GFL Environmental Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Record EBITDA Margins Amidst Macro Headwinds

Lucy, Call Coordinator, GFL Environmental: Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the GFL First Quarter 2026 earnings call. My name is Lucy, and I’ll be coordinating your call today. It is now my pleasure to hand over to Patrick Dovigi, Founder and CEO of GFL, to begin. Please go ahead.

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: Thank you. Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to today’s call and thank you for joining us. This morning, we will be reviewing our results for the first quarter. I am joined this morning by Luke Pelosi, our CFO, who will take us through our forward-looking disclaimer before we get into details.

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: Thank you, Patrick. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining. We have filed our earnings press release, which includes important information. The press release is available on our website. During this call, we’ll be making some forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities laws, including statements regarding events or developments that we believe or anticipate may occur in the future. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those set out in our filings with the Canadian and U.S. securities regulators. Any forward-looking statement is not a guarantee of future performance, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements speak only as of today’s date, and we do not assume any obligation to update these statements, whether as a result of new information, future events and developments, or otherwise.

This call will include a certain discussion of certain non-IFRS measures. A reconciliation of these non-IFRS measures can be found in our filings with the Canadian and U.S. securities regulators. I will now turn the call back over to Patrick.

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: Thank you, Luke. Our financial results for the first quarter exceeded our expectations from top to bottom. Adjusted EBITDA margins expanded 180 basis points to 29.1%, the highest first quarter adjusted EBITDA margin in our history. We achieved this record-setting result in the face of notable headwinds that arose after we provided our guidance, as well as increased uncertainty of the broader macro environment. The strength of our start to the year once again demonstrates the quality of our asset base, the effectiveness of our growth strategies, and the resiliency of our business model. Most importantly, it highlights the capabilities and commitment of our employees who make all of these achievements possible. Pricing was ahead of plan, driven by strong customer retention and ongoing tailwinds from our recent growth investments, including EPR.

We think that this early outperformance should carry forward through the rest of the year and represent upside to our original guide. We expect that our continued focus on realizing incremental pricing opportunities that are available within our portfolio will continue to support pricing at an appropriate spread above our internal cost of inflation. Volumes were better than expected, considering the incremental headwinds from significant winter storms experienced in many of our markets later in the quarter. Excluding the impact of hurricane and one-time transfer station volumes realized in the prior year, volumes were up 80 basis points. Our special waste and EPR volumes more than offset the impact of lower C&D-related volumes and winter storms. We believe that the ongoing industry-leading volume performance demonstrates the quality of our market selection and the effectiveness of our returns-focused capital deployment strategy.

The impact of broader economic uncertainty continues to be a drag on C&D volumes compared to prior periods, but we remain well-positioned to participate in the upside when these volumes inevitably return. On the cost side, we saw our fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year reductions in both operational and SG&A cost intensity as a percentage of overall revenue. Greater operational efficiency, improving labor turnover, fleet optimization, and procurement benefits are some of the initiatives that we highlighted at last year’s Investor Day, which all have contributed to these results. The benefit of these cost efficiencies in our top-line outperformance are reflected in the over 200 basis points of underlying solid waste adjusted EBITDA margin expansion that we achieved in the quarter.

We believe that our continued sequential exceedance of our already industry-leading margin expansion guidance demonstrates that we are on path to realizing our stated goal of low-to-mid-thirties margins by 2028. On M&A activity, we’ve had an active start to the year as expected. We have completed 8 acquisitions year to date, including Frontier Waste Solutions, which closed at the beginning of this month. Frontier is a leading vertically integrated solid waste business with operations across the Texas Triangle, one of the fastest-growing regions in the United States. Frontier’s assets are highly complementary to GFL’s existing assets in the region and will densify our Texas footprint and further strengthen our presence there. The region’s favorable demographics, when combined with the deep market and operational expertise that the Frontier management team brings to GFL, are expected to drive outsized growth for the coming years.

The contribution from these 8 acquisitions allows us to increase our guidance by nearly 5%, and Luke Pelosi will walk you through the details shortly. We still have a robust pipeline of actionable opportunities where we think we can deploy an incremental CAD 300 million-CAD 500 million before year-end. The contribution from any additional M&A that we complete this year will be further upside to our guide. Additionally, earlier this month, we announced the proposed acquisition of SECURE Waste Infrastructure. SECURE operates a network of per-permitted waste processing and disposal assets that will complement and densify GFL’s existing geographic footprint in Western Canada, a market that has very strong structural tailwinds to support the combined businesses’ growth prospects over the near and long term.

Combining SECURE’s hard-to-replicate infrastructure network with GFL’s broader platform strengthens our ability to capture more waste streams across the value chain and to more fully participate in the significant growth investments that are expected in this region by both public and private sectors. I will now pass the call to Luke, who will walk us through the guidance update and the quarter in more detail, and then I’ll share some closing comments before we open it up for Q&A.

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: Thanks, Patrick. Q1 revenues grew 8.5% before considering the translational headwinds from FX, largely on account of strong pricing and underlying volume, which more more than offset greater than anticipated headwinds from adverse weather conditions in the quarter. Pricing was 7% for the quarter, which was approximately 25 basis points better than planned and attributable to higher retention rates and ongoing realization of the incremental pricing opportunities we articulated at Investor Day. Pricing was 8.5% in Canada and 6.3% in the U.S. The strength of the first quarter’s pricing results provide a high degree of visibility on the path to meet or exceed the high end of our pricing guidance for the year.

Q1 volumes were 120 basis points behind the prior year, better than expectations even in the face of the impacts of outsized winter storms experienced in several of our markets. Lapping hurricane and one-time transfer station volume in the prior year period were the primary drivers of the anticipated negative volume print for the quarter. Average commodity prices in the quarter were in line with plan, we saw sequential increases over the last few months and market pricing that is now CAD 15 per ton higher than our initial 2026 outlook. This is the first time in a while where it feels like commodity prices may have bottomed. While there was no meaningful impact to the quarter, if pricing remains at or above current levels, that will result in incremental upside for the year.

Our current commodity price sensitivity is that every CAD 10 change in the gross basket price yields a CAD 6 million change to annual revenue and adjusted EBITDA. Looking at operating costs, cost of sales before depreciation, amortization, and integration costs as a percentage of revenue decreased 90 basis points to 60.7%. Ongoing efficiency and labor costs, in part driven by continued improvement in voluntary turnover, as well as reduced repair and maintenance cost intensity more than offset the impact of higher fuel and transportation costs. In terms of fuel, diesel costs in the quarter were up nearly 10% year-over-year and 40% up in March alone.

The sudden inflection in diesel pricing created a CAD 10 million cost headwind versus our guidance, only CAD 1 million of which was recovered in the quarter due to the timing lag inherent in our fuel surcharges, which are often billed in advance based on the prior month’s diesel pricing. We expect that by the end of the second quarter, our surcharges should generate sufficient incremental revenue to offset the additional fuel expense tied to diesel prices. Although the cost recovery nature of the surcharge mechanism will be a headwind to margins. SG&A cost intensity also significantly decreased as compared to the prior year, primarily driven by operating leverage of our corporate cost segment in line with expectations.

As we had previously indicated, the temporary increase in the percentage of revenue represented by corporate costs resulting from the divestiture of the Environmental Services business is expected to reverse as we continue to grow revenues and leverage this relatively fixed cost segment. Adjusted EBITDA margins were 29.1%, representing 180 basis point improvement over the prior year, about 30 basis points better than planned and a 300 basis point improvement over 2024, a definitive illustration of the success of our strategies. Adjusted EBITDA margins were up 340 basis points in our Canadian segment and up over 100 basis points in the U.S., excluding the impact of hurricane volumes, acquisitions, and the winter storms as mentioned earlier. Fuel and commodity prices were a drag on margins in both segments.

Excluding the impact of these exogenous factors, underlying consolidated Q1 margins were up over 230 basis points from the prior year. Adjusted free cash flow for the quarter was approximately CAD 20 million ahead of plan on account of EBITDA outperformance. Q1 cash flows were inclusive of the investment in working capital we typically make in the first half of the year. In January, we opportunistically issued a CAD 1 billion of new bonds to provide flexibility to execute our growth strategy. The bond issuance was significantly oversubscribed, and the interest rate offered represented one of the tightest spreads ever offered for our rating category. Another testament to the conviction institutional lenders have in our corporate credit quality.

The cash proceeds from this issuance were on hand at the end of the quarter and were partially used to fund Frontier and the other acquisitions that closed in April. We exited the quarter with net leverage of 3.6 times, inclusive of the translational impact of the FX rate running up to 1.393 at quarter end. Using the average FX rate for the quarter, net leverage would have been 3.5 times, exactly in line with our expectations. The second quarter acquisitions will temporarily increase leverage about 30 basis points, and the business will then naturally de-lever back down to mid-3s by year end. As is typical for our industry, we will update our full year guidance for our base business when we release our second quarter results.

However, with the strong start to this year, we see multiple avenues of upside to our current guide that gives us confidence in our ability to meet and potentially exceed the expectations for the year. Nevertheless, given how successful we have been in our M&A program in the first 4 months of the year, we are updating our full year guidance to reflect the expected in-year contribution from the 8 acquisitions completed year to date. Again, this update does not change our previous guidance for our base business.

As a result of the new acquisitions, we now expect the following amounts for full year 2026: revenue of CAD 7.32 billion-CAD 7.34 billion, Adjusted EBITDA of CAD 2.23 billion. Adjusted free cash flow of CAD 850 million, inclusive of cash interest of CAD 445 million and net CapEx of CAD 825 million. Specifically, as it relates to the second quarter of 2026, we expect consolidated revenue of approximately CAD 1.89 billion-CAD 1.9 billion at an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 30.4%. As previewed in Q1, the Q2 Adjusted EBITDA margin is modestly behind the prior year on account of the impact of commodities, fuel price, and M&A.

Q2 adjusted free cash flow is expected to be approximately CAD 225 million, inclusive of CAD 85 million in cash interest and CAD 265 million in net CapEx. I will now pass the call back to Patrick, who will provide some closing comments before Q&A.

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: Thanks, Luke. I wanted to finish by talking a bit more about our proposed SECURE acquisition. This acquisition represents an opportunity to acquire a best-in-class network of hard-to-replicate waste disposal assets in a region with highly compelling market characteristics at a fair value. We first started looking at SECURE business in 2023 when they were divesting a small set of assets coming out of a review by the Competition Bureau related to the Tervita merger. While we saw a lot of opportunity in this asset package, we had limited balance sheet capacity at that time of the sale process, and we were ultimately unsuccessful with our bid.

Since that time, we have observed the resilient financial performance of SECURE through several years of macro-related headwinds, including the rapid interest rate hikes of 2021 and 2022, the inflationary environment in 2022 and 2023, and then the tariff related of uncertainty of 25 and oil price volatility along the way. The financial performance has been exceptional, illustrating the consistent and durable cash flows that characterize high-quality solid waste assets. SECURE’s business is unlike other E&P disposal businesses that operate in other regions of North America. First off, the permitting process in Canada is such that it is truly difficult to replicate these assets. New disposal assets of this quality simply do not come online. Secondly, over 80% of their business is tied to ongoing production rather than new drilling activity, which generates stable, recurring, highly predictable volumes of waste.

The financial performance is largely insensitive to drill rig counts and drilling activities that drive volumes into E&P disposal assets in other regions across North America. Thirdly, the ownership of the disposal capacity in the region yields an attractive competitive dynamic. We believe the Western Canada region in which Secure operates is on the precipice of the largest investment cycle of the region’s history as the Canadian federal government looks to fast-track nation-building critical energy infrastructure projects. Private sector capital is already flowing into the region, with new multi-billion CAD investments being publicly announced with increasing regularity. We expect Western Canada will be the growth engine of Canada for the foreseeable future. The combination of Secure’s post-collection network with GFL’s existing asset base strategically positions us to participate in this growth.

Operational costs and revenue synergies are expected to be material and could represent an incremental CAD 25 million-CAD 50 million of opportunity above the CAD 25 million of largely SG&A cost savings already identified. SECURE’s revenue in 2026 is expected to be CAD 1.5 billion-CAD 1.6 billion. Approximately half of this amount is derived from normal post-collection activities, with the other relating to tangential energy-related services, namely specialty chemicals and energy infrastructure. These other energy-related revenue is expected to represent less than 8% of our pro forma 2027 revenues and will decrease further in time as we continue to grow in solid waste. Grow is exactly what we plan to do. The enhanced scale and free cash flow generation of the pro forma combined business will allow us to materially increase our returns-focused growth capital deployment without compromising our net leverage commitment.

While this breadth and depth of our M&A pipeline suggests that most of this capital will be invested in the future solid waste acquisitions, as well as high return on invested capital organic opportunities. The enhanced scale will accelerate the opportunity for share buybacks to become a more frequent and sustainable component of our capital allocation strategy going forward. I will now turn the call over to the operator to open up the line for Q&A.

Lucy, Call Coordinator, GFL Environmental: Thank you. To ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. We kindly ask all participants to limit their questions to one main and one follow-up. The first question today comes from Sabahat Khan of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi1: Great. Thanks and good morning. Maybe just a question first to start off on the pending transaction. I think there’s a vote coming up later in May, and one investor came out somewhat opposed to the transaction in some form. Maybe from your vantage point, can you just maybe share your thoughts on, sort of getting the transaction to completion and your confidence in getting the vote? Thanks very much.

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: Thanks, Sabahat. Yeah. You know, as you said, there was, you know, there has been one investor that has publicly expressed their desire to not vote for the transaction. I think, you know, I don’t personally know Abrams, but for everything we’ve learned and know, they’re, you know, highly respected, great performing sort of money manager. You know, I think the one thing we agree with Abrams on is the quality of the asset that we’re buying, and their passion for owning this asset, given the amount of work that they’ve done over a long period of time studying and understanding the asset. Obviously we don’t agree on the fact that we believe there’s more value to create as one versus two. You know, that being said, I’ve never met them, never had a conversation with them.

Reached out to them recently and plan to have a fruitful discussion with them next week. You know, we’ll see where that goes. That being said, that’s one investor out of a multitude of many. You know, when you look at the transaction, you know, you have a very experienced management team that has been at both of these assets, being SECURE in GFL for over 20 years. You have a board here that, again, highly sophisticated, has been alongside both of us building the business for a long period of time. Most importantly, you know, put their money where their mouth is. You know, around this board table, there’s about CAD 6 billion of invested capital in the combined entities, right? You know, they all believe in the strategy. They believe in the combination of these two businesses.

You know, over the last week, we’ve had 60 to 70 investor calls with both GFL investors as well as a number of SECURE holders. You know, it’s been very positive. You know, from our perspective, you know, we believe this transaction is gonna, is gonna go over the line. Obviously, shareholders can vote however they want. You know, I think once, particularly the GFL investors got comfortable with the strategy, got comfortable with the assets, you know, we underestimated and probably underappreciated the lack of knowledge of some of our investors in terms of, you know, what the profile of this asset was, where it was, you know, what the opportunities were coming in Western Canada, you know, on the backdrops of a lot of the, you know, Canadian infrastructure and government investment.

I think we’re very well positioned to sort of move this across the line. Again, we’re going to continue speaking to both investors over the next course of the next few weeks. You know, I keep reiterating the fact, when you look at these businesses on a combined basis, you know, when you look at next year, you know, yeah, you’re approximately going to have CAD 9.5 billion of combined revenue. Call it CAD 3.2 billion of EBITDA. You know, CAD 1.3 billion-CAD 1.4 billion of free cash flow next year. I mean, if you look where the business is trading today on a combined basis, we’re probably trading at 17-18 times 2027 free cash flow, probably 10-10.5 times EBITDA, when historically we’ve traded at 25-30 times free cash flow.

You know, multiple EBITDA has been, you know, somewhere between 13x-16x, right? From our perspective, you know, this will catch up. Yes, a little bump in the road, but there’s significant upside to the combined business. You know, for all those reasons, we believe that, you know, this is the right thing to do.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi1: Great. Thanks. Then just on a follow-up, maybe on the guidance outlook and maybe more for Luke. I appreciate the color that you shared on the guidance. I guess, as you think about the base business, can you help us just maybe think about the puts and takes, at least on the organic business outside of the completed M&A that you’ve baked in? You know, RINs and commodity prices, at least directionally, are stabilizing. Maybe just talk us through the opportunity in the back half. Is there potential for upside to the numbers you’ve shared for 2026? Thanks. I’ll pass the line.

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: Thanks, Sabahat Khan. Great question. I mean, as we said in the prepared remarks, we will wait till Q2 before we provide. If you think about directionally, obviously the strength of our pricing to start the year coming in 25, 30 basis points better than expected should flow through to the balance. If you think about the original guide of being a mid-5s or 5.5% price, you know, I think you would see a path where you are 25 bips better than that, right? That should yield, you know, if you are looking in dollars, that is CAD 15 million to CAD 30 million incremental dollars coming out of that. The offset is volume, and this is really why we need to wait till Q2 to see.

As much as we outperformed in Q1, it’s difficult to see, you know, between winter weather and some special waste tailwinds that we had as to what’s actually gonna transpire in the underlying core volumes. C&D continues to drag, the outlook for the year I don’t think has been improved by virtue of the incremental uncertainty that has arisen on a geopolitical basis since we started. If you think about from an interest rate perspective, from an oil price perspective, you know, the expectations for incremental C&D activity to ramp, I think still has a high degree of uncertainty. That’s really, I think, the unknown piece on volume. I mean, the guide was 25 to 50 basis points, right? That’s representing CAD 15 million-CAD 30 million of incremental revenue. You know, I think that’s the part we wanna wait and see.

Obviously, some of the exogenous factors, being commodities, fuel surcharge, and FX, all have opportunities to be meaningful upside above and beyond the guide. Obviously, with the commodity price recovery, there could be a tailwind in there, and provided the sort of sensitivity, we’ll see where fiber prices go. Certainly on the fuel surcharge piece, if today’s diesel prices persist through the balance of the year, you know, there’s another, call it CAD 50 million-CAD 75 million of incremental revenue that would come online to offset that incremental diesel cost. FX. Recall, I mean, FX was a 210 basis point headwind against us. The Canadian dollar has been bouncing around quite significantly. That CAD 135 million headwind, you could see some improvement to that number, depending on where it ultimately shakes out.

We’ll wait till Q2, but certainly very optimistic based on the strength of Q1, and, you know, we see multiple avenues to upside.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi1: Great. Thanks very much.

Lucy, Call Coordinator, GFL Environmental: Thank you. The next question comes from Patrick T. Brown of Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi0: Hey, morning guys. It’s Tyler. You there?

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: Morning. Yeah, good morning.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi0: Hey, hey, Luke, I appreciate all the color a little bit on the guidance, but I just want to make sure I’ve got it clear. I know that you guys have put a lot of work into fuel surcharges. That’s been a big push over the last couple of years, but I just want to be clear, based on where you are today, you feel that fuel is basically just a margin dilutive issue. It’s not really an EBITDA dollar drag over the course of the year. Would that be right? Second, can you just talk about the momentum on price? What was the delta there? Was that better pricing that you went out with on the street, better retention, a little bit of both? Just a little bit of color there would be helpful.

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: Yeah, great questions, Tyler. In terms of fuel, absolutely. With the surcharge mechanisms and the efficiency we have in place, while you can have a temporary delay or lag, like what we saw in March, the expectation is by the time you get into Q2, those surcharge mechanisms will recover the incremental CAD. Net, net, no impact to EBITDA and just really that sort of margin dilution. Now, obviously, if diesel runs up another significant leg higher from here, you could have an incremental lag. Assuming that we’ll find some sort of stability in that, the surcharge mechanisms should recover all of our incremental costs. In terms of the base pricing, look, as we’ve said, we have incremental opportunities within our portfolio by virtue of just being a little bit behind the industry and where they’re at in terms of, you know, price optimization.

We continue to pull on that lever, and we have success with it. I think what we’ve also seen is just a very high level of retention, right? The base plan assumes you put out pricing of X and you have to give back a component of it. Our retention levels have been higher than anticipated, which has allowed for us to print that higher level of price. Do think, if you recall the original guide, we started at mid-6s or better, was then gonna step down ratably through the year. That cadence is expected to remain the same. If you think about Q2, that should step down now to sort of the high 5s and continue to step down thereafter.

If all other things being equal, we should be able to end the year 20 to 30 basis points higher on overall price than was originally anticipated due to the strength of the Q1 start.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi0: Okay, excellent. This is a bigger picture question, I wanna kinda come back to this prospect of getting to investment grade. I think one of the things about the SECURE deal is that it will substantially improve the cash generating profile of the business. I’m just kinda curious how quickly you think the rating agencies would factor that in. Then how quickly, just don’t know mechanically how it would work, but how quickly would you be able to actually refinance the balance sheet? You just talked about a really tight spread on your bond issuance, the CAD 1 billion this year. How much of a coupon differential would there be big picture? Sorry, I know there’s a lot there, but just broadly on the investment grade opportunity to cash flow. Thank you.

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: It’s a great question, Tyler. Something we focus a lot on, and I think our offering in the bond market demonstrates our borrowing rate today is already closer to investment grade than our, you know, actual rating represents. Pro forma for SECURE, you’re absolutely right. A bigger business, better free cash flow generation, you know, larger scale is all highly sort of credit positive. You know, the rating agencies, as you know, are a little bit more backward-looking than we are, and so it would take some time for the pro forma combined business to perform and the sort of run rate adjustments to roll off before I think you were at a place where you started getting those credit rating upgrades.

To your point on refinancing the balance sheet, you know, as we have alluded to, our borrowing rate today on an after-tax basis is just modestly higher than what we would be borrowing at on an investment grade level. We’ve continued to highlight that we view this less as a cost of debt capital. While there is benefit, you know, that’s not really the idea. I think it’s more the cost of equity capital that one can achieve by having the perception of higher quality by virtue of the investment grade rating. If you look at our spread, I mean, we’re borrowing at 140 basis points over the underlying treasury, and an investment grade peer would be doing it at 70-80 basis points. You have a 60-70 basis point spread on a pre-tax basis.

I think that probably represents what the interest efficiency opportunity is. As we’ve said, we continue to really believe this is more of a cost of equity capital than of a cost of debt capital.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi0: Yeah, perfect. Thank you. Thank you, guys.

Lucy, Call Coordinator, GFL Environmental: Thank you. The next question comes from Kevin Chiang of CIBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Kevin Chiang, Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets: Hi. Good morning. Maybe just one clarification question. Just on the Frontier deal, you noted it improves your density in Texas, and you’re tied to these high growth markets in the Texas triangle. Did you mention that you saw internalization benefits, or was that something I might have missed in the prepared remarks?

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: No, we have internalization, benefits obviously, we have landfill capacity in Houston, which you’ve been to.

Kevin Chiang, Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets: Mm-hmm

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: ... internalization opportunities around that, those disposal assets

Kevin Chiang, Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets: Okay. Okay, cool. Yeah, I thought that would be the case. Maybe just a more conceptual question, and Luke, you alluded to this in your prior answer. You know, I realize you make strategic decisions, you know, with the long-term view in mind versus just, you know, the near term gyrations in your share price. But if we kind of look back the last 18 months, you know, you saw your cost of equity improve, you know, as you went through this deleveraging process. Clearly the market has penalized your equity a little bit here, just as you’ve seen elevated M&A to start this year.

I’m just wondering, when you look back, does that reframe how you think about the pace of future M&A? Just given how, you know, this one specific issue can kind of swing your cost of equity quite violently in a short period of time.

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: I mean, I’m looking at Patrick, but I’ll respond, Kevin. Look, it’s obviously something we think about, and I think, you know, truthfully, it’s probably one of the flaws of the public equity markets that it forces you.

Kevin Chiang, Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets: Mm-hmm

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: ... to maybe be a little bit more short-termism in your thinking than long-term thoughts that, you know, we believe are actually the foundation for equity value creation. Obviously, coming out of 2023 and 2024, we reevaluated our capital allocation strategy and, you know, came to the view that operating in a sort of 3-3.5 turns leverage level is ultimately what’s going to yield the best sort of path for ideal cost of equity. That’s what we’re sticking to and maintaining. I think while we may continue to see hopefully temporary dislocations in the, you know, current share price over the long term, you know, we are large believers in driving incremental free cash flow per share generation at rates above and beyond the industry by virtue of our, you know, returns-focused capital deployment strategy.

That is going to pave the path to long-term equity value creation. Short-term sort of share swings, as you said, may come and go, and obviously not something that we aspire to, but very much attempt to not allow that to cloud the vision that, you know, Patrick started with nearly 20 years ago and has been highly successful at creating material equity value.

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: Yeah, I think, Kevin, I mean, the industry, for whatever reason, I think sold off, you know, was out of favor for, you know, the, let’s say, Q4 of last year and definitely into Q1 of this year. You know, stock had sold off before we announced any sort of M&A-

Kevin Chiang, Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets: Mm-hmm

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: Actually recovered a bit with some of the actual M&A. I mean, listen, we don’t know what makes a stock go up or down. I think over time, you know, the capital allocation decisions we’ve made have made investors a significant amount of money over a long period of time and compounded their rates at above and beyond sort of each and every one of their expectations. We’re gonna keep making smart financial decisions. Like I said, you have a board on the GFL side that probably today owns around CAD 5-plus billion of equity, and you have, you know, a SECURE board that owns, you know, between PPG and Solus, another CAD 1 billion of equity. It’s over CAD 6 billion of equity. You know, I think we are making prudent financial decisions, and we have our money where our mouths are.

You know, we’re gonna keep doing the things that we think will yield the best results for us as shareholders. You know, might not be. Listen, we knew that the share price could maybe suffer, you know, 4% or 5% at the time of when we did the SECURE deal, but it’ll recover. You know, you could keep printing quarters like we printed, keep printing quarters like SECURE printed this quarter, as you saw this morning. You know, I think each and every one of our investors are gonna be very thankful, you know, that of what we’re doing and what we continue to do to drive exceptional results and exceptional performance. We’re just gonna keep doing the things that we know how to do.

Albeit with, you know, what we have heard over and over and time and time again, maintain leverage between 3 and 3.5, because that is gonna yield the best results for the equity account. We’re gonna keep doing that, and we’re gonna live within that. You’ll continue to see that from us.

Kevin Chiang, Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets: I appreciate the response there. Congrats on a solid start to the year here. Thank you very much.

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: Thanks, Kevin.

Lucy, Call Coordinator, GFL Environmental: Thank you. The next question comes from Stephanie Moore of Jefferies. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi3: Great. Good morning. Thanks, everybody. I wanted to touch on SECURE again. You know, maybe just talk a little bit about, I think a lot of the questions that we get, and may be helpful to get a little bit of color, would just be about the commodity exposure under the assets. You know, how you think about how the exposure has changed over time and at the same time, the position that GFL can make as the new owner here, and really kind of addressing the quality of the assets and, you know, really looking at GFL’s legacy services and how they can enhance the business under GFL’s umbrella. Thank you.

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: Good morning, Stephanie. It’s Luke. Great question. On the commodity price exposure, like we’ve highlighted in the call and certainly I believe on SECURE’s call today, they’re doing the same. It’s really limited in the short term, on the basis that they derive a very small amount of revenue from the sale of, you know, oil and oil-related products. In the short term, that’s what gives rise to the commodity price exposure. If you think about SECURE’s guidance for the year of CAD 525 million-CAD 550 million of EBITDA in light of WTI running as much as it has, you know, I think they’re now suggesting that they’re at the high end of their guidance, right? Meaning a relatively de minimis in-year impact.

Where the exposure could be more significant is at an elevated level of WTI over the longer term, does that drive multi-year changes in production volumes in the area in which they operate, ultimately generating higher volumes of waste? Conversely, the same is true. If you entered a period of prolonged suppressed WTI pricing, say something below $45, that could see a reduction in the production activities that give rise to the steady state volumes that SECURE processes. Again, unlike some of the other basins or areas of energy exploration, that is the volumes are very much tied to rig counts, and those rig counts can be much more volatilely tied to WTI swings.

The production-focused nature of SECURE’s waste streams that it processes does not yield any of that sort of short-term volatility, thereby creating a much more sort of stable and cash flow characteristic very much alike to what GFL has today. In terms of the overlap in that region, look, I mean, if you really think about it at the highest level, SECURE operates a best-in-class network of post-collection assets, and GFL in the area is very focused on collection. If you think about just the market as it exists today, there will be overlap opportunities whereby GFL currently collects wastes and brings them to a disposal site that is not SECURE, that could ultimately be internalized. The opposite is true, whereby SECURE uses or benefits from collectors that bring the waste to their facilities that are not GFL, and that could be internalized.

Just with the existing footprint today, I think there’s those sort of internalization opportunities. Obviously, when we look at the expected capital investment into this region over the near, medium, and short term, which is looking to be in tens and tens of billions of CAD as more energy production comes online and more transmission and pipelines to get that energy to the West Coast and other markets is developed, we think there’ll be a massive opportunity for incremental participation in both the collection activities that GFL does today and the post-collection activities that SECURE does today. We’re feeling very optimistic for just the base business status quo.

When you layer in the potential growth opportunities in this region, we think there could be meaningful upside, and that’s where I think to Patrick’s point, the combined boards and shareholders believe the business is much more valuable on a combined basis than it was standalone.

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: The regulatory environment in Canada for these assets, you just, they’re irreplaceable. To try and get a landfill permitted, to get a deep well permitted, you just, you can’t do it. Their metal recycling facility permits the rail that goes into those facilities. You know, again, the network of storage and pipeline facilities that they own, you just, these are impossible to replicate assets, which, you know, yields the margin profile that these assets come with and the returns on invested capital that come with them. You know, I think the transaction worked perfectly because it’s highly complementary to both businesses.

You know, I think from an M&A perspective, you know, there’s limited opportunities on the SECURE side, and they would have to diversify outside of, you know, their core today into more sort of lines of business like that we’re in that would come in at significantly lower margins because we’ve been densifying and rationalizing the businesses around them for almost 16 years. Again, you know, strategically makes total sense, financially makes total sense in a, you know, as I always say, market where we wanna be and market selection where we wanna be. In a market that, you know, we’re gonna be sort of sharing a big part of it with Waste Connections. You know, that’s a market profile that we like.

you know, we’ll continue sort of driving through and, again, like I said, I think we as the shareholders will all be re-rewarded handsomely on both sides of the transaction, both SECURE shareholders and GFL shareholders over time.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi3: Appreciate the color. Just one quick follow-up on M&A in general. I think you touched on this, but I think it’s worth emphasizing. Maybe just talk a little bit about, you know, let’s just say this deal does close. What is the enhanced flexibility for doing additional M&A on a combined basis? I think that’s an important aspect here that’s not being considered. Thanks.

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: Great question. I mean, if you look at it today, we said we could effectively deploy, you know, somewhere between CAD 800 million and CAD 1 billion on incremental M&A while still de-leveraging sort of 10 to 20 basis points, right. That’s sort of the sweet spot in which we, you know, have been sort of modeling where we’re sort of moving. When you put the two businesses together, you’re basically going to be able to deploy, you know, somewhere between CAD 1.8 billion and CAD 2 billion a year. We can materially ramp up the solid waste M&A spend because our pipeline’s very deep. I mean, as you’ve seen this year, we have a significant amount of opportunities that we can continue deploying capital.

On the SECURE side, when they were thinking about diversifying into sort of incremental M&A, we don’t need to spend those dollars anymore on that incremental M&A. We can just spend the capital on their internal sort of, you know, on their organic high returns on invested capital projects that you’ve seen them spend on the year, which has been a CAD 50 million-CAD 100 million a year spend. You put those together, that will keep the solid waste business growing, continue densifying the markets where we’re operating in the U.S.

You know, we have an incremental, you know, call it CAD 800 million to CAD 1 billion a year that we can continue spending with the free cash flow generation off of the combined businesses, which is highly compelling. If the share price continues to remain this large, you’re gonna take that, and you have ultimate flexibility to buy back, you know, a significant amount of stock at these levels. And obviously stock share buybacks when the stock’s trading at these kind of levels, you know, is highly compelling. We have ultimate flexibility with the capital structure to basically do whatever we want. You know, I think, again, that is a tangential benefit of the transaction.

Lucy, Call Coordinator, GFL Environmental: Thank you. The next question comes from James Schumm of TD Cowen. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

James Schumm, Analyst, TD Cowen: Hey, thanks, and good morning. Just wanted to get your thoughts on landfills and logistics. Your competitor noted that rail may play an increasing role in disposal, and another competitor believes that available landfill disposal capacity will gravitate towards the central U.S. Just curious how you see things playing out and how is GFL positioned for any shifts in the landscape?

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: I mean, I think that’s more of a geographic discussion than anything else. You know, I think if you’re thinking about the Northeast particularly, that’s where a lot of, you know, waste-by-rail volumes are happening. You know, from our perspective in the regions that we’re operating, keep in mind we’re 75% secondary, you know, 25% primary. The big primary markets where we’re operating in, again, sort of, you know, if you think about Houston, Atlanta, Detroit, those are our big, you know, primary markets in the U.S. There’s a lot of disposal capacity in those markets, that’s not a major issue for us. In the secondary markets we’re operating, you know, our landfills have significant capacity for the next number of years. Well, we’re not gonna have to worry about waste by rail.

As you know, we don’t operate very much in the Northeast, the waste-by-rail thesis for us is less relevant because we just don’t have, you know, operations in those geographic regions.

James Schumm, Analyst, TD Cowen: Right. Okay. Then could you just give us an update on the EPR and just maybe on the sustainability growth CapEx? Is that like CAD 100 million next year sort of ballpark the right way to think about it?

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: On EPR, you know, with the exception of some of the stuff in Western Canada, the lion’s share of EPR, you know, continues to come online throughout 2026. Obviously, the growth CapEx spend associated with those has been coming down significantly, to the tune of, you know, CAD 100 million-CAD 125 million as we sort of go into next year. There will be some modest CapEx spends around Alberta as those collection contracts and processing contracts continue to come online throughout now and the end of 2027. You know, that program is materially winding down now, and those contracts are live. The largest collection contracts came on, are coming on to the sort of first half of 2026.

We’re largely through the lion’s share of the major CapEx spend around those initiatives.

James Schumm, Analyst, TD Cowen: Okay. Forgive me, were there still some opportunities in the Maritimes, or did that already come to pass?

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: There’s still some collection opportunities in the Maritimes, but the processing ones have been let already.

James Schumm, Analyst, TD Cowen: All right, great. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: Thank you.

Lucy, Call Coordinator, GFL Environmental: Thank you. The next question is from Brian Bergmeier of Citi. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Luke, I was wondering if you could maybe just call out some of the bigger items for the 2Q margin bridge to kind of get to that 30.4%. You know, I think we’ve talked about kind of the timing of EPR from last year and then maybe some fuel headwind, and then you’ve got the M&A integration now. Just if you can provide color on some of the big items, that would be helpful. Thanks.

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: Brian, great question. If you look at sequential going from Q1 to Q2, you know, contemplating at that 30.4% level, an 80 basis point increase. I think in order to frame the year-over-year, you have to look at last year. Last year, Q1 to Q2 increased sequentially 280 basis points, which was sort of outsized and atypical. If you go back to 2024, the sequential increase from Q1 to Q2 is 170 bips, I think that’s more sort of the normal course cadence. As we go into this Q2, you have fuel, commodity, and M&A. I mean, fuel at today’s pricing is gonna be a sort of 40, 45 bips headwind, you’re gonna have commodities.

If it stays where it is today, it’s about sort of 20, 25 basis points. You got M&A, with what we’ve done so far is 40, 45 basis points. When you add that all together, you got this sort of 110, 120 basis point headwind going against you. If you were to normalize for that, you know, this 80 basis point sequential increase from Q1 to Q2 is, you know, closer to sort of 200, which is sort of more in line with that normal course cadence. The other thing, I mean, Q2 of last year also had the benefit of 40, 50 basis points as it just related to certain accruals and WSI rebates that we generated in Canada. Again, it was about a 45 basis point benefit for the prior year that’s not repeating.

It’s a combination of all those pieces. We knew about this going into the year with the cadence. Notwithstanding, you know, the headline numbers slightly behind on a year-over-year basis, I think when you look at the underlying, we continue to generate the margin expansion by pulling on all the levers we’ve been talking about.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi: Got it. That’s really helpful. I’ll turn it over.

Lucy, Call Coordinator, GFL Environmental: Thank you. The next question comes from Trevor Romeo of William Blair. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi4: Morning, guys. Thank you for taking the questions. I wanted to follow up a little bit on Frontier and then the Texas market, and maybe appreciate the comments on internalization opportunities. Just thinking about, you know, Texas being a good population growth market, sort of from a growth perspective, how are you thinking about that from, for potential for future deals now that you have a bigger footprint across the space? And then I know Frontier had done several acquisitions of their own over the years, just what are your thoughts on how they’ve integrated all those deals and where they are from an efficiency standpoint?

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: Yeah. Great question. They’re running a very well-oiled machine. If you think about Frontier today, historically, we were generally around the Houston area. This has obviously opened up sort of Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston for us now. I think if you look at our plan, we have a plan to sort of, you know, double the revenue of the Texas market sort of over the next over the next five years. We feel pretty comfortable in that operating model. That’s a model shared by ourselves and the Frontier team that has come along with the business. You know, the plan is to double the size of the revenue in Texas over the next five years.

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: I’d say on that, just to add, I mean, while M&A is obviously part of our playbook, you know, the nice things about entrepreneurial and growing business like Frontier is there’s meaningful opportunities for organic M&A deployment as well. You know, one of the opportunities that was in flight when we closed the transaction is adding a new sort of C&D recycling facility at the front end of their C&D landfill, and that’ll be a benefit to sort of the whole region. That’s in flight. You know, have some incremental growth spend, you know, doesn’t manifest as purchase price because, you know, the payment for that is happening under our watch. You know, when that’s up and running by towards the end of the year, there will be incremental benefit that we’ll see coming through in the results.

You know, that goes to the point of the sort of outsized growth expectations. Not only just M&A, but some high return organic growth opportunities are available to us in that market as well.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi4: That’s great. Thank you both. Then quick follow-up on volumes. Did you specifically call out any headwind from weather in the quarter? Then just if you have any thoughts on kind of, if you take out the hurricane top comp, what was underlying volume activity kind of across your regional areas, if there were any differences?

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: Yeah. Look, weather, we operate in Canada, we operate, you know, in northern climates. We try not to call out weather on it, but I think, you know, this 1st quarter was exceptional and certainly, you know, beyond what we had sort of anticipated. When we look at the volume, we anticipate there’s about CAD 11 million headwind as it related to the sort of weather. Again, it wasn’t just in Canada, but you had weather in, you know, the Carolinas and other sort of markets that aren’t typically known. If you look at actual dollars, I mean, volume was negative CAD 18.5 million. Prior year, we had this one-time transfer station volume of CAD 10 million that benefited Q1, and we also had hurricane-related volumes of CAD 21 million last year.

If you just normalize for those two things, you actually had positive CAD 12.5 million of underlying volume. Now, as I said, weather was about a CAD 11 million headwind, but you also had EPR, which, you know, this growth capital spend was about a CAD 10 million tailwind. Those sort of largely offset. You’re really left with this CAD 12.5 million on a sort of net-net, you know, underlying volume, and that’s roughly sort of 80 basis point improvement. Now, if you look at the pieces in there, I mean, we had a great performance in special waste in the quarter, which, as you know, can be sort of lumpy and a little bit challenging to extrapolate trends from.

While special waste has been good for the past 4 quarters, C&D volumes have been negative, you know, for those past 3 or 4 quarters. C&D was at the landfill was negative 7.5% in Q1. Now, typically, the special waste is a precursor to subsequent C&D volume growth, and I think, you know, at the beginning of the year, we thought that that was gonna be an opportunity. Back to the prior comments, I mean, with today’s macro uncertainty, I think there is a bit of a wait and see. With that, we’ll, you know, let Q2 play out and see if there is sequential improvements. We’re seeing it in the roll-off. I mean, our roll-off pulls in Q1 were organically down about 1%.

Those have flipped to positive in April, which is an encouraging sign. Again, we’ll wait until the balance of Q2 before we recast what we think that means for a full year basis.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi4: All right, guys. Thanks a lot.

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: Yep.

Lucy, Call Coordinator, GFL Environmental: Thank you. The next question comes from Jerry Revich of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Jake Kooyman, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Hi, this is Jake Kooyman on for Jerry. Thank you for taking the questions. On the SECURE synergy build, you’ve laid out roughly CAD 25 million of low-hanging operational cost synergies and a path to CAD 50 million-CAD 75 million over 18 to 24 months once the broader operational components are factored in. I was just hoping you could walk us through what gets you from the CAD 25 million to the higher end of that range?

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: Yeah, great question. Thanks. As you said, the CAD 25 million really SG&A related costs, you know, public company and other type of corporate costs where we think there’s efficiency. You move into the next leg, which I’d call operational cost. When, you know, we had alluded to this in the prior comments, you start thinking about internalization opportunities, whereby today, you know, SECURE is subcontracting a collection activity to a third party, you know, the ability to internalize that collection activity. Additionally, if you look at the inverse, where GFL is disposing of waste at a third party, the ability to internalize that. On the sort of cost internalization, I think that’d sort of be the next bucket. Then the third bucket being sort of what we’ll call revenue opportunities.

If you look today, GFL services many customers in the services that GFL provides. That customer also has a need for a service that Secure could provide, but isn’t today. That could represent an incremental revenue opportunity that we could capture on the pro forma combined business. The same is true in the inverse, where Secure may be taking the waste of a customer, but other services that GFL is capable of providing are being provided by a third party. Again, we think that incremental wallet share capture is a real opportunity that the pro forma combined business could go out and get. While the first bucket, the CAD 25 that we underwrote, is really that sort of SG&A, that other incremental CAD 25-50 is really equally across those two operational costs and revenue synergy categories.

Obviously, if there’s growth above and beyond in this market, as is anticipated by many by virtue of the capital investment plan that’s coming out of both public and private sectors, there could be, you know, meaningful growth opportunities above and beyond that.

Jake Kooyman, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Great. Thank you. Really appreciate the color. My second question would be, on the Q4 call, you sized RNG in the roughly CAD 125 million-CAD 150 million range. I was just hoping you’d give us an update on where you sit today on RNG run rate contribution and how much of the 2026 step up in the bridge is RNG versus EPR. Thank you.

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: That’s right. I mean, the original plan for RNG was CAD 175. We talked that down, saying to about CAD 125 in light of deeper dives at each of the facilities, what’s feasible in terms of actual facility development, as well as, you know, the opportunity at each of those facilities. CAD 125 is the expected target. You’re doing roughly CAD 50 million today out of the 5 facilities that you’re generating benefit from. That’s roughly flat with last year. If you recall this year’s guide, there was no meaningful incremental step up in RNG-related contribution, as you had an incremental amount of volume from the maturity of facilities offset by the slightly lower RIN prices. You know, today’s CAD 2.40 versus the higher level that you realize on a blended average in 2025.

Going forward, 2027 is supposed to see an incremental 4 facilities come online, which takes you sort of upwards to that sort of, you know, close to CAD 85 million-CAD 100 million mark. In 2028, you have the other remaining sort of 4 facilities that come online and take you the balance of the way there. Meaningful or minimal incremental contribution in 2026 to the guide, but we remain, you know, clearly focused on that path of sort of getting to that CAD 125 target as a whole.

Jake Kooyman, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Great. Thank you.

Lucy, Call Coordinator, GFL Environmental: Thank you. The next question comes from Adam Bubes of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Adam Bubes, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hi, good morning. Can you just update us on the 2026 EBITDA outlook for GIP and Environmental Services respectively, and any changes in net leverage on those assets since the last mark to market?

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: No, nothing material. I mean, I think ES this year of sort of exiting year run rate of, you know, probably CAD 600 million-CAD 625 million. You know, there’s been some incremental M&A. No change in sort of net leverage, sort of 5.5x-6x. On the GIP business today, you know, recently just signed another transaction, pro forma EBITDA, probably exiting the year of, you know, in the neighborhood of CAD 350 million-CAD 375 million. Net leverage in that business been sitting around 4.5x-5x. Again, going back to the point of, you know, it doesn’t show up on the Bloomberg screen, but there’s material equity. Again, keep in mind, we own just under 40% of ES and roughly a quarter of GIP.

And our equity value creation initiatives in those businesses continue to prove out. You know, they’re going well. They’re doing exactly what they were supposed to do and what else they’re set out to do. You know, at some point over the next few years, we’ll definitely monetize our stakes in those two businesses.

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: Adam, just as a follow-up in terms of disclosure on that, I know we’ve talked to them before about regular cadence of disclosure. As Patrick alluded to, you know, the values vis-a-vis when we just marked the equity in 2025 have not changed sort of materially. So you have that sort of CAD 1.7 billion-1.8 billion value on the ES investment and then the CAD 1 billion that was just marked on GIP. Those are still, you know, relatively fresh. As we get towards the end of this year, we will look at incorporating ongoing disclosure, so people have the ability to keep, tabs on that incremental store value. As Patrick said, we think sometimes is, sight of which is lost.

Adam Bubes, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Got it. Super helpful. Can you just talk about how you’re thinking about magnitude of transaction and integration costs over the next 12 months as you digest a higher level of M&A? Just trying to think through, you know, what that bridge between adjusted and free cash flow, actual free cash flow might look like to consider how much capital on hand you might end the year with. Thanks.

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: What I’d say is, you know, that’ll be somewhat binary depending on whether the SECURE transaction is happening or is it not. As Patrick said, there’s a vote at the end of May, which we’ll have certainty and while we’re feeling good, we’ll have that in hand before we sort of update that for the year. If you think ex SECURE normal course, you’ll have the same level of acquisition integration costs that you’ve had the last couple of years. That number doesn’t sort of move around all that much. If SECURE gets layered on, you could have something greater. Although I would highlight, as we have said many times, it’s often much easier to integrate large organized businesses than it is a bunch of sort of small ones. I mean, the team in SECURE is fantastic.

When you think about their capabilities and skill sets across IT, HR, legal and areas where we need integration, you know, being able to leverage the existing folks is really gonna minimize the need for incremental sort of third-party costs. However, we’ll wait until Q2 and, you know, by then we’ll have more visibility and provide you a sort of number. For the guidance that was provided today on the CAD 7.3 billion-CAD 7.34 billion of revenue, I’d assume, you know, commensurate level of integration costs as you’ve seen in the past couple of years.

Adam Bubes, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Great. Thanks so much.

Lucy, Call Coordinator, GFL Environmental: Thank you. The next question comes from Chris Murray of ATB Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Chris Murray, Analyst, ATB Capital Markets: Yeah, thanks folks. Good morning. Maybe turning back to SECURE just for a second and thinking about kind of the, again, the synergies and where you drive this from. Can you maybe lay out the impact that this may also have on the ES business versus maybe the solid waste business and where you think you could leverage some of these assets? I know historically, you know, you had been involved in some of the transactions even back in the Tervita days. Any other thoughts you have on kind of the mix of business that you see kind of evolving over time would be great.

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: Yeah, not material impact on the ES business, although there should be some disposal synergies from the ES business that would benefit, you know, the Secure GFL combination, right. I think there’s some incremental waste streams that we could probably internalize into those landfills sort of over time and into the depot, but no material changes to sort of either business that sort of come with that.

Chris Murray, Analyst, ATB Capital Markets: Okay. The last one, just to follow up on just the pricing comment. You had mentioned that part of the reason for the stronger pricing was on lower churn, as well as EPR. Just the question very quickly, is there something different you’re doing on your approach to churn that’s actually driving that, or is it just kind of a factor of kind of, you know, the mix of business or how it’s coming in and how is EPR playing into that? You know, any additional color would be helpful.

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: I mean, two distinct questions in there. EPR is just a function that we have deployed this growth capital and we’re strategic at getting in front of this wave of change in Canada and have sort of benefited from returns on our capital invested, and some of that’s materializing in price and some materializing in volume. As we’ve said, if it was a contract that we were doing before or volume that we were processing before and now we’re still doing the same but under an EPR contract, that change has been sort of reflected in price. Whereas if it was net new volume or activity, that change was in volume. The EPR price component is a function of that return on the capital invested.

In terms of the base business and sort of churn and retention, I mean, churn and retention really comes down to customer service, right? Provide exceptional service in a market and that’s going to go a long way towards your retention. I think it’s also becoming more strategic in your pricing initiatives. I mean, I’m sure this is a theme throughout the industry as a whole, but as you have better tools, whether that’s AI-enabled or not, just better data analytics allows for more appropriate or targeted or relevant sort of pricing. You know, when it’s more appropriate and targeted pricing, you tend to get sort of better stick rate than not. I think it’s just the continuous improvement.

You know, the other piece of it is obviously the incremental portfolio optimization that we’ve spoken about, and we continue to find the opportunities to realize what we had articulated as a CAD 40 million-CAD 80 million benefit at our Investor Day. You know, we keep sort of chipping away at that, but it’s all those pieces together. I think that’s what gives us a great deal of comfort that the industry’s pricing dynamic, that the discipline around ensuring to sort of price above our costs to generate sufficient return is very healthy and remains disciplined. You know, we see that not changing, you know, for our long-term outlook.

Chris Murray, Analyst, ATB Capital Markets: Okay, that’s helpful. Thanks, folks.

Lucy, Call Coordinator, GFL Environmental: Thank you. The next question comes from Tobey Sommer of Truist Securities. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Henry, Analyst, Truist Securities: Hi, guys. Thanks for letting me in. It’s Henry on for Toby here. Just to start on kind of your expectations for inflation for the rest of the year and, you know, some of the potential upside to the guidance there with the global situation, and just kind of the mix of contracts that you have that CPI linked in the lag, you know, we could expect once those adjustments flow through. Thank you

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: Yeah. Great question. I think it’s important to understand the nature of our CPI resets are often such that they’re looking back at a reference period sometime before the contract price renewal. If you think about January 1 price increases that you received, those were probably based on inflation reads somewhere three, six or nine months before that. With that, 2026 pricing is largely baked and isn’t going to change materially as you think about that largely residential book of business that has CPI linked. It would really represent an opportunity for your 2027 pricing. With that, as we and the industry have demonstrated historically, if cost inflation runs significantly higher than expectations in year, we will go to our open market pricing in order to recover those incremental costs.

Where we’re at today, we have yet to sort of see that because I think the cost inflation is really a function of the energy costs, and we’re able to recover that separately. You know, I think if you look back at 2022 through 2024 and how the industry responded to cost inflation, there’s a great data point to show the willingness, ability, and sort of real-time nature in which incremental unexpected cost inflation can be passed on. The broader sort of CPI printing at a higher level, though, would really be a benefit for 2027 and beyond.

Henry, Analyst, Truist Securities: Understood. Thank you. Thanks for that. Just a quick on the kind of financial timeline for the SECURE deal from the regulatory side. you know, are there any major milestones that you would call out or that we should be looking for, you know, as that process moves along? Thank you.

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: No, I mean, I think again, we’ve put in a significant amount of work, obviously pre-announcement and post-signing. You know, from our perspective, there are no real material issues. You know, and hopefully the Bureau, again, just because they’ve gone through this process in depth a couple years ago, they understand the market really well, and our expectation is that our hope is that we’ll get through relatively quickly. You know, I think you can expect somewhere between 3 and 5 months is probably a reasonable timeframe to get through that, which would have, you know, us hopefully closing the transaction on, you know, going into sort of Q4, so around, you know, somewhere in September, October, closing the transaction. We’d have that tucked in for a quarter of ownership of that asset for this year.

Henry, Analyst, Truist Securities: Appreciate the color, guys. Thank you.

Lucy, Call Coordinator, GFL Environmental: Thank you. The final question today comes from Shlomo Rosenbaum of Stifel. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi2: Hi. Thank you very much for squeezing me in over here. Patrick, maybe you could just give us a little color on the differences in the regions in the performance. Looks like Canada grew organically 7.2%, U.S. 3.4%. You’re getting more margin expansion in Canada even, you know, you look at the underlying in the U.S. and I’m just trying to understand, is there operational something that’s very different going on? Does it have to do somewhat with EPR coming on? Maybe you could break that down, then I just have kind of a housekeeping question for Luke.

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: I mean the most of the margin increase in Canada again is coming from. Remember, on January 1, 2026, we took over a significant amount of recycling contracts. A lot of those things were extended. You know, they were priced between 2009 and 2013. That just kept continuing to get extended, and we were getting CPI on those. Then as we took over the recycling as part of EPR, we reset them to current market rates, right? That led to some of the margin expansion or the big difference in the margin expansion between Canada and the U.S. over that period. There’s no anomalies that have come out of Canada or the U.S. over that period.

It’s just, it’s largely just, again, the repricing a bunch of those recycling collection contracts that, you know, represented a significant amount of revenue.

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: Shlomo, I would just add, when you think about that margin that you described on the face of it, underlying the U.S. was significantly more impacted by some of what I’d call exogenous factors than Canada was. If you think about the U.S. quarter, you know, year over year margin, commodities was a 40 basis points headwind. Fuel was 40 basis points. The hurricane from last year that you’re lapping and the winter impact was 40 basis points, and you had sort of 75, 80 basis points from M&A that was in the U.S. If you factor that in, you actually have nearly a 200 basis points underlying margin expansion in the U.S. Canada is still higher by virtue of the EPR benefits that Patrick sort of alluded to.

You got to remember, our Canadian business, you know, is coming from what was a high 20s margin business now approaching, you know, the low to mid-30s, where our U.S. business has very squarely been, sort of, you know, low to mid-30s. Some of the pricing opportunities that we’ve talked about were also disproportionately available in Canada than in the U.S. I think it’s all of those things that need to be taken into account. I’d suggest both of our, you know, geographic regions, you know, from our perspective, are performing exceptionally well, and it’s really more those exogenous factors making the headline margin expansion look different in the different geographies.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi2: Okay, great. That’s great color. Then Luke, maybe you could just provide color. This is a housekeeping item. What is the change in value on a call option? What is that due to?

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: As you know, we have a call option to buy back the ES business in four years’ time. As with any option, a significant component of the value is the time. Naturally, all other things being equal, that time decay is going to erode the value of the options. To the comment we were having before with Adam, we will update the equity value calculations for that asset on a periodic basis, which would offset the time decay component of the call option. All other things being equal, you’ll just see that natural CAD 10 million a quarter amortization of the value as a function of the reduced amount of duration left in the option.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi2: Okay, that’s great color. On an annual basis, you should expect to see something like that absent a change in the equity value.

Luke Pelosi, Chief Financial Officer, GFL Environmental: Correct.

Brian Bergmeier, Analyst, Citi2: Great. Thank you.

Lucy, Call Coordinator, GFL Environmental: Thank you. We have no further questions at this time. I’d like to hand back to Patrick for closing remarks.

Patrick Dovigi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GFL Environmental: Thank you, everyone, and we’ll look forward to speaking to you about our Q2 results. Thank you. Have a good day.

Lucy, Call Coordinator, GFL Environmental: This concludes today’s call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect your line.