to bring in a lot of new streams. As John said, it’s really a defensive risk management move for us as we look at the risk in the Northeast. It’s a double edged sword. The the complexity of permitting, the intensity, the the the desire of politicians and regulators to have less disposal capacity and really just ship waste to faraway places is both helpful and hard.

It’s one of the things that’s allowed us to create a very much a very valuable landfill position in the Northeast. But it’s also challenging for us to keep these facilities, expand them, create new facilities. We do really well because we live in the market. We we we’re involved and John’s very much involved in the politics or regulatory side. But but it is that huge challenge.

And you have states like Massachusetts who have decided we’re just gonna export most of our waste to far off other locations. And the externality of that discussion, I think we’ll continue to come up and having that in market capacity is really important and not just shipping the waste off a thousand miles away to another community.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: So so two questions out of that. One, you’re it’s about 4,000,000 tons of annual disposal. And when you’re all done, you’re still gonna be at 4,000,000 even if New Hampshire gets closed or non terrorist closing with the expansion at Highland and and

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: That’s right.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: What’s happening in McKean. We’re still

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: We’ve got about 6,000,000 tons today. We’re filling probably about three and a half to four depending on the year.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: And you’re still gonna be in a position to be able to absorb that and have the room to grow into it. Right. So let’s just get that out on the table. What and this is now a little more philosophical. In Massachusetts, isn’t it unique?

More states are doing this, thinking about this, you know, I’m gonna export this problem. But it has an extraordinary compounding issue on a local cost of business. Correct. When does that when does that rooster come home to rest and business wakes up and says, hey. This is a dumb policy because you’ve raised a number that was one or 2% of my cost is now all of a sudden becoming five or so.

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: I mean, you look at the CPI print and you look at the basket of where trash and waste services sits, it’s like 40 basis points. So four tenths of 1%. And I think from our vantage point, we’ve always thought that economics would win. And in many ways, it it doesn’t. I I think, for politicians, regulators, they really do see this vision with more waste being recycled, brought into circularity.

And we win every day when we focus on those topics. You don’t win when you focus on the economics around landfilling.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: So they just they’re they’re gonna push down this burden onto their local economies and be damned.

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: Yes. I think that’s that’s exactly right. Think unfortunately too many states are of a mindset that part of their waste management solution is to ship it out of state. And I think we’re ways away from the economic burden of that really making a difference in terms However, you’re right.

At some point in time, the pushback is going to come from business. I think the other thing that is really important is when we talk about that to governors and legislature, it’s not only about the waste that’s generated every day. It’s about hurricanes. It’s about floods. It’s about being able to move that material.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: How do you how do you respond?

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: You got to be able to respond in emergency. And we’ve seen across the Northeast 3, 4 in the last three or four years, significant emergencies where there’s been thousands of tons of material that has to be moved and has to be moved in a timely manner. Otherwise, you got another health issue. So it’s it’s it’s gonna come home to roost. I think, you know, it may be, as Ned said, maybe a little while before it does economically, but, people are beginning to listen.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: Alright. Very quickly because we’re coming to the end of our time. You’re a cash compounder. How do I think about some of the things that are happening at a macro level right now and and impacting in the very short term that cash compounding? And then as you look out and talk about what you think that compounding looks like on a on a consistent basis, who are you as a compounder?

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: So so for the last decade, we’ve grown free cash flow, adjusted free cash flow about 10 about 15 to 20% per year. And we, day in, day out, grow organically about 10 to 12% and then that 12% to 20% plus comes from acquisition So that compounding is really important. And we are hyper focused on putting investments to work to have the right return profile from a cash standpoint. And it’s everything. It’s replacing a truck to buying a business.

We’re always focused on that cash return.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: Okay. Last question. Waste goes across the scale every single day. I think the industry is actually an economist at some degree because you can really measure fluctuations in the behavior of a marketplace place. So what is your read for now into the fifth month of twenty twenty five about the economic environment in in the patch that you work in?

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: Yeah. So it’s always a little bit hard in the Northeast to get that read in the winter. We had a particularly rough winter this year with lots of ice, lots of snow, very cold.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: And I know. I was up there. We’re trying to get my CDL in a little bit.

Ned Coletta, President, Casella Waste: So things were a little slow in the first quarter, especially on temporary roll off. We we saw even a little bit of weakness from a volume standpoint in the commercial side. But coming into April and May, volumes are strong across each segment of our business. We have not seen any major impacts from the tariff discussion or any sort of economic slowdown. There’s a handful of customers that we’ve heard have been slowing down, but it’s not an overall trend across our customer base at all.

It’s actually pretty positive right now.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: Alright. We’re at the end of our conversation. Thank you for making time for us. Happy fiftieth anniversary.

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: Yeah. Thank you.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: Thanks for thanks for

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: having us kick it off as usual.

Michael Hoffman, President and CEO, National Waste and Recycling Association: You’ve been kicking it off for a decade, so you’re the opening act. They do a pretty good job too. Absolutely. Even in a town with 10,000 unemployed comedians.

John Casella, CEO, Casella Waste: Thank you all. Thank you.

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