Earnings Call Transcript - CWST Q1 2025

Operator, Operator

Today we'll be discussing our first quarter 2025 results, which were released yesterday afternoon. I'm joined by John Casella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Ned Coletta, our President; and Sean Steves, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Solid Waste Operations. After a review of these results and an update on the company's activities and business environment, we'll be happy to take your questions. But first, please be aware that various remarks we make about the company's future expectations, plans, and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the Safe Harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the Risk Factors section of our most recently filed Form 10-K, which is on file with the SEC. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent our views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing our views in any subsequent date while we may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we specifically disclaim any obligation to do so even if our views change. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any date subsequent to today, May 2nd, 2025. Also, during this call, we'll be referring to non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures are not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures to the extent they are available without unreasonable efforts are included in our press release filed on Form 8-K with the SEC. And with that, I will now turn the call over to John Casella to begin today's discussions.

John Casella, CEO

Thanks, Brian. First, a quick update. Brad came down with a fever this morning and he is out sick. So, I asked Ned to come out of CFO retirement for a few hours today. I just wanted to bring that to your attention. Welcome to our first quarter 2025 conference call. Before I review the highlights of the quarter, I'd like to take a minute to recognize several of our team members who exemplify our core values and put service to our communities first while operating in a safe and responsible manner. We're proud to have three drivers recognized under the National Waste and Recycling Association's Driver of the Year program through their focus on safety, operational excellence and being strong representatives of the Solid Waste industry. They are Frank Corl, Juan Caraballo, and Daniel Hale. In addition, Julia Potter, our Director of Business Transformation, was named to Waste360's 40 Under 40, an annual award recognizing professionals under 40 whose work has made significant contributions to the industry. These employees will all be recognized at WasteExpo next week. At a company level, Casella was recognized under Forbes 2025 Americas Best Midsized Employers list. As I often discuss, our core values and culture are very important to us and are central to everything we do. So it's gratifying to be acknowledged externally. Shifting to the results. As you saw in our earnings press release yesterday, we started the year strong with revenues, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted free cash flow all up over 20% year-over-year in all records for the first quarter. The winter was particularly challenging in the Northeast this year, but we exceeded plan and delivered results, which was a function of great effort and execution across the organization. Operationally, we continue to make excellent progress on initiatives to expand fleet automation, onboard computing, internalize incremental volume into our landfills, and improve employee retention. Each is yielding results. These advancements are occurring at the same time as our ongoing integration efforts, which are successfully working through two years of record M&A. It's impressive and speaks very well of our entire team, who are truly going above and beyond. In the Landfill business, we reported organic growth exceeding 7% with positive contributions from both price and volume. We are focused on internalizing more of our owned tons, which Ned will discuss in more detail in a few minutes. On the collection side of the Solid Waste business, pricing momentum was positive at 5.8%, more than offsetting a volume decrease of 1.7%, which included slower roll-off volumes during a challenging winter. Pricing continued to exceed internal inflation, which, combined with operating initiatives, expanded margins by 140 basis points in our legacy collection operations. Resource Solutions continues to perform well with the first quarter results benefiting from the ramp-up at the recently upgraded Willimantic recycling facility and strong organic growth of over 10% in our National Accounts business, as that group continues to gain traction with larger accounts in our new geographies. We also continue to execute our acquisition strategy having closed four deals year-to-date with approximately $50 million in annualized revenues. Looking ahead to the remainder of 2025, our active M&A pipeline is full. Our strong balance sheet positions us to continue to complete deals opportunistically. The first quarter was a nice start to 2025 and a product of hard work, with our core operating strategies working well. While tariff and macro uncertainties have been recent topics of investor concerns, the nature of our Solid Waste business reduces the impact of economic swings and our domestic focus limits exposure to tariffs. We remain confident in our 2025 outlook and continue to see opportunities for future value creation. And with that, I will turn it over to Ned to go through the financial details.

Ned Coletta, President

Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone. Before I get into numbers, I'd like to take a moment to welcome Brian Butler to our team as Vice President of Investor Relations. Brian joins us from Stifel, where he was most recently the Lead Equity Research Analyst for the Waste sector. And as Michael Hoffman's longtime partner, he was one of the most tenured Waste analysts on Wall Street. He brings deep corporate finance skills, industry knowledge, and investment perspective to our team. We're very excited to have Brian join the Casella team. Now on to the financial results for the quarter. Revenues in the first quarter were $417.1 million, up $76.1 million year-over-year or 22.3%, with $57.3 million from acquisitions, including the rollover and $18.4 million of growth from organic growth or 5.4% year-over-year. Solid Waste revenues were up 25.9% year-over-year, with prices up 5.6% and volumes slightly down, down 1.7%. Within Solid Waste, pricing and collection line of business was up 5.8% with volumes down 1.7%. Price was strong across the board, led by a positive 6.5% price in the Front Load Commercial business. From a volume standpoint, we saw softness in the roll-off line of business across our footprint this quarter. Some of this can certainly be attributed to the challenging winter weather in the Northeast, but we also observed some slower economic activity in several of our markets. However, it's hard to draw firm conclusions from the first quarter roll-off volumes as we're seeing nice strength in seasonal uptick into April and early May. Price in the disposal line of business was up 5.5% year-over-year and volumes were down 2.2% with softness in third-party transfer station volumes, which is really related to soft roll-off volumes in the quarter. Results in the Landfill business were strong with prices up 3.3% and tons up 3.9%, including volumes across all major waste streams. The average price per ton was up 4.8% in the quarter. Resource Solutions' revenues were up 9.5% year-over-year with recycling and other processing revenue up 7.4% and National Accounts up 10.9%. Within the processing operations, price was up 3%, with average commodity revenue per ton relatively flat year-over-year. Commodity prices overall remained stable this year, with recent softness in the fiber market, largely offset by strength in plastics and aluminum. Processing volume in revenue terms was up 2.6% with growth in both recycling and municipal biosolids processing. Within National Accounts revenue, price was up 3.9% and volume was up 7.4%. Adjusted EBITDA was $86.4 million in the quarter, up $15.4 million or 21.7% year-over-year with positive contribution from acquisitions and organic growth. Adjusted EBITDA margins were 20.7% in the quarter, down 10 basis points year-over-year, but in line with our budget. Bridging the year-over-year change in adjusted EBITDA margins in the quarter, an adjustment to long-term stock-based compensation expense, driven by our improving outlook against long-term targets, impacted EBITDA in the quarter by approximately $2.6 million, which represents about 60 basis points of margin headwind. Excluding this adjustment, margins were up approximately 50 basis points year-over-year with margin expansion in the base business and the net tailwind from acquired operations. Cost of operations were $280.5 million in the quarter, up $49.7 million year-over-year, with $44.4 million of the increase from acquisitions and $5.3 million in the base business. Cost of operations in the base business were down approximately 200 basis points as a percentage of revenue in the quarter, primarily reflecting the continued operating leverage and benefits from our key strategies in the collection line of business. General and administrative costs were $56.5 million in the quarter, up $12.2 million year-over-year. Excluding the stock-comp adjustment I just mentioned, G&A costs were down 10 basis points as a percentage of revenues. Depreciation and amortization costs were up $17.5 million year-over-year with $15.5 million resulting from the recent acquisition activity, including the amortization of acquired intangibles. As a reference, D&A associated with acquisitions was approximately 27% of acquired revenues in the quarter as compared to about 16% in our base business. Adjusted net income was $12.2 million in the quarter, or $0.19 per diluted share, up $3.5 million or about $0.04 a share. GAAP net loss was $4.8 million in the quarter, impacted by about $6.9 million of increase in amortization of acquired intangibles year-over-year. Net cash provided by operating activities was $50.1 million in the first quarter, up $42.4 million year-over-year, driven by strong EBITDA growth and a more normalized seasonal working capital outflow as compared to last year. Our DSO was steady at 36 days from December 31st. As you may have noted last night in the press release, adjusted free cash flow was $29.1 million, a record for the first quarter. Capital expenditures were $55.5 million, up $25.2 million year-over-year, but included $25 million of upfront investments in recent acquisitions in line with our full-year plan and the pro formas for each transaction. As of March 31st, we had $1.15 billion of debt and $268 million of cash and our consolidated net leverage ratio for purposes of our bank covenants was 2.45 times. As of today, after the recent acquisitions completed thus far in 2025, we maintain approximately $900 million of availability between excess cash and our undrawn revolver. Our liquidity and leverage profile will enable us to be opportunistic in continuing to execute our growth strategy and robust M&A pipeline. As announced in our press release yesterday, we reaffirmed our financial guidance for 2025. We started the year strong, but it would be premature if we consider our initial guidance ranges, particularly in light of the heightened macroeconomic uncertainty. Regarding the economic outlook, we believe that our exposure to tariffs is low, as John mentioned, given the nature of our cost structure, we've seen virtually no efforts by vendors to date to pass on tariff-related increases, but we're closely monitoring the situation and we're in dialogue with key vendors to understand potential impacts as the situation evolves. In the event that we do face tariff-related cost increases, we have multiple options to offset such tariffs on the revenue side. Now moving on to the operations highlights for the quarter. As discussed by John earlier and in the financial dialogue, organic operating trends were very positive in the first quarter as mid-single-digit pricing combined with new business wins in our Resource Solutions group and cost-efficiency gains from operational initiatives offset headwinds from lower collection and transfer station volumes in the quarter. From an operating standpoint, we continue to execute well on our core programs, including automated truck conversions, route optimizations, and extra revenues generated through our onboard computing. Our 2025 plan includes adding approximately 40 more automated trucks eliminating over 50 rear-load trucks. As a comparison, in 2024, we added 17 automated trucks, which eliminated 22 rear loaders. After completing a full technology retrofit during the second half of 2024, we brought our Willimantic recycling facility back online in January. The facility is performing well and is on track to deliver $4 million of targeted incremental adjusted EBITDA in 2025. We continue to evaluate other opportunities to advance our recycling and resource management infrastructure with several additional facilities that could potentially benefit from conversions in the coming years. Our sales team remained diligent in the first quarter, successfully winning $22 million in new annualized revenues with premier customers in key market segments, including municipal, industrial, multisite retail, and high institutional and higher education. Overall, new business growth remained strong in the first quarter, slightly ahead of our 2025 goals. Our Resource Solutions business also delivered strong revenue growth with first quarter National Accounts volumes increasing 7.4% year-over-year, given the strong sales efforts. Landfill volumes showed improvement in the first quarter, up 3.9% year-over-year as the C&D market headwinds that we experienced in 2024 have subsided and we've begun to see the benefits of a revamped landfill sales process and our efforts to increase internalization of volumes. We expect that these positive tailwinds will remain throughout the remainder of 2025. Acquisitions remain a strategic priority for our team with a focus on opportunities that have great operational fit, allowing us to advance the densification of routes, drive margin improvement through application of our key operating strategies, and establishing new adjacent markets that support future growth. Our active M&A pipeline is over $500 million of revenues in various stages of engagement. As we look ahead, we remain very well-positioned to deliver attractive organic growth combined with strategic acquisitions. We have limited exposure to tariffs and a resilient business model in the event that the economy does slow.

John Casella, CEO

With that, I'd like to turn it back to the operator for questions.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our first question will come from Adam Bubes from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Adam Bubes, Analyst

Hi. Good morning.

Ned Coletta, President

Good morning.

Adam Bubes, Analyst

Nice to see the positive landfill volume trajectory in the quarter. Just wondering how much of that is the loss construction and demolition volumes flowing back to you in Q1 versus Q4? And is there still room for continued recovery there as we move through the balance of the year?

Ned Coletta, President

Yes. Thanks, Adam. Great question. So as you mentioned, we had a really nice first quarter. Last year, we had those negative headwinds coming from Long Island as that site closed and there was a little bit of competitive tension. But our rebound this year in the first quarter, about a third of it is us recapturing construction and demo tons in that New York market. About two-thirds is related to our efforts in 2024 to get new transportation lanes in place to internalize additional tons. And we've been working hard to set up a new strategic sales organization around landfill sales, special waste, and just taking a look in the mirror of what we can improve to become more effective on the sales side there. So it's just three. It wasn't just the market bounce-back and we sat back. We also, I think, as you know, we're working really hard in 2024 to make our own future as well.

Adam Bubes, Analyst

Great. And then as we think about your landfill positioning today and opportunities for incremental internalization, can you just help us think about sort of how much unfilled annual landfill capacity you have today? I think McKean is close to 1.5 million incremental capacity, but just trying to figure out where else there is slack for more internalization of third-party tons.

Ned Coletta, President

We are currently operating at about 30% excess capacity, primarily in New York State, not including the additional capacity at McKean. We see opportunities to increase volumes at our Hake's C&D landfill in New York and our Hyland landfill in both Ontario and New York. If market conditions become more constrained, those sites can be further expanded. Including McKean, which has an additional capacity of 1.5 million tons per year that is largely untapped, we are actively exploring select third-party opportunities at that location. As we've mentioned in previous quarters, McKean serves mainly as a defensive strategy for us in the Northeast, especially if there are additional landfill closures. It is important for us to ensure long-term security for our customers and communities by providing environmentally sound disposal options. Therefore, our approach to McKean is strategic and focuses on long-term risk mitigation rather than immediate expansion.

Adam Bubes, Analyst

And then last one from me, can you just provide an update on the Juniper Ridge landfill gas plant ramp? And any update on timing on the three plants in partnership with Waga? Thank you.

Ned Coletta, President

I want to start by stating that our decision not to invest in R&D opportunities was a wise choice for Casella. We are not an energy company; we are a resource management company. It was essential for us to partner with the right experts in this area. As we've seen over the past few years, these projects are complex and require specialized knowledge in gas purification and achieving pipeline quality. The Juniper Ridge project has been operational for several months but is currently running at around 10% capacity or less. The team at BP and Archaea is diligently working to increase production to normalized levels, and we hope to see improvements throughout this year. Regarding Waga, our partner from France, they are developing facilities at our Chemung, Hyland, and McKean landfills, and all these projects are progressing well. We anticipate that the first facilities will be operational in the third to fourth quarter of this year, and we are optimistic that their technology and approach will help us address the gas issues we've experienced at Juniper Ridge and North Country landfills.

Adam Bubes, Analyst

Great. Thanks so much.

Ned Coletta, President

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. One moment for the next question. Our next question will come from the line of Trevor Romeo of William Blair. Your line is open.

Trevor Romeo, Analyst

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks so much for taking the questions.

Ned Coletta, President

Good morning.

Trevor Romeo, Analyst

I had one on price, I think 5.6% for solid waste in the quarter. I think that was a little above your full year expectation. I guess are there any areas where you saw pricing stick a little bit better than you expected? And then thinking as we move throughout the rest of the year, is there any reason to think whether it's either mix or underlying environment or anything like that? Any reason you might see a deceleration from these levels in the next few quarters?

Jason Mead, SVP

Hey, Trevor, it's Jason. I'll answer the question here. So our pricing in the first quarter was slightly ahead of budget. So off to a good start in the year. And as you know, I believe much of our pricing goes out early in the year, in January upwards of 70% of our budgeted price increases. So we're out the door with most of our pricing for the year and off to a great start. Our pricing guidance for the year is approximately 5%. That still holds true. Typically, we do see a little bit of moderation through the year with select pricing rollbacks across customers. But as you know, we have had a history of pricing in excess of our budgeted levels. However, as it stands today, our guidance is still 5% for the year, which is in excess of our cost inflation that we're experiencing. So we're getting a modest to moderate spread on that, which is nice. In terms of customer groupings, I would say that in the collection line of business, a strong start there from a commercial perspective, with pricing on the higher end of our expectations from a pricing perspective. Roll-off may be a little bit weaker given some softness across the volumes and that's something we'll continue to monitor through the year. Landfills, we've gone to market with budgeted pricing and we've hit the mark there.

Trevor Romeo, Analyst

All right. Thanks, Jason. That's helpful. And then I did want to ask on your integration efforts. I think you mentioned a little in the prepared remarks, just a lot of activity in the past two years, a few kind of larger ones toward the end of '24. How have all those integrations progressed thus far relative to your expectations? And then in terms of, I think, Ned you mentioned there was a net margin tailwind from acquired businesses if I heard you right. So just thinking of efficiency and synergy capture and such, how has all that kind of performed so far for those acquired businesses? Thanks.

Ned Coletta, President

We have been actively acquiring new businesses and have established best practices to integrate them effectively. We put together a full-time integrations team, along with support from our department heads and business leaders. We constantly assess where we can improve in this process. On the operational side, our teams are excelling, particularly in HR, where we are efficiently implementing our core systems and financial processes. We're performing well in transitioning to these systems. However, the technical side presents the most challenges and lessons learned. We expect to realize synergies and create value as we move forward. Compared to the initial projections for each acquisition, we are ahead of schedule. Our team has effectively identified the potential earnings of these acquisitions and areas for improvement through operational synergies. We are slightly behind in IT systems, but we anticipate more opportunities for value creation. Regarding our fleet, many of our acquisitions come with older rear-load trucks. Sean and his team are implementing strategies to automate in these markets. A significant challenge is securing these trucks quickly enough to allow for automation and improved routing, which is crucial for our operational efficiency.

Jason Mead, SVP

I believe the IT situation presents a real opportunity for the future, and transitioning to a new lead-to-cash system is expected to generate significant long-term value. Importantly, this transition involves minimal risk since we are currently using Soft-Pak and will upgrade to a newer version. Most of the company is already on Soft-Pak, but we are upgrading from an older version, which will enhance our capabilities, especially as we integrate other systems from our acquisitions. This presents another opportunity to create additional value over time, as mentioned by Ned.

Trevor Romeo, Analyst

All right. Thanks so much, guys. Appreciate it.

Ned Coletta, President

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. One moment for the next question. And the next question will come from the line of James Schumm from TD Cowen. Your line is open.

James Schumm, Analyst

Thanks. Good morning, guys.

John Casella, CEO

Good morning.

James Schumm, Analyst

I wanted to understand how much of the four acquisitions, which generated $50 million in annualized revenue, is additional to the annual rollover guidance provided for revenues.

John Casella, CEO

About $10 million of it, $40 million of it was already in the guidance.

Ned Coletta, President

You got the rollover from last year. You have what we did early this year before we announced Q4 and then you have what's done in between Q4 now, and to John's point, the incremental from that initial guidance in February to now is $10 million.

James Schumm, Analyst

I appreciate that. I would like to clarify the disposal volumes. Your disposal volumes have decreased, while your landfill volumes have increased significantly. Does this indicate that the transfer stations are performing poorly in roll-off? Is that the situation, or perhaps you had roll-off operations that were previously directed to a third-party landfill, which has now weakened? Please help me understand the dynamics at play.

Ned Coletta, President

Yes, excellent question. It is a bit nuanced. And it really also illustrates how strong our landfills really were. So we recognize revenues for disposal through different points. Some can be through a transfer station that could go to our own landfill or third-party site. We also have a transportation area in our business where we might transport materials from a site to our landfills. And then we recognize revenues directly at the landfills. And when we're talking about statistics, it's always the third-party revenue at one of those points. So disposal overall covers transfer, transportation, and landfills. And to your point a minute ago, across the eastern part of our business, so Massachusetts, New Hampshire, to Maine, roll-off activity was pretty weak through the first quarter. And it wasn't just our own trucks, it was third parties coming into our transfer stations. But when you look at landfills, we were up pretty strong year-over-year and that just speaks to us overcoming that negative headwind in the first quarter on some of the transfer weakness, roll-off weakness, and then just our efforts to get internalization from new streams that we've discussed the last few quarters as we've done acquisitions, our ability to recover some of the C&D tons in the New York market and just broader sales activity. It really shows how strong that was in the quarter. As I think I mentioned in the finance script, each year the spring breaks a little differently in the Northeast and the United States. This was a tough winter and we don't ever make weather excuses but like it was a tough winter. We got tens and tens of feet of snow in the mountains, and economic activity was a little bit lower around that, especially on the construction side. As you see the beautiful weather break into late March, now into April, into May, we've seen a really nice seasonal uptick. And as I said, it comes a little different each year. This year, April is stronger than March and stronger than we expected. So we don't want to make an economic call, but that's always something we're watching in the winter through the spring.

Trevor Romeo, Analyst

Okay. That's encouraging. All right. Thanks guys. Appreciate it.

Ned Coletta, President

Thank you.

John Casella, CEO

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you, and the next question will come from Stephanie Moore of Jefferies. Your line is open.

Stephanie Moore, Analyst

Hi. Good morning. Thank you.

Ned Coletta, President

Good morning.

Stephanie Moore, Analyst

I wanted to ask, first question, just a clarification question. Did you highlight or call out what the weather impact to the first quarter was either from a revenue or margin standpoint?

Ned Coletta, President

No, we didn't. We always approach things from the perspective of working outside every day in New England in the Northeast. Weather conditions come and go, and we try to adapt accordingly. This past winter was particularly challenging, which likely contributed to the slight decline in roll-off and transfer tons, but we did not analyze the specific impact of weather on our performance. As an organization, we typically assess situations like major hurricanes, but we do not focus on the effects of tough winters.

John Casella, CEO

And I think that we saw, looking at February, in particular, year-over-year, volumes were a little bit weaker, probably because of the weather. And then in March, they got a little bit better year-over-year as spring started to open up a little bit in the Northeast.

Stephanie Moore, Analyst

Got it. Okay. No, that's clear. And then maybe taking a bigger picture question or I think you're very clear about the opportunity from internalizing volumes, particularly, after doing M&A and just some of the dynamics in the Northeast. But just for us, as we continue to monitor and watch your M&A activity, is there a way for us to think about the expected EBITDA contribution from internalization? So like every 100 basis points of improvement or increase in internalization, what that could actually translate into from an EBITDA or margin standpoint just kind of rough numbers there. Thanks.

Ned Coletta, President

That's a complex question. I believe we need to focus on specific acquisitions where there's an opportunity. Over the last couple of years, we've successfully completed a few acquisitions that have benefited internalization in the Twin Bridges area of the Greater Capital District of New York, and extending down to Duchess County and North of Westchester. These regions weren't significantly internalizing volumes from competitors before. As we often mention, we don't instantly move volumes on day one due to the existence of long-term disposal contracts, and we also require transfer and long-haul capacity, which develops over time. The benefits we are observing from late 2024 to the present are the results of these gradual steps. It’s challenging to state that an acquisition leads to an immediate benefit; it's heavily dependent on the specific acquisition. As we provide guidance or specifics on a transaction, we will aim to clarify that.

Stephanie Moore, Analyst

Absolutely. Well, I appreciate the time. Thanks, guys.

Ned Coletta, President

Thank you.

John Casella, CEO

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. One moment for the next question. And the next question is coming from the line of Tony Bancroft of Gabelli Funds. Your line is open.

Tony Bancroft, Analyst

Good morning. How is everyone? Great job as always. I have a broader question along those lines. Could you discuss your significant activities in mergers and acquisitions? It seems you have had some successful acquisitions recently. Are you considering something more transformative, perhaps something outside your core business or entering new markets? Also, given your excellent performance and stock price, might you consider using your stock for any of these potential transactions? You mentioned some impressive acquisitions. How many more opportunities remain, particularly with larger or mid-sized operators in the Northeast? What opportunities do you see out there?

John Casella, CEO

Tony, this is John. I think that Ned laid out that we're working on about $0.5 billion of opportunities now. Those opportunities are all in various stages, but that's really right down the middle of the fairway in terms of our core competency. You're not going to see us outside of our core competency getting into other verticals that, at least in our view anyway, makes sense to stick to our core knitting, continue to tuck-in in the Northeast and in the Mid-Atlantic. Continue our strategic direction, which we've indicated that the Eastern Seaboard is where we'd like to continue to grow strategically. So we've got a tremendous opportunity in our core competency, and we're going to stay with that meeting. It's created a lot of value for all of our shareholders, and it's clearly the way that we believe we can create the most shareholder value on a go-forward basis.

Ned Coletta, President

And I mentioned in the financial script that we have about $900 million of availability between our current cash and the revolver. So as we sit here today, our near-term pipeline, we've got plenty of liquidity and meet our needs. But Tony, I think, as you know, we've been opportunistic over the years, and when the right opportunity is there, we try to fund it with about half equity, half debt.

John Casella, CEO

Yes. And I think to Ned's point and your question before, we don't have anything transformational in the mix at this point in time. It's really kind of steady as you go. Certainly, that can change, as you know. But currently, there's nothing transformational that we're looking at.

Tony Bancroft, Analyst

Thanks so much. Keep doing it. You're doing great. Thank you.

Ned Coletta, President

Thanks, Tony.

John Casella, CEO

Thanks, Tony.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. One moment for the next question. And the next question is coming from the line of Timna Tanners of Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Timna Tanners, Analyst

Hey, good morning.

John Casella, CEO

Hey, Timna. Good morning. How are you?

Timna Tanners, Analyst

Wanted to just ask a high level question. So given that you had a strong first quarter, you just told us there's an additional $10 million of revenue from recent acquisitions, but you didn't change your full-year guidance. And you also said that the C&D market seems to be improving, which would be a big cyclical part of your business, typically. So I guess the question is, what does it take to get more positive on the full year with all those components? Is it just more time or is there anything specific you're looking at?

John Casella, CEO

Well, I would really like you to be able to predict what's going to happen next with the Trump administration right? If you could do that, we could probably get a little more aggressive.

Ned Coletta, President

Yes. So but it's a good point. Like over the years, we just really haven't changed guidance all that often in the first quarter. It's just not something, unless there is something really out of the norm, we typically keep away from it. We're trending mid-to-high range across all categories, and it's a nice start to the year for us. And we're hopeful that given where we sit, we'll be in a position to hopefully raise guidance in future quarters, but it's a little early in the year from our vantage point to do that.

John Casella, CEO

In our guidance that we initially laid out back in February, our organic growth was 3% to 5% top-line revenue. So it's a bit of a wait-and-see at this point in terms of us getting through the year, more visibility to roll-off in the landfills as we enter the next several months. So more to come from there.

Timna Tanners, Analyst

That makes sense. Thank you. And then similarly I'm wondering if some of this uncertainty that you referenced is impacting your acquisition candidates or how they're looking at their business future?

John Casella, CEO

I don’t believe we’ve observed much of an impact at this time. We have dedicated a lot of effort to building relationships within the industry. Currently, there’s nothing specific we’re noticing that is influencing movements, whether positive or negative. The situation is more stable regarding M&A activity. While there may be some tax-related implications, there’s nothing significant affecting M&A at this point.

Timna Tanners, Analyst

Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Ned Coletta, President

Thank you.

John Casella, CEO

You welcome. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. This does conclude our Q&A session for today. I would like to turn the call back over to John Casella for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

John Casella, CEO

Thanks, everybody. I look forward to you all joining us for our second quarter conference call in July. Thanks, everybody. Have a great day.

Operator, Operator

Thank you for joining the conference today. You may all disconnect.