Okay, I'd like to invite up here with us today. We've got CFO Brian DelGhiaccio. And investor relations Aaron Evans, with Republic Services. Republic's the second largest waste provider in the United States, operating in 41 states. Brian joined Republic in 1998 with roles with increasing responsibility across the business. Aaron joined in 2007 and took over IR responsibilities in 2022. Republic's got 315 million shares. Trades around $190 for a $60 billion market cap, $12.5 billion of net debt. Thanks for coming here today, Gents. We'll sit down and have a chat.
Thanks, Tony.
We were, you know, we were just talking here, Brian. Yet you're the, I think you got the founder series. I think you're the only person that has been at this conference today that was here at our first one in 2014. So thanks for your support and, always, always being here. I appreciate it very much and welcome again, Aaron. Thanks for making the trip in last night. I guess you had a pretty hairy flight in to Newark. Maybe you can discuss a little bit more about what Republic does and the growth algorithm. Maybe you could sort of break it down on price and volume and M&A.
Yeah, certainly. So, first of all, thank you, Tony. Thank you, Mario, and the entire Gabelli team for hosting us today. I appreciate being here. Like Tony said, it was a little rough getting in last night. So we experienced turbulence that I don't think we had ever seen before. So, quite an adventure, but here we are. So, Republic Services, as you mentioned, leading provider in the broader environmental services industry. So, and when I say broader, just because we are not just exclusively in the traditional recycling and waste business, we are also in the broader environmental services, including some of the industrial services, which we got to in a bigger way with our acquisition of U.S. Ecology in, in May of 2022, which I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about as well. But we look to continue to grow and grow at a pace.
And we'll talk about that algorithm as well. You know, if you take a look back historically, we used to talk about growth in that mid-single digit type range, and that would be a good year. And what you're seeing is now that we've opened the aperture a little bit and we've expanded where we compete, we're now talking more mid- to high-single digit on a repeatable basis. As you've seen over the last couple of years, that's actually been in the double-digit range. And in part, some of that's the recovery from the pandemic, as well as some of the outsized acquisition growth that we've had. But we do see a path and more of a on a sustainable basis in that mid- to high-single digit. And I'll kind of break down the components.
We look to price in excess of our cost inflation. And if you can imagine an inflationary backdrop in the, you know, call it 3% range, we look to get at least 100 basis points above that. So you're in that kind of 4% plus from a pricing perspective. As you heard Tony talk about earlier, when you think about GDP, when you think about population growth, when you think about housing starts, we look at organic volume growth in that 50-100 basis points through the cycle. And then increasingly more as we've made investments in sustainability, innovation. And Hanna, you set us up perfectly with, you know, some of the investments we're making in advanced, you know, plastic recycling. You know, together with some of our RNG investments, we look to sit there. And those can contribute as well.
So that when you take that together with a consistent, you know, a diet of M&A, you know, that's what gets you into that mid- to high-single-digit year in, year out.
That's a great overview, Brian. You know, let's discuss how the business is broken down. You mentioned the acquisition of U.S. Ecology and some other businesses you have as industrials. How is it broken down with your traditional recycling waste business and the recent acquisition into environmental services?
Yeah, I mean, broad brush, when you kind of think about the, you know, the business, a little less than 90%, about 89% or so is that traditional recycling and waste business, 10%-11% in the environmental solutions. Now, we don't look at them as different businesses because we really started with the customer, right? So we have a number of customers with the in the manufacturing and markets. We have a $1.5 billion market vertical in recycling and waste that we're saying, we want you to do more. You're at our facility. You're at our plant. You're taking this material. Why can't you take this as well? So customers are the ones that, you know, kind of brought us into this business. We, we built out the business, and it really started back in 2015. We bought the U.S. assets of a company called Tervita.
That was more in the upstream oil and gas business. But they also had a small downstream business. What we liked about the downstream business is it was much more stable. So it wasn't as dependent on oil prices. In the upstream, it's really, you know, as oil prices went up, people are drilling, and then you get some of the, you know, the muds that you're burying. The downstream was much more consistent. So we started building that business out in a much bigger way. Then we expanded up here into the Northeast. We bought a company called ACV. Then shortly thereafter is when we started the dialogue with U.S. Ecology. What we really liked about U.S. Ecology was, you know, infrastructure, those post-collection assets, the landfills, the TSDFs that just can't be replicated, right?
So again, just, you know, shy of 40% of every single hazardous waste ton that goes into a landfill goes into one of those 5 landfills. And when you think about that national platform from which we can continue to sit there and do tuck-in acquisitions and really gain the benefits of vertical integration, you know, Tony, you mentioned on your slide, scale matters. Scale really matters in this business. So we think we can continue to grow that. We can continue to sit there and grow that at a rate that actually exceeds what we're going to see in recycling and waste. So I'm sure we'll get into, you know, the margin cadence going forward. But we think about margin in the recycling and waste business moving in the 30-50 basis points per year, year in and year out.
For the near term, we see on that environmental solutions business more like 75-100.
It's a great story and a great model, I think, for growth, as you diversify into the services, environmental solutions. Maybe you talked about inflation has obviously gone up in the recent years and still being a little stubborn. How do you actually mechanically go about and are able to price ahead of inflation year on year, year in, year out?
Yeah, well, one of the things that, look, two years ago, when we went into the year, we actually thought that inflation was going to be transitory. And we undershot that, right? And again, that's tough because when you think about going out to the market from a price increase perspective, the last thing you want to do is go to your customer and say, hey, we have to come back with another price increase within the year. So you really only want to sit there and price once per year. So last year we took a different approach. In 2023, we went in thinking that inflation was going to be sticky, and it was. And we're doing the exact same thing this year as well.
So I know, many have called, right, for this, you know, downtick or this modulation, if you will, with respect to inflation, which may happen, certainly, but that's not the way we built our plan. So we want to go in thinking that inflation is going to remain somewhat elevated. So we're in the call it the 5.5% all in, you know, type inflation levels. And when you think about that historically, that is certainly elevated compared to a historical normal, okay? But the reason we did that is we've got to get from the mindset of our field operators, that's the type of cost increase you have to expect in order to go get the price you need to cover that level of cost inflation. Now, a lot of that's already known, right? So our biggest cost input is the cost of people.
And so we've already gone out with our merit increase for the year. So we know that. One of the other, you know, larger pieces, I would say, this year is just the cost of maintenance. I wouldn't say it's necessarily just inflationary. Some of it was some of the supply chain constraints is we are maintaining an older fleet, right? So we, the last 3 years, we have not gotten our full truck order. We've been running somewhere between low 70s%-a little over 80% of the trucks that we ordered have been received. And what that means is that when you're maintaining an older truck, let's say a 13-year-old side loader, is you've got your maintenance cost, higher cost per engine hour versus if you're able to buy that new truck that's under warranty, a very low cost per engine hour.
So it's a little bit of an OPEX cap, CAPEX trade-off. We would certainly rather have that truck and have that lower, you know, maintenance spend because we've done the math and we know where the optimal replacement age is. So that's why when you talk about cost inflation, that number's in there. We're kind of expecting more about an 8% increase in maintenance year-over-year. That's something where if we do get those trucks, if they start to be delivered, the manufacturers have said they're, they're on track. Yet to be seen, right? We've seen that, over the past couple of years as well. But that could certainly be a source if we get those trucks and maintenance comes in. That could be, certainly a tailwind relative to our initial expectations.
Could you go into a little more detail? You went over, briefly went over it about margin, the margin expansion algorithm and alluded to, and I sort of alluded to my comments too, but maybe walk through how the model works for margin expansion, in maybe both sides of the business in a little more detail.
Yeah, well, it's, it's relatively consistent on, on both sides of the business. So we, we talked about price. It starts with price, right? So pricing in excess of our cost inflation. Because one of the things, again, when you think about our business with our largest cost input being people, is that we're not perfect, but we've done a pretty good job from a productivity perspective. So we don't have enough productivity gains to offset those wage increases, right? So we, we have to price. So it starts with price. And again, we look to get somewhere around 100 basis points of price in excess of our cost inflation. And then together with some of the investments we've made and realizing the benefits, so starting with some of our digital initiatives where we've done our RISE platform.
That really was about a visualization tool for our dispatchers where they can now go in and optimize the way in which they build routes where before it was really paper-based. So you had to have a really good knowledge of the market in order to sit there and determine what truck should go pick up that extra stop. Now they can actually see where the truck is relative to the customer request, and they can allocate that pickup to the most efficient route, right? As well as putting the tablets in the cab for the drivers and giving them an optimized route structure, turn-by-turn instructions, in order to sit there and drive seconds and ultimately minutes out of the business. And just to put that into context, a minute of savings across our system is worth almost $5 million per year.
So, you know, every second matters. Again, driving productivity savings helps to drive some of that margin expansion per year. With respect to some of those investments we've made in digital, right, expect about $100 million of cumulative benefits over time, of which we've realized about $65 million to date. Then I mentioned some of those investments we're making in sustainability innovation, right? And all of which are accretive. So our RNG portfolio, what we're doing with our polymer center in order to sit there and get revenue streams, right, that are coming in at an accretion margin profile. Collectively, those are the sort of things that give us confidence with our ability to drive 30-50 basis points of margin expansion per year. And that's not just in a single year.
Again, when you start talking about the way in which these are going to layer in, I mean, we've got visibility to these coming in over the next 4-5 years, which gives us a nice glide path to, you know, ultimately see better performance over time.
You discussed the environmental solutions business and the acquisition of US Ecology. You know, could you just give us an update on how that is going? Have there been hiccups? Is it as you foresaw it going this way or is it better, worse? Maybe just an update on that.
Yeah, so we completed the acquisition of U.S. Ecology in May of 2022. When we originally valued the deal, we did it based on, you know, the U.S. Ecology performance plus $40 million worth of cost synergies. Although we knew that there were revenue synergies that were there to be obtained, we don't include that. We never pay on revenue synergies. So a combination of both, cross-sell opportunities. As I mentioned earlier, we have a $1.5 billion market vertical that is exclusively focused on manufacturing and markets. These customers, we knew that there were cross-sell opportunities, as well as the ability to price. And again, to price for the value of the service that we were providing and the scarcity of the asset, that post-collection infrastructure that exists in that space.
We actually were able to achieve some of our performance targets when you take a look at how we were able to sit there and price in that business. And again, getting over $100 million of cross-sell, within the first 18 months, we were able to achieve those targets sooner than anticipated, but we knew that that was there, right? We just accelerated some of that, some of that value capture. I would say some of the things that I don't know if it was necessarily a surprise. I don't know that we fully appreciated was the amount of integration that was going to be required on U.S. Ecology more into itself. So U.S. Ecology was somewhat acquisitive. There were pieces that were out there that hadn't yet been fully integrated from a system perspective. So we are still doing some of that integration.
We expect to be completed in 2024. I think the important point about that, though, is that we've been doing everything we've done somewhat through brute force. What I mean is that we don't have a common CRM platform yet between the recycling and waste business, environmental solutions. Environmental solutions is still on multiple systems. So to be able to get to customer profitability can be somewhat challenging. So as we deploy these systems, as we continue to integrate, as we get on a common platform, our ability to certainly get smarter about the way in which we go to market and to be able to really get a little bit more surgical, with the way in which we, we price our customers starts to increase, which is one of the reasons why we feel the cadence with respect to margin expansion somewhat elevated in that, in that business.
That's why I mentioned, before, 75-100 basis points because there's still more opportunity.
Yeah, it seems like there's a lot more opportunities, the potential to come from that integration. Y ou again, you mentioned the RISE platform. Could you talk a little bit more? I think this is where you guys differentiate yourselves on how you look at pricing and the pricing tools. I think John's done a great job of driving that in your company. And it seems like you're probably one of the leaders in that space.
Yeah, we have a tool, a digital tool in our recycling and waste business we call Capture. And so what it is, essentially, it's understanding the unique costs about each one of the customers. So when you're configuring a product for the customer, so for example, if a driver has to get out and open up a lock, right, in order to service that container, that costs more. So we understand on average how much time that is. Because again, if you take a look at our business, it's, I'm going to grossly oversimplify our business, but if you understand time and weight, you have a majority of your cost structure. So we put those costs. We understand that a restaurant, the weight of a container is heavier than a pillow factory.
So we put all of those attributes in against which then we sit there and have to have, you know, some sort of return on the investments that we're making in the truck that we're deploying and the containers that we're buying. And then we create a threshold price that a salesperson cannot sell below. Okay, that's the minimum. And if they want to sell below that, it's got to go up through a number of different approvals. And I can tell you there aren't many exceptions granted by design. The nice part, though, is that we pay based on profitability. We don't pay based on revenue. So that a salesperson can also see as you slide the price to the customer and you start to move it up, they start to see what their commission will be for increased profitability of that customer.
And so it gives us visibility. It gives us control, but it also gives us real-time information. So again, if we're in a market and we're out there and every single customer is saying yes, well, guess what? The guardrails, we're moving up. If we're out there and we're, you know, batting zero, you know, on these things, then we have to address, you know, are we sitting there and potentially, you know, selling above market? And you've got to make those corrections, in order to make sure that you're really trying to sit there and get it right. And that's what we strive to do. And it's just, again, it's more information. It's more real-time information where prior to that, what a salesperson was armed with was a price sheet. And that's all they had. And they had to just walk around with that.
That could become outdated pretty quickly. Now we can actually change some of those guardrails. We can push a button and it'll change every quote from that point forward.
That's a very interesting model and very easy to visualize in my mind. Let's switch gears here and talk about some other things going on in the industry. RNG, you know, renewable natural gas development approach. You guys have taken a different approach than some others in the industry with a joint venture model, you know, royalty partnership. Could you talk, maybe just give a little background on what this is and how, why you're differentiated, why you went the way you did?
Yeah, so when you think about renewable natural gas, you know, first, landfills as the waste decomposes create methane gas. So one of the conditions of our permit and every Subtitle D Landfill is required to put in the infrastructure to vacuum the gas. And you can do two different things. You could either flare it. So you're converting methane into CO2, which is better for the environment, but it's not awesome, right, for the environment, you know, when you're discharging the CO2. Or you can put in some infrastructure in order to sit there and to clean up the gas and ultimately convert it into electricity, or into renewable natural gas. So when we looked at the opportunity there for renewable natural gas, the reason that we went the JV route, it started with a partnership with Archaea that was ultimately acquired by BP.
The reason we went that path is, there's several reasons. One, we actually put this out as a portfolio. So meaning it couldn't be cherry picked. So, again, if you cherry pick landfills, you're going to take the ones that are going to create the most gas and you're not going to have anyone that's going to go and develop some of those smaller sites. So this came as a portfolio of 40 sites. Okay, so again, we ran it as a process, and as a result of running it as a process, because it was a competitive process, we were ultimately able to strike a deal where we invest 28% of the capital, but we get 40% of the return. And we get that 12% step up, again, just because it was , it was competitive, right?
I mean, that's what it took to, get the deal done. The other reason why we went the JV route is that we don't have the capabilities, the resources in order to design, develop, operate 40 sites concurrently, right? That's why we said, let's leverage a partner that has those capabilities and that can move quick. And the reason why moving quick matters is that, when you think about a landfill and the associated landfill gas curve, this is not something that grows into perpetuity, right? So you have a peak amount of gas production. And then ultimately, once a landfill closes each year, that landfill gas production is going to decline. And ultimately, the idea is that a landfill becomes inert.
So getting after this as quick as possible, and that's why we're actually working in some form or fashion in order to sit there and move all 40 of these at the same time. Now, it's going to come in at a phased approach, but to capture as much of that and monetize as much of that landfill gas as possible.
Yeah, that's a pretty interesting business you guys have. And it seems like there'll be a lot of opportunities coming from that going forward. Maybe we could switch gears again and talk about recycling. You guys are leaders in, I'd say, advanced recycling. You've sort of attacked it in a different method. Could you talk about your advanced recycling program and your polymer center, which you've, opened a few of them recently?
Yeah, I think, again, Hannah, I think set us up well. I think you called it a crisis. So we're here, we're here to help solve that crisis, on the plastic side. So, if you think about our portfolio of recycling centers across the U.S., what we typically do with all materials, but in particular, I'll talk about plastics, where we're going there, is that we collect the material, we separate it, we bale it, and a lot of the plastics ultimately get downcycled. So, you know, you take the PET. The PET gets sold into, for example, carpet manufacturers where it's used as an input. And they're doing that because they can actually buy that downcycled product at a discounted version. Okay, what we're now doing, hub and spoke model, we're going to actually create the original plan is for what we call polymer centers.
First one being in Las Vegas, but these are going to be geographically based. So think, you know, everything on the West Coast will be, you know, all that material, the, the PET, and the HDPE, the olefins, will be shipped to the polymer center where we're going to be able to separate the material finer sort. We're ultimately going to grind, wash, and flake the PET, and we're going to be able to sell that back as a food-grade flake back to either CPG companies or converters. So the water bottle gets turned back into a water bottle, right? So true circularity. And, what we're seeing from brand commitments, so CPG companies, as well as now enhanced regulation, right? So starting in California, moving up into Washington, New Jersey, that's going to require a certain amount of those plastic bottles to have that post-consumer content.
And so we certainly see the demand for this product. The problem has been limited supply. And one of the reasons when you think about why the supply has been limited, think about the two largest aggregators of this material. It's us and WM. And we were sitting there and baling this stuff and then downcycling it, which is one of the reasons why this hasn't been done previously, is because no one would step into this market and just build one of these facilities without relative control of the feedstock. We built these things knowing that this stuff is already on our back. And so we have visibility to this material. So supply of the, of the feedstock is not a concern. It was just, you know, can we actually get this, you know, machinery to work? We had seen it in Europe and it was working.
We have now delivered, right? Our first rounds of commercial, you know, from a commercial operation perspective to our customers. We actually did that, what, two weeks ago? I think we delivered our first loads and the quality is phenomenal. There's, you know, our customers are saying it's better than anything they've ever seen.
I mean, in that, you're natural, natural operators, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of dynamics there that are a lot of goodness. I don't want to, I don't, I know there's some questions from the audience. Anyone would like to ask a question? Mario.
All right, thank you. I'll deal it out.
Okay. Even better. 10 years from now, we'll have a 20th. You'll be here for 20 years. The turbulence will be different in the world. I don't want to get into the election and taxes for 2025 with the change of your fleet. I want to know what's on your radar screen where you're signing NDAs.
As far as.
What kind of businesses would you like to buy? What kind of locations geographically? Where do your technology taking you next to handle the PFAS, the plastics, and whatever else is going on in your world?
Yeah, a couple of things. I would say from an M&A perspective, I would sit there and say you're more of the same from the perspective of building out that route density on the recycling and waste side and for that matter, on the environmental solution. So think more tuck-in type acquisitions where when you build that density, again, you can really, you know, punch out those synergies, especially on the environmental solution side, which carries a larger SG&A burden. So a lot of cost synergies that are available on that side. When you think about things like regulation on the PFAS side, again, on the recycling and waste side, we see that as a modest risk at this point.
So meaning that if landfills are required to do any sort of enhanced treatment or processing of the leachate, we've shown, right, as a company, as an industry, that those increased costs can be passed along to the customer. Okay, so we would expect most of that to pass through on that side of the business. However, on our environmental solution side, we're a natural owner of that material in order to process and treat. So we actually think of that as an opportunity. Y ou push the two together into the enterprise, we see a, you know, a nice opportunity between the two.
Yeah, just a hitchhike on that. Refresh for us your multiple of cap of EBITDA to how you look at your debt leverage.
We're right around 3 times.
What's your comfort level?
Three times.
Thank you. You got a currency to make love.
Maybe back to what Mario touched on, with the election and fleet electrification. You, I think, again, you've been sort of a leader in this area. Maybe just talk to why now, just your overall thoughts on going the electric battery route.
Yeah, look, as we look forward, so you said, you know, ten years from now, you know, we see, communities that are going to want a zero emissions technology. And CNG is incrementally better than diesel, but it's not zero emissions. And so, we were working with several vendors and we want multiple vendors to succeed here on an electric product. Really it was, it was Oshkosh, right, that kind of did. Can actually get the, the power that we need in order to run a full route, where when you do a retrofit of, of a diesel truck, it becomes a little bit more challenging just because you, you, you can't get out of the way of the weight of the truck. So, you know, we're excited about what we're seeing with this initial prototype that we've received.
Again, we expect to receive just over 50 of those trucks in 2024. We've got a couple that are running around Phoenix right now, but it is meeting and exceeding the thresholds that were in the performance. You can look at our revenue portfolio in the state of California. By 2030, there's a proportion of our heavy vehicle fleet, the collection fleet, that has to be zero tailpipe emission. So we feel like we're moving ahead. You've got to secure the power off the grid. You've got to secure the units, right, to maintain our position and even further grow our position in, in a state such as California. And you generally see, other states as fast followers to that California regulation.
So, again, it's early bird will get the worm, not only on incentives that are offered for the zero tailpipe emissions, but also our availability on the grid. So just making sure we take advantage of that while we can.
I mean, it's a good point as goes, the saying, as goes California, right? Maybe I can get in. Well, I probably can't get in one last one, but, well, thank you for, thank you for being here today, Brian and Aaron. Thanks for making the trip in and, always appreciate your support. Hopefully can get you back next year for number 11 and, have a safe trip back.
Sounds great. Thank you. Thank you.