You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: You will hear prepared comments from each of them today.
Jim will cover high-level financials and provide a strategic update, John will cover an operating overview and Devina will cover the details of the financials.
John will discuss the results of the areas of yield and volume, which, unless stated otherwise, are more specifically references to internal revenue growth or IRG from yield or volume.
During the call, Jim, John and Devina will discuss operating EBITDA, which is income from operations before depreciation and amortization.
Any comparisons, unless otherwise stated, will be with the first quarter of 2020.
Net income, EPS, operating EBITDA margin and SG&A expense results have been adjusted to enhance comparability by excluding certain items that management believes do not reflect our fundamental business performance or results of operations.
These adjusted measures, in addition to free cash flow are non-GAAP measures.
wm.com for reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures and additional information of our use of non-GAAP measures and non-GAAP projections.
Time-sensitive information provided during today's call, which is occurring on April 27, 2021, may no longer be accurate at the time of a replay.
It was said many times last year that 2020 was a year like no other.
For many reasons, it was an incredibly difficult and trying year, yet our positive message internally was that great companies use tough times to better themselves, and that's precisely what WM did and the first quarter of 2021 showed that with an exclamation point.
We had an exceptionally strong start to the year as we kept our focus on those fundamentals that have always been great.
Our people first, then our customers and then we focus on the details of our business, and that order inevitably produces the best results.
In Q1, it sure did as we achieved record operating EBITDA of $1.16 billion and robust cash from operations of $1.12 billion.
Typically, during our first-quarter earnings call, we reaffirm our full-year guidance.
However, as we view these strong results, in addition to our confidence in the transformative changes we're making to our business model and the fact that we have yet to see a full recovery in our critical landfill, commercial and industrial volumes, it became clear that we're on track to outperform our guidance from only two months ago.
Combine this with the broader economic trends and all indicators show that our full-year revenue, adjusted operating EBITDA and free cash flow are on track to meet or exceed the upper end of the guidance ranges we provided in February.
Devina will discuss our updated guidance, but it's safe to say we're very excited about our performance for the first quarter and we expect to show continued strength throughout the year.
We're seeing tangible benefits from the investments that we've made in recycling and renewable energy.
In our recycling line of business, we've developed a model for all new plants which, with the addition of sophisticated technology, produces far better returns through a combination of added efficiencies, a higher quality of saleable material and less residual material for disposal at the end of the process, all while our basket of recycled commodity prices have climbed back nicely to historical average price levels.
Additionally, three years ago, we made the decision to close the loop between our natural gas fleet and the gas produced at our landfills by investing in the renewable energy business.
We're now seeing those investments pay healthy dividends with approximately two to three-year paybacks on our four plants, in tandem with greater stability and higher pricing in the renewable energy markets.
As we discussed last quarter, WM is also well positioned to leverage our ESG leadership, and particularly our focus on environmental sustainability to help our customers meet their own climate goals through recycling and other beneficial uses such as renewable energy generation.
We're in a unique position to help key stakeholders rise to the challenge.
And we can do this while growing our business at the same time, collaborating with our stakeholders to find new ways to create value together.
Continuing to integrate environmental sustainability into our strategic business framework for long-term sustainable and profitable growth requires a strong focus, which is why we've taken a step to dedicate a member of our senior team to this effort.
I'm pleased to announce that Tara Hemmer, senior vice president of operations, will be taking this new role as senior vice president, chief sustainability officer reporting directly to me effective July 1.
With Tara's move, our Area vice president leading the Greater Mid-Atlantic area, Rafa Carrasco, will be promoted to a member of the senior leadership team as senior vice president of Operations.
We've also launched a new exciting education benefit for our team members this month that will provide development and upskilling opportunities for our workforce.
These changes underscore how the tenets of ESG are embedded into our broader business strategy.
As digital transformation sweeps across nearly every industry in the wake of the pandemic, we're making strides in differentiating our customers' experience through end-to-end digital transformation.
Today, our customers can manage their relationship with us through online -- through our online WM -- My WM platform, which is connected operationally through our smart truck technology and supported by our customer analytics and data management tools.
Our newly automated setup process streamlines customer orders and accelerates the speed at which we can deliver on our commitments, while also reducing our cost to serve.
These developments, combined with the continued growth of our e-commerce channel, give us confidence that our decision to accelerate technology investments was the right one, and we will emerge from the pandemic a stronger, more agile company.
WM is well positioned to benefit from the continued reopening as more states and provinces emerge from the pandemic, and we expect our commercial, industrial and landfill businesses, our three most profitable lines of business, to benefit from further volume recovery and produce robust financial results with high incremental margins over the remainder of the year.
Before reviewing the terrific operating results that we achieved in the first quarter, I want to provide an update on the integration of ADS.
Over the last six months, we've made significant progress on combining the two businesses, and we've been able to accelerate some of our integration plans.
The teams have worked tirelessly to make sure that this combination goes smoothly.
And based on the success of the integration so far, we are increasing our synergy expectations to $150 million of total annual run rate synergies, $130 million coming from operating costs and SG&A savings and $20 million coming from capital savings.
For 2021, we now expect synergies of between $75 million and $85 million, all coming from cost savings.
With approximately $15 million of annualized synergies captured in 2020, we expect to exit 2021 on an annual run rate synergy level of around $100 million.
The remaining $50 million is expected to be captured in 2022 and 2023 from a combination of operating costs, SG&A and capital expenditures.
Now turning to our first-quarter results.
Organic revenue grew 2.1% as disciplined pricing and improved recycling results overcame modest volume declines.
Pricing performance for the quarter was very solid with both core price of 3.4% and collection and disposal yield of 2.8%, outpacing our expectations.
Notably, our commercial yield rebounded sequentially from 3.1% -- to 3.1% from 1.9% in the fourth quarter.
As economic reopening progressed during the first quarter, collection and disposal volumes improved again sequentially to a decline of 2.3% from 2.7% in the fourth quarter.
In the first quarter, net new business turned positive, churn improved meaningfully to 8.2% and service increases expanded.
While volumes have recovered meaningfully from the second quarter of 2020 collection and disposal decline of 10.9%, as Jim pointed out, WM is positioned to benefit from further improvements in North American economies.
For example, at the end of the first quarter, we have recovered about 72% of the commercial yards lost due to COVID, providing room for considerable improvement in commercial volumes as we progress through the year.
Similarly, our other highest-margin businesses, industrial and landfill, have volume upside opportunity as visibility into the economic reopening continues to improve and more event work is scheduled and completed.
Looking at the lines of business, we're making improvements with the help of a very delivery pricing focus, residential, landfill and recycling, I'm happy to report that we have had standout in each of these areas during the quarter.
Residential yield doubled year over year to 4.2% as we made strides to improve the profitability in this line of business.
This is the highest residential yield we have achieved since 2008 and it showcases our success in demonstrating the value of our service and pricing it appropriately.
The increased yield drove operating EBITDA margins in the residential line of business to the highest level in the past 12 months despite still elevated residential container rates.
Landfill core price was 3.2%, a strong result when you consider the impact of lower volumes related both to the pandemic and severe winter weather.
In recycling, operating EBITDA doubled year over year to achieve earnings that rank in our top five best quarters ever.
These results are truly a reflection of our work to improve the business model while creating a sustainable solution for our customers and not simply the result of an increase in recycled commodity prices.
While our other top recycling quarters had an average commodity price of $127 per ton, we achieved our strong first-quarter results with a price of $79 per ton.
Finally, turning to costs.
First-quarter operating expenses as a percentage of revenue improved 130 basis points to 61.1%, demonstrating that we are maintaining our cost discipline as volumes recover.
In the first quarter, we saw a 40-basis-point improvement in our labor costs as we continue to manage overtime spending.
We also saw efficiency improvements in both the commercial and industrial lines of business, which we were able to identify and capture as our investments in technology help make us nimble.
As you've heard from both Jim and John, we had a fantastic start to 2021 and we forecast continued strength our business as local economies emerge from the pandemic.
These strong results and our confidence in our outlook for the remainder of the year have led us to raise our full-year financial guidance.
Revenue growth is expected to be 12.5% to 13%, with combined internal revenue growth from yield and volume in the collection and disposal business of four and a half percent or greater.
The increased outlook is underpinned by our disciplined pricing programs and strong outlook for continued volume recovery.
For adjusted operating EBITDA, we now expect to generate between $4.875 billion and $4.975 billion, a $100 million increase at the midpoint from our prior guidance.
The improved outlook for adjusted operating EBITDA translates directly into incremental free cash flow, and we now expect that we will generate between $2.325 billion and $2.425 billion of free cash flow for the year.
Our team members on the frontline continue to deliver and the investments we are making in our people, technology and customer experience are generating strong results.
Turning to our first-quarter results.
Net cash provided by operating activities grew $355 million.
The contribution from operating EBITDA growth accounted for a little less than half of that increase, with the remainder coming from lower incentive compensation payments and an increase in cash collections from customers, and favorable timing of some of our payables.
While we expect some of the timing differences experienced in the first quarter to reverse for the year, the remaining contributors to our strong cash flow from operations results position us for a very strong year.
In the first quarter, capital spending was $270 million, a $189 million decrease from the first quarter of 2020.
Capital expenditures were lower in the quarter, primarily due to timing, but the timing of fleet purchases, which we had intentionally front-loaded in 2020 and steps we took in late 2020 to accelerate some of our 2021 capital given our confidence in the pace of volume recovery.
We continue to prioritize the investments in the long-term growth of our business, including recycling, renewable energy and technology investments that we have previously discussed.
For the full year, we expect capital spending to be at the high end of our $1.78 billion to $1.88 billion guidance range as we invest in our business to support growth, reduce our cost to serve and extend our environmental sustainability efforts.
Putting it all together, our business generated free cash flow of $865 million in the first quarter.
The operating EBITDA growth, lower capital expenditures and favorable working capital changes that I discussed drove the significant year over year free cash flow increase.
This sets us up very well to achieve our increased free cash flow outlook.
In the first quarter, we used our free cash flow to pay $247 million in dividends and allocated $250 million to share repurchases.
Turning to SG&A costs.
SG&A was 10.7% of revenue in the first quarter.
That's a 20-basis-point increase over 2020.
We remain focused on managing our discretionary costs, optimizing our structure for the ADS acquisition and using SG&A dollars to enhance our business.
Our deliberate increased level of investment in technology as well as higher incentive compensation accruals are the driver of SG&A as a percentage of revenue being above our long-term target of less than 10% of revenue, but we are committed to ensuring we return to that optimized cost structure in the near term.
Our first-quarter leverage ratio of 3.04 times has improved from the fourth quarter due to our strong operating EBITDA growth.
This leverage ratio remains well within the financial covenant of our revolving credit facility and right at the top of our long-term targeted range of two and a half to three times.
Our strong first-quarter results and increased expectations for current year operating EBITDA and free cash flow, position us to purchase at least $1 billion of our shares in 2021, and at the same time, achieve our target leverage of 2.75 times by the end of the year.
Our capital allocation priorities continue to be a strong balance sheet, prudent investment in the growth of our business and strong and consistent shareholder returns.
With the strength of our collection and disposal business, expectations for continued recovery and improved market backdrop for recycling, effective cost control and even better-than-expected integration synergies from the ADS acquisition, cash flow converges conversion is strong.
And as a result, we expect to increase cash allocated to shareholder returns from our initial plans.
Our strong results are a testament to their commitment, and we're excited about what we will achieve together over the remainder of the year.

user
company increases 2021 financial guidance.
adjusted operating ebitda is expected to be between $4.875 billion and $4.975 billion in 2021.
total company revenue growth is expected to be 12.5% to 13% in 2021.

assistant