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Text: Jon Vander Ark, our Chief Executive Officer; and Brian DelGhiaccio, our Chief Financial Officer, are joining me as we discuss our performance.
The material that we discuss today is time sensitive.
If in the future, you listen to a rebroadcast or recording of this conference call, you should be sensitive to the date of the original call, which is October 28, 2021.
I want to remind you that Republic management team routinely participates in investor conferences.
We are pleased with our strong performance in the third quarter.
We continue to execute on our strategic priorities of customer zeal, digital and sustainability to drive growth and value for our stakeholders.
During the third quarter, we delivered revenue and EBITDA growth of approximately 14% compared to the prior year.
Generated adjusted earnings per share of $1.11, which represents an increase of 11% over the prior year and produced $1.4 billion of adjusted free cash flow on a year-to-date basis.
We continue to effectively allocate capital by investing in value-creating acquisitions and returning excess cash to our shareholders.
Year-to-date, we've invested over $900 million in acquisitions to further enhance our market position and increase free cash flow.
This is the highest level of acquisition investment in over a decade.
On August 31, we completed the acquisition of ACV Enviro.
This strategic acquisition broadens our capabilities and offerings in the environmental services industry.
It also provides us with a platform to pursue additional growth.
Our acquisition pipeline remains robust with opportunities in both the recycling and solid waste and the environmental solutions businesses.
We now expect to invest over $1 billion in acquisitions through the full year.
In addition to investing in acquisitions, we have returned $622 million to our shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.
We continue to prioritize customer zeal to drive profitable growth.
This includes increasing customer loyalty, driving willingness to pay and attracting new volume as the provider of choice.
Our customer retention rate remains at a record-setting level of 95%.
During the third quarter, we delivered outsized revenue growth throughout our business.
Total core price remained at an all-time high of 5.2%, and average yield increased to 3.2%.
Volume increased 4.3% compared to the prior year, which exceeded our expectations.
And acquisitions contributed an incremental 350 basis points to total revenue growth.
The outlook for organic and acquisition growth for the remainder of the year is strong.
We continue to realize the benefits of our investments in technology.
In the third quarter, we made meaningful progress on the rollout of the next phase of our RISE platform.
We have now implemented tablets in approximately 70% of our large and small container fleet.
We expect to be substantially complete by the end of this year with plans to further deploy to the residential fleet beginning in 2022.
Next, turning to our sustainability platform.
We continue to partner with developers to capitalize on landfill gas to energy opportunities.
We currently have 17 projects in the pipeline with more opportunities thereafter.
On top of the royalty revenue, these plants will generate a majority of equity investment opportunities to further participate in the project economics.
We also recently opened a solar project on one of our closed landfills in Belleville, Illinois.
This project consists of 30,000 solar panels and will produce enough energy to power 2,200 homes annually.
We remain committed to increasing the recycling and circularity of key materials as part of our ambitious 2030 sustainability goal.
We recently opened the first solar-powered compost facility in California to further our progress and address the growing community needs.
This facility will provide critical organic processing capabilities to residents and businesses in the greater San Diego area.
Our strong financial and operational results will not have been possible without our dedicated Republic employees.
We continue to invest in developing both existing and new talent and creating innovative solutions for the increased demand for skilled workers.
We recently unveiled our Republic Services Technical Institute, which is the industry's first ever diesel technician school.
This subsidized program is already building a strong pipeline of high demand technician talent for Republic.
Additionally, graduates will have upskilling opportunities to further grow their career with Republic.
These types of innovative investments in talent lead to external recognition for our company.
Republic was recently certified as a great place to work for the fifth consecutive year.
This is a meaningful achievement as employee recruiting and retention remains a prominent focus in today's labor market.
Finally, turning to our outlook for the remainder of the year.
Given the continued strength in our business, we now expect to exceed the full year guidance we upwardly revised last quarter.
Accordingly, we are increasing 2021 full year financial guidance as follows: adjusted earnings per share is now expected to be in the range of $4.10 to $4.13; and adjusted free cash flow is now expected to be in the range of $1.475 billion to $1.5 billion.
Core price during the third quarter was 5.2%, which included open market pricing of 6.5% and restricted pricing of 2.9%.
The components of core price included small container of 8.2%, large container of 5% and residential of 5%.
Average yield was 3.2%, which increased 60 basis points from the second quarter.
Third quarter volume increased 4.3%.
The components of volume included an increase in small container of 5.4%, an increase in large container of 3.9% and an increase in landfill of 6.6%.
For reference, small container and MSW volumes in the third quarter were both above a 2019 pre-pandemic baseline.
Moving on to recycling.
Commodity prices increased to $230 per ton in the third quarter.
This compares to $99 per ton in the prior year.
Recycling processing and commodity sales contributed 160 basis points to internal growth during the third quarter.
Next, turning to our environmental solutions business.
Third quarter Environmental Solutions revenue increased $27 million from the prior year.
This was driven by both organic growth from increased activity and the contribution from acquisitions.
On a same-store basis, environmental solutions contributed 20 basis points to internal growth during the third quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA margin for the third quarter was 30.4%, and increased 10 basis points over the prior year.
This included a 90 basis point increase from recycled commodity prices, a 50 basis point headwind from net fuel and a 30 basis point headwind from the impact of recent acquisitions, primarily driven by deal and integration costs.
SG&A was 10.2% of revenue.
This represents an increase of 20 basis points over the prior year, which was exclusively due to higher incentive compensation accruals.
Year-to-date adjusted free cash flow was $1.4 billion and increased $247 million or 22% compared to the prior year.
This was primarily driven by EBITDA growth in the business.
With respect to our full year cash flow guidance, we expect to spend a disproportionate amount of our full year capex and cash taxes during the fourth quarter.
It should also be noted that we increased our expected full year capital spending in our upwardly revised guidance by over $50 million.
This increase relates to capital to support growth opportunities.
Free cash flow conversion through September continued to track ahead of our original expectations and increased 330 basis points over the prior year.
During the quarter, total debt was $9.3 billion, and total liquidity was $2.4 billion.
Interest expense decreased $11 million due to refinancing activities completed last year, and our leverage ratio was 2.8 times.
With respect to taxes, our third quarter adjusted effective tax rate was 25.5%.
We had an equivalent tax impact of 27% when you include noncash charges from solar investments.
We expect our fourth quarter equivalent tax impact to be approximately 25%.
This includes the effective tax rate and noncash solar charges.
We continue to create value for our stakeholders by executing our strategic priorities, which drives profitable growth and increases returns.
We are expecting the positive momentum in our business to continue to produce profitable growth in 2022.
At this point, we anticipate producing above-average revenue growth, leading to high single-digit adjusted free cash flow growth compared to our full year 2021 performance.
As usual, we will provide full year detailed 2022 guidance on our fourth quarter earnings call.
With that, operator, I would like to open the call to questions.

user
q3 adjusted non-gaap earnings per share $1.11.
sees fy adjusted earnings per share $4.10 to $4.13.
raised 2021 full-year financial guidance.
qtrly revenue $2,933.9 million versus $2,572.1 million.

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