Casella Waste Systems Inc (CWST) 2017 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Casella Waste Systems Q1 2017 Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this call is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Joe Fusco.

Thank you for joining us this morning, and welcome. With us today are John Casella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Casella Waste Systems; Ed Johnson, our President and Chief Operating Officer; and Ned Coletta, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Today, we will be discussing our 2017 first quarter results. These results were released earlier yesterday afternoon.

Along with a brief review of those results and an update on the company's activities and business environment, we will be answering your questions later as well.

But first, as you know, I must remind everyone that various remarks that we may make about the company's future expectations, plans and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by those forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the Risk Factors section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, which is on file with the SEC.

In addition, any forward-looking statements represent our views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date. While we may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we specifically disclaim any obligation to do so even if our views change. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any date subsequent to today.

Also, during this call, we will be referring to non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures are not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, to the extent they are available without unreasonable effort are available in the appendix in our investor slide presentation, which is available in the Investors Section of our website at ir.casella.com.

And now, before I pass out, I'll turn it over to John Casella, who will begin today's discussion.

Thanks, Joe. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter of 2017 conference call. We are very pleased with the first quarter results. We are off to a solid start for 2017. As reported in yesterday's press release, our revenues for the quarter were up 6.7% from last year. Adjusted EBITDA was up 20.1% from last year. Adjusted EBITDA margins were up 190 basis points from last year. We drove year-over-year improvement in the first quarter through our strong pricing execution, our operating efficiency programs, tailwinds from higher recycling commodity pricing and continuous strong overall execution against our key strategic initiatives.

In the first quarter, we experienced normal weather -- winter weather in the Northeast with a number of severe snowstorms and prolonged periods of cold weather. While we're used to operating in these conditions, the first quarter faced a tough year-over-year weather comparison as we experienced historically warm weather in the first quarter of 2016, which resulted in higher volumes and lower operational costs last year. Winter has finally left the Northeast over the last few weeks, and we've seen positive seasonal trends for construction, demolition and contaminated soil work.

In August 2015, we announced an updated comprehensive strategic plan and outline for investor financial targets for fiscal year 2018. The 2018 plan is focused on increasing landfill returns, driving additional profitability within our collection operations, creating incremental value through resource solutions and reducing financial and operating risks while improving our balance sheet. We are tracking ahead of this multiyear plan and we remain confident that our enhanced process, discipline and continuing focus on key operating strategies will further drive improved performance and increase free cash flow, enabling us to continue to further delever the balance sheet and increase shareholder value.

Our first major strategy is improving landfill returns through a focus on principal -- pricing discipline, sourcing incremental volumes at select sites and driving operational and capital efficiencies. As expected, our landfill tons were down 6.4% in the quarter with the decline driven largely by the planned diversion at the Southbridge landfill and a planned waste diversion from our Ontario landfill as we work to complete a newly constructed cell. Excluding these 2 impacts, our landfill tons were roughly -- were up roughly 2.1% in the first quarter.

The disposal capacity continues to tighten in the Northeast market, as permanent site closures are reducing capacity and stronger economic and construction activity are driving higher volumes. Given the supply-demand imbalance, we were able to successfully advance 3.4% of pricing at our landfills in the first quarter. We believe that this positive pricing backdrop will continue into the future as additional site closures are expected over the next several years. And as we roll off multiyear contracts, we expect to advance pricing in excess of CPI on a larger percentage of our book of business.

On the landfill development side, we recently received a draft license for a 9.4 million cubic yard expansion at our Juniper Ridge landfill. This permit, when issued, will extend the life of the site to match our long-term operating and lease agreement that goes through 2033. We continue to make slow progress advancing our permitting activities for the next cells at the Southbridge landfill. Given these timing delays and challenges, we ramped down volumes at the site by roughly 31% in fiscal year 2016, and by another 35% in the first quarter.

On April 30, we entered into an ACO with Massachusetts DEP, the town of Southbridge and the town of Charlton for the equal sharing of costs between MassDEP and us of up to $10 million in total or $5 million each for the town of Southbridge to install a municipal water line in the town of Charlton. Upon satisfactory completion of the water line and other matters covered by the ACO, we and the town will be released by MassDEP from any further responsibilities for the Charlton Chapter 21E obligations.

It is expected that the town of Southbridge will issue up to a 20-year bond for our portion of the water line cost, and we have agreed to reimburse the town for periodic payments under the bond. While we continue to pursue future expansion capacity at the Southbridge landfill, we currently do not have visibility on whether we will be able to develop this expansion capacity at an adequate risk-adjusted return. And it is possible at some point in the near future, we could conclude that closing the site is in the company's best interest.

However, even if we are unsuccessful from a permitting standpoint at the Southbridge landfill, we remain confident that we can still achieve our fiscal year 2018 financial targets that we first announced in August of 2015.

In the first quarter, we continued to make great progress with our second major strategy, improving profitability of our hauling operations. Our focus here is on core blocking and tackling, namely a focus on pricing programs, route optimization and fleet standardization. In the first quarter, operating income in the collection line of business was up 12.8% year-over-year with margins up 130 basis points, as robust pricing and operating efficiencies drove results despite a tough operational comparison to last winter. We have continued to advance price increases in the collection line of business with residential and commercial pricing growth of 3.1% in the first quarter.

On the operating side, we continued to advance a number of key initiatives, including our fleet plan, maintenance initiatives, improving routing to further improve our operating cost in the collection line of business.

Moving onto the third major strategy, creating incremental value through resource solutions. Here, we differentiate ourselves in the marketplace by offering value-added resource solutions. These solutions range from our customer solutions group, which provides professional services to large industrial customers, to our organics business that is a leader in organics processing and disposal in the Northeast to our market-leading recycling business. Higher commodity prices coupled with the changes that we made over the last 2 years to reshape our recycling business model helped to drive strong recycling performance in the first quarter. We generated a return on net assets of over 20% in the first quarter, up from roughly 2% in 2015. While we expect recycling commodity prices to drop by roughly 25% from March to April on weakness in paper and cardboard pricing, we do not expect this decline to impact our guidance for the year since we had previously budgeted prices to moderate throughout the year.

Also we continue to make substantial progress improving our balance sheet and reducing operational and financial risks. During the first quarter, we continued to repay debt and reduce leverage. And in April, we completed a favorable repricing of our Term Loan B to save additional cash interest costs.

With the work that we've done over the last few years, our balance sheet positions us well for the future and we remain deeply committed to a disciplined capital investment strategy with free cash flow primarily used to repay debt or in select instances, for small tuck-in acquisitions and growth investments within our core operations. We completed a small tuck-in acquisition during the quarter, and we're working to reinvigorate our acquisition pipeline.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Ned to walk us through the financials.

Thanks, John. Revenues in the first quarter were $133.8 million, up $8.4 million or 6.7% year-over-year. Solid waste revenues were up $1.3 million or up 1.5% year-over-year in the first quarter with higher collection and disposal pricing and the rollover impact from the acquisition of 3 transfer stations last year, partially offset by lower solid waste volumes.

Revenues in the collection line of business were up $2 million year-over-year with price up 2.4% and volumes up 1%. Pricing was up 3.1% in our residential and commercial lines of business in the first quarter. Volumes were slightly down in the roll-off line of business as we continue to focus on price over volumes, and we had a tough comparison to an unseasonably warm and dry first quarter of 2016.

Revenues were down $1 million in the disposal line of business year-over-year in the quarter with higher pricing offset by lower volumes. We increased our third party recorded landfill pricing by 3.4% year-over-year in the quarter with landfill prices up 3.3% in the Eastern region and up 3.5% in the Western region as we [picked] this strategy in mid-2016 to focus on advancing pricing versus capacity utilization in the West. We expect these same positive pricing trends to continue through 2017 as we recognize the rollover impact of price increases already completed and we advance further pricing in key markets.

Our landfill volumes were 866,000 tons in the first quarter, down 59,000 tons year-over-year. During the quarter, as John mentioned, we continued to ramp down the Southbridge landfill with tons down roughly 31,000 tons at the site.

Further, we ramped down volumes about 47,000 tons at our Ontario landfill as we had to divert tons for a newly constructed cell. We expect this headwind to resolve during our second quarter. Excluding these 2 impacts, our landfill tons were actually up 2.1% year-over-year with strength across most waste types and sites.

Recycling revenues were up $6 million year-over-year in the first quarter with higher commodity pricing and volumes, partially offset by lower tipping or processing fees. Our average commodity revenue per ton, or as we say, our ACR, was up 89% year-over-year in the first quarter on higher fiber, plastics and metals pricing.

However, this positive trend reversed in April with our average commodity revenue per ton down roughly 25% from March to April. Much of this decline was driven by a significant drop in export pricing for news, cardboard and mixed paper as China has reduced purchases in the marketplace. As we discussed last quarter on our conference call, we'd only expected the higher pricing for commodities to hold in the first quarter and we had forecasted the ACR to drop throughout the year to about $95 in the fourth quarter or down about 25% for the year.

Organics revenues were up $300,000 in the first quarter on higher volumes as our team continues to source new streams of biosolids in the ever-tightening Northeast disposal markets. Customer solutions revenues were up $700,000 in the first quarter with continued growth in our industrial services business.

Adjusted EBITDA was $23.1 million in the quarter, up $3.9 million year-over-year with margins improving 190 basis points to 17.3%.

So with our revenues up $8.4 million and our adjusted EBITDA up $3.9 million, that gave us a flow-through impact of 46% in the quarter. This further reinforces our success of shedding less profitable, low margin volumes, while at the same time securing pricing increases and reducing operating costs.

Solid waste adjusted EBITDA was $18.9 million in the quarter, up $1.2 million year-over-year. We achieved 6.6% adjusted EBITDA growth on only 1.5% revenue growth. Solid waste adjusted EBITDA margins were 20.1%, up 100 basis points year-over-year, reflecting strong pricing coupled with cost efficiencies, which offset the volume declines.

Recycling adjusted EBITDA was $2.6 million in the quarter, up $2.6 million year-over-year with the improvement driven by a combination of higher commodity pricing coupled with the structural changes we have made to the recycling business model to offtake risk and increase our returns. To be clear, our improvement in recycling financial performance has not just been driven by higher commodity prices. The last time our adjusted EBITDA in the recycling business was at these same levels was back in fiscal year 2011 when our average commodity revenue per ton was roughly 45% higher than we experienced over the last year.

Adjusted EBITDA was $1.6 million in the other segment, up $100,000 year-over-year with the increase driven by better performance in the customer solutions group.

Cost of operations in the quarter was up $4.1 million but down 140 basis points year-over-year as a percentage of revenues with the improvement as a percentage of revenues driven by lower transportation costs and lower vehicle maintenance costs, partially offset by higher purchase materials cost on our recycling business due to higher commodity pricing, higher health care costs and higher fuel costs. G&A costs in the quarter were up $250,000 year-over-year. This increase was mainly driven by higher equity compensation accruals.

Depreciation and amortization costs in the quarter were down $600,000 year-over-year due to lower landfill amortization expense, mainly associated with the lower volumes at the Southbridge landfill.

Our free cash flow was $1.1 million in the first quarter as opposed to negative $8.3 million last year. This improvement was driven by our improved operating performance, lower cash interest costs on the refinancing we did last year and slightly lower capital expenditures on timing differences.

In the first quarter 2017, we took 2 additional steps to further strengthen our balance sheet and reduce risk. On February 1, we completed the remarketing of $25 million of our Finance Authority of Maine solid waste disposal revenue bond with a great outcome from this remarketing where we repaid our existing term rate bonds that had a fixed rate of 6.25% and our existing variable rate bonds with borrowings from a new 8-year senior unsecured bond with fixed rate at 5.25%. During the quarter, we recognized roughly $0.5 million loss on debt extinguishment associated with this transaction.

In mid-February, we also began our efforts to further manage long-term interest rate risk by entering into $60 million of floating fixed LIBOR swaps that mature between 4 and 5 years. As of March 31, roughly 32% of our debt was at fixed rates, including these swaps.

On April 18, as you might have seen in our press release, we finalized our repricing amendment to our senior secured credit facility to reduce the interest rate on our $350 million Term Loan B from LIBOR plus 300 basis points to LIBOR plus 275 basis points. We also reduced the interest rate step down, so now when our consolidated net leverage ratio is at or below 3.75x, our interest rate will drop to LIBOR plus 250 basis points. This amendment is expected to save us roughly $875,000 per year in cash interest costs. This is on top of the $11 million of cash interest savings we recognized from the October 2016 refinancing.

As of March 31, 2017, our consolidated net leverage ratio was 4.07x, which is down 1.35x since December of '14. As stated in our press release yesterday afternoon, we reaffirmed our previously announced guidance ranges for 2017. We're currently tracking a little bit ahead of budget year-to-date with recycling and the collection lines of business both ahead and landfill slightly behind on further slowing of out volumes to Southbridge and the delays of getting into the new cell at the Ontario landfill. We remain very confident in achieving our guidance ranges for the year.

And with that, I'll hand it over to Ed.

Thanks, Ned, and good morning, everyone. Well, another good quarter in the books. As we all know, the first quarter is the slowest quarter for the year and the results are always dependent on weather and the timing of spring activities. This year, we had a pretty normal winter as compared to last year's mild winter. And we had snow into April, so the construction season got a late start. Despite this, we continued show improvement operationally, and in mid-April, we saw activity increase and we remain comfortable with our guidance for the year.

Looking at the quarter. We see a continuation of our cost of ops improvement as we picked up another 140 basis points as a percentage of revenue as compared to last year's first quarter. Unlike prior quarters, this improvement was driven primarily by our recycling line of business. But given the circumstances for the quarter, we're pretty happy with the performance in all lines of business. On the hauling side, as you might recall, last year's first quarter was a breakout quarter led by record price improvement and improvement in our key cost and efficiency metrics aided by the mild winter. This year, we're happy to maintain the cost of ops percentage on increased revenue, adding about 5% to last year's EBITDA contribution and as John mentioned, 12.8% on EBIT.

We also focused efforts during the quarter on preparation for what we believe will be a strong construction season this year. The economy looks good, and April is off to a strong start.

On the disposals side, we've been focused on price, while working through permitting delays and our strategy has been very successful. At the Southbridge landfill, we have needed to push out tons as we deal with the lengthy expansion permitting process. Coupled with the temporary logistical issues at Ontario as we work through activating a new cell, we were down about 50,000 tons from the prior year first quarter. Strong price discipline allowed us to only see a slight drop in revenue, matched by a drop in cost and we maintained our EBITDA contribution despite the lower tonnage. We continued to push price in a tightening market, and the Ontario cell logistical issues are behind us now.

As I mentioned, the recycling line of business produced a very strong quarter for us. Our transition to a new pricing structure a few years ago has given us a business model that shifts commodity risk to the customer and allows us to generate a fair return on invested capital irrespective of commodity prices. Although our customers do benefit when commodity prices are high from either increased revenue share or reduction in our floating SRA fee, we share on the upside and our average commodity revenue per ton, our ACR, was up almost 90% as compared to a year ago. As a result, recycling contributed an additional $2.5 million in EBITDA and helped drive our cost of ops percentage of revenue down. Another thing we changed a few years ago was the way we looked at and incentivized our Customer Resource Solutions group and our Casella Organics business group. Performance in these groups is evaluated based on not only their contribution of third-party revenue and profits, but also the revenue and profit they contribute to the disposal and recycling lines of business. During the first quarter, they improved both and these teams are working well as integrated contributors to our results.

So another good quarter and we look forward to continued improvement as we move through the year.

And with that, I'd like to turn it back to the operator for the Q&A session.

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Tyler Brown with Raymond James.

Ned, just looking through the proxy, it looks like you guys achieved an incentive comp payout of maybe 190%, I believe, in '16. It obviously seems to be much deserved given the performance. But if you simply accrue for a 100% bonus this year, what would that dollar difference be between the '16 accrual and the '17 accrual?

Do you have that number, Jason?

I don't have that on hand, I can get back to you. We are tracking right now slightly better than our budget. And the way the compensation committee of the board puts together incentives, typically around -- if we hit our budget numbers, we get about 50% of our incentive compensation. And then from there, it scales up. So last year, we blew our budget out of the water and that's why we achieved above 100%. This year, we're tracking a little bit ahead right now. So as you mentioned, the accruals are down a little bit at this point of the year.

Okay. So should we think about SG&A coming in around 13% of revenue? Or could it be lower than that?

Give me one second, I have to find my thing. So G&A right now in our forecast is right around 13% for the year.

Okay, okay. And then longer term, not to keep harping on SG&A, but where should we think about that panning out? Your peers are, call it, 300 basis points lower than you. They have more scale, I get that. But any broader thoughts on where SG&A as a percentage of revenue could go in out years? And is that going to be part of kind of the story, maybe the next leg of the story, so to speak?

Yes, that really could be a part of the next leg of the story. We haven't been fully prepared to lay out some of the plans we've been working on, but behind the scenes, we've been making some investments in sales force efficiency and productivity and also our back office. And we've been working on, as you know, laying out the next leg of strategy and those are 2 areas that we're about a year into making some investments. They're longer term to pan out, but we feel like there are areas to gain efficiency there over time.

Okay, good. And then, John, this may be a bit of a left field question, but any updates on developing the rail infrastructure from McKean?

No, nothing to report, Tyler. I think that we continue to look, the team continues to look for that opportunity that would cause us to invest the capital to put the rail siding in, et cetera. But no, nothing really to report. And as we said before, we're not going to invest that capital unless we have a long-term contract for a minimum of 200,000 tons.

Sure. Sure. Okay. Okay, good. And then maybe my last one here. John, you made some interesting comments in the prepared remarks about possibly reinvigorating your acquisition activity. I'm just curious if you could expand on that. And would you kind of be more focused on smaller deals, more tuck-in? Just any color on that would be helpful.

Sure. I think that clearly, we're -- everyone is looking for the next stage of growth from a Casella perspective, so -- as is our board, quite frankly. So we're beginning those discussions now. We're beginning to look at the acquisition pipeline. And I think that it's fair to say that we're -- it's a very positive in terms of what we see and what the opportunities might be and we're in the process of going through that process of putting together a strategic plan for the next few years.

Just adding to that, our capital discipline extends to everything in what we're doing as a business over the last few years. We have looked at a few acquisitions, say 10 to 20, and we've only done a handful because they just either didn't fit our assets correctly or the valuation expectations weren't where they needed to be. As John said, we completed 1 in the first quarter, that was a perfect tuck-in and the valuation was right for us and we continue to look at that. But I think our perspective is the team is, we're very focused on risk-adjusted returns and things need to make sense for us.

Your next question comes from the line of Joe Box with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

So Ned, on the recycling side, just where we sit on the price curve here in Q2, could you maybe just talk about where the sharing agreements could actually come out at and how we should think about the expected incremental margins?

Yes, it's interesting because we have so many different contracts with customers where sharing kicks in at different levels and we're sharing different commodities that -- and some of that has to do with the export markets as well. This last quarter, with every dollar increase of commodities, we saw about 50% shared with our customers. So we've said this before, $1 price in the recycling business is not exactly like $1 of price in another part of business because we're sharing some of that back. But it's exactly where we want to be as a business as, if commodity prices were to fall again, we start to see a curve that smooths out and ultimately we get to breakpoints in most of our contracts where we're getting paid dollar for dollar tipping fees. You can almost imagine like an Aspen (inaudible) of a curve where we hit a floor. So we're very comfortable with where we are. We made more money from recycling in this period and our customers did as well, it's a great place to be.

So I mean, but just based off of the 25% sequential change, I mean, could we think about that maybe stepping back to a 65% incremental margin on the recycling side? Or is that aggressive?

Yes, we -- maybe a little bit aggressive. We'll kind of move linearly between the 50% and the 65% during the period. And then kind of when we get commodities around a little bit below 90%, we get into that more of a 65% range, where 65% accrues to us and 35% generally to our customers.

Okay. And then maybe changing gears. How has the EBITDA profile changed at Southbridge since you guys started throttling back the volume? I guess, what I'm specifically looking for is maybe the contribution of EBITDA to the total company from Southbridge? And then if it's -- if that EBITDA number has declined meaningfully as the volume has come down or if you've been able to kind of stabilize that EBITDA just with the price offset.

Yes. So as you know, incremental tons into a landfill are very high contributors. There are a lot of fixed costs at a landfill. Back in 2015, we did roughly $12.5 million of EBITDA at Southbridge. 2016, we did roughly $7.5 million. And we're tracking to about $3 million to $4 million in 2017. So it's been throttling back. But at the same time, we've been beating our numbers and we're winning in other areas of our business. So we remain confident that we can offset any further declines at the site.

Got it. So the risk profile has [really] moderated as the EBITDA has come down there?

Yes.

Absolutely, Joe. I mean I think we're very confident in terms of being able to meet our numbers for 2018 irrespective of what happens with Southbridge.

I mean, I don't want to take too Draconian of a view, but hypothetically speaking, let's say Southbridge doesn't get permit expansion. Is there -- is it possible to maybe construct a transfer facility to try and internalize some of those volumes and ship it up into your Western New York facilities?

I think that's certainly a possibility. There's no question that we could potentially do a transfer station there and move it to other facilities. Obviously, we'd prefer to get through the process and be successful with the development but if not, that's a possibility.

Okay. Yes, I mean you can't do the permitting process in tandem? And I would think it would still take a while to get a permit for a transfer station, right?

So not a lot of the garbage comes direct drive to that landfill today, Joe. We've got 2 very well-placed transfer stations in Central Mass that are moving some of that waste around to third-party sites. A little bit of it's moving internally as well.

And it wouldn't be a significant -- I don't think it would be a significant effort from -- to have a small transfer station there. As Ned said, a lot of the waste is coming in by long-haul trailer. But it wouldn't be -- I don't think a significant effort from a permitting standpoint to do a transfer station.

Got it. That's helpful. And then one last one, if you don't mind. Can you maybe just give us a feel on pricing quarter-to-date here in 2Q? I'm curious how the trajectory looks relative to maybe what you got last year at this time or versus just normal seasonality?

[indiscernible] Q2. Meaning Q1, or -- we gave the pricing for Q1, right?

Yes, so far in April and early May. And it sounds like maybe there's a little bit of a normalized step up from a seasonal standpoint. I'm just hoping you can give us maybe a little bit of color on the pricing side.

Yes. We haven't closed our books for April yet, so I don't feel comfortable. I think what we're saying is we've got good visibility on pricing in our residential commercial customers and we remain on plan for the year and price increases when it's budgeted in April. On the roll-off line of business, we're entering that time of the year where construction is ramping up and we've brought a little bit of new capacity into the franchise this year, but we're focused on gaining an adequate return in the roll-off line of business, so we're pushing price.

The other thing that we've done, too, proactively, we've put roll-off containers in place because we do anticipate that we will need additional assets for the demand that we're likely to have through the spring.

Your next question comes from the line of Corey Greendale from First.

John, congratulations on the Hall of Fame. It's really cool. A question about the Western region. So I understand the dynamic swell to the landfill pricing dynamics in the East, but in the West, seems like you've been kind of creeping that up. Can you just talk about kind of competitive conditions in that market? Has that changed? Or is this all internally driven? And initially, as you ramped it up, what's the reaction then? How much push back are you getting?

Yes, so the Western landfills, if you flash back a few years ago, when we reset strategy back in 2013, we had shed a lot of tons in the Western region as the economy stalled back in '08, '09, and we saw the [Turtlemont] go away in '11 and '12. We ship -- it's a volume-based strategy at our Western region landfills and it was an important strategic move for us. It wasn't that we dropped price in the market, but when we reached further away, we were taking in tons at lower price. And as we sat down last summer, really reviewed where we were strategically for the budget, we just weren't making an adequate return at a few of our landfills. It's expensive to permit capacity. We had just gone through 5 years of permitting at Ontario, 5 years of permitting at Chemung, had huge successes getting airspace at both sites. But it's expensive to operate, expensive to build, expensive to permit landfills. And we made a decision that we were shifting strategy in the marketplace and starting to focus more on pricing over volumes. We have shed some volumes in the marketplace, but it's the right thing to do. Some of this volume is irreplaceable, and we need to manage these assets appropriately.

Okay. And in terms the -- so I understand what you're saying. In terms of the reaction, I'm imagining if the headline price is 3%, that means you're not getting 3% on everything, so you're getting larger increases on some volumes, so just what has their reaction been?

That's exactly right, Corey. I think it's fair to say that we had fairly significant increases on the C&D basis at our Hakes facility that is probably a big driver in terms of the overall price increase, very substantial price increases there. And I think that as Ned said, we're really looking at the lower priced waste that we've got at all of those facilities and making a real effort to push out all of the lower priced waste and be fairly aggressive at all of the sites in terms of pricing. But probably one of the biggest drivers was our Hakes facility from the C&D pricing standpoint. And we go into this year, this first quarter, we had thought that we would push away more tons than we actually did.

Okay, great. And then apologies if you feel like you've addressed this already, but it would -- could you just help me understand the EBITDA impact, specifically of higher commodity prices, just kind of parsing out the various pieces of that?

Yes. So EBITDA was up $2.6 million year-over-year in the recycling business. And as we talked about, our revenues were up roughly $6 million. So our pricing was up -- what's that number? Price was up. I don't have it in front of me. But not every dollar of price flows through perfectly to EBITDA, and that's what we were saying because we have revenue shares that kick in. So the way our contracts are structured, we'll set a threshold amount for the average client revenue per ton and we'll start to share with our customers above that threshold. And as we move through those thresholds, we're sharing more and more with our customers. But the point I was trying to make earlier is, it's -- a lot of it has to do with what we changed structurally in the business because if you kind of flash back in time and say, when's the last time we were making this much operating income or EBITDA in our recycling business, it was back in 2011. But commodity prices were 50% higher at that point in time. So it's hard to disaggregate all the moves, but we know we've made our business more profitable and higher return in all market cycles because you just do a direct comparison to when we made this much money before.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Hoffman with Stifel.

So in the spirit of all that, we hear that Wheelabrator is being shopped by ECP, and if it gets done before you hit a 4-year anniversary of the original trade, Waste Management can cancel its disposal agreement. So I'm curious what your thoughts are about what could happen to spot market pricing if they pull tons away even though that's temporary. What do you think happens in the spot markets, in the markets you're operating? Do you have a feel for that?

I think that -- I don't think that, from an overall standpoint, it's likely that, that waste would move away from the incinerators because of transportation costs. So I don't think that it's likely that, that would move to other facilities. Maybe with some rail infrastructure, possibly. But I don't think that there's a significant impact in the short term.

Okay, that's great. And Ned...

The other thing too, I don't think that with the New Hampshire facility, double check this, Michael, but I'm not sure that they have a lot of capacity at that facility to take that waste. So I think with the...

Or Western Mass.

Yes, or Western Mass, the Chicopee facility is closing and they're moving that volume to the Fitchburg facility and they did get a permit expansion there. But the Chicopee facility is closing, so there'd obviously be waste in our view probably moved from Chicopee to the Fitchburg facility, but I don't think that there's a lot of capacity that they would have to take that waste that would make sense from a transportation adjusted basis.

Okay. That helps then. And then, Ned, would you mind, can you share with us your ACR for the quarters for '16, so we understand -- and then what it was in 1Q '17?

Sure. So Q1 of '16, our ACR was 67 a ton; Q2 was 87; Q3, 100; Q4, 104; and Q1 of '17, 128. And we've forecast it to be down to the low 90s by Q4 of '17.

Okay. All right. That helps terrifically. And then with regards to the margin, if I looked at this at a little longer time frame, there's a lot more margin expansion than you might think, I think. I'm setting this question up for an easy yes. But you're up 100 basis points, as acknowledged it's mostly recycling, and this is solid waste year-over-year. But if I go back to 2015 and look where you started there, factor in the pull forward of volume that helped margins in '16 and sort of try and smooth that some, net of the recycling prices, you had a pretty good margin improvement in '17. That's my interpretation. Am I talking myself into something?

I don't think so. Ned's going through the numbers right now, Michael, but I think your perspective is right.

Yes. I mean, we continue to -- the solid waste business, as you know, makes up about 20 -- 75% of our revenues and over a 3-year period, we're up roughly 300 basis points on our solid waste business. We're around, last 12 months, around 26.5%. We continue to see opportunity to drive that higher, over the next couple years, so you're right.

Yes I mean, the -- as Ned said before, there was obviously a benefit from a commodity standpoint in the first quarter. No question about it. But the last time we had that kind of contribution was in '11 and commodity prices were 50% higher than where they are today. So I think the most important thing from our perspective is we believe we fixed the recycling model that, as you know, Michael, in low commodity prices was broken historically, it has been broken. So we believe that we fixed it.

Great, all right. And that's the point I was trying to make, as we strip away recycling and you're going to still see there's been this true structural margin improvement in solid waste and there's still room. So where do you think the room to go is? Is it another 200 basis points? And what's the time line? And that kind of leads into you're beating your 2018 plan by a year, so what's the next plan?

So both on the hauling side and the disposal side, the hauling side still has room. We're -- from my point of view, we're only halfway through our fleet improvement plan. So as we progress the next couple years, we'll see margin improvement on the collection side of the business. And on the disposals side, the markets have gotten better for us, quite frankly. You're going to see it in the price, and we're running the sites as efficiently as we can. We've got a heavy equipment plan as well which I don't talk about much, but we're trying to improve the compaction at the sites and that's the general operation of the sites that has already improved pretty -- quite dramatically. And I expect some more margin improvement there. And when you tie us to what percentage number that could be in the time line, well, those are the 2 variables. We don't like to put a stake in the sand yet. But there will be improvement and it should be the next couple years.

And it's not 50 basis points or maybe it's not 300, but it's somewhere in between, right, that's...

That's a fair perspective, yes.

Okay. All right. And then have you settled on a new plan for 2018 and beyond since you're going to beat the 2018 plan by a year?

You sound like the board. We're working on it. So it's a very fair...

The board is going to dinner with me on Monday, so I'm going to ask them (inaudible)...

You could ask them, absolutely. They've said the same thing, Michael, what are you going to do for me now? So we're in the process of reinvigorating the acquisition pipeline. We're looking at that. We're going to be presenting to the board next quarter, the beginning stages of what the next 3-year plan is going to look like. So we're in the process of doing that now. We've got that commitment to the board as well. They're obviously asking the same questions.

All right. And then, Ned, given the strength of the performance, when do you think you cross over to -- or use up the NOLs? Make it simple, so you become a cash taxpayer at this point?

Right now, it looks like 2020.

Okay. All right. And then last question, on that deal subject. The Northeast market is kind of interesting because there are a lot of big chunks still that are privately-held family businesses. So how many little bits and pieces are there really to meaningfully move the needle from a tuck-in standpoint? Are you really going to have to go after some of these chunkier pieces?

I think that you would look at all of it, quite honestly. You'd look at everything that is an overlap. Some of those businesses may very well be for sale over the next year or 2. Some may not. But I think clearly, when we look at opportunities in the acquisition pipeline, you're going to look at all of it.

Okay. All right, great. Oh, one last question, E&P activity. I know it's -- you're exposed to the Northern Marcellus, but I just have a curiosity what you're seeing as far as the trend given gas prices have lifted and there's some activity starting to pick up?

Not any significant movement from our perspective in terms of tons. Maybe a little bit of movement from a rig standpoint, but nothing of any substance at this point in time, Michael.

(Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Wayne Archambo with Monarch Partners.

Operator, he could follow up with me later if he got cut off.

And we have no further questions at this time. I turn the call back over to the presenters.

We continue to execute well against our key strategies to improve our financial and operating performance. At all levels of the organization, we're devoted to operational blocking and tackling with a focus on pricing strategies at the local level, improving our operational facilities and disciplined capital allocation. We believe these actions will further improve the company's performance and allow us to continue to delever the balance sheet on a going-forward basis. Thank you all for your attention this morning, and we look forward to discussing our second quarter 2017 earnings with you in early August. Thanks, everyone. Have a great day.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day. You may all disconnect.