Waste Management Inc. Q2 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

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2009-08-01 06:02:23.0

Tags: J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Waste Management Inc., Call Transcript, Earnings, Energy Price, Sales Strategy, Pricing, Investment, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Scott Levine with J.P. Morgan.

Scott Levine - J.P. Morgan

With regard to the volume outlook which sounds like in general, it’s stabilizing and the back half expected to be roughly consistent with what you’ve just seen, are there any observations you can offer up on a geographic basis? Were there material differences in certain parts of the country, either better or worse?

David E. Steiner

Yes, you hit the nail on the head, Scott. We’ve seen basically through June and continuing into July, it’s flat volumes which as I said was about half of what we normally see in the seasonal uptick. You know, it’s pretty widespread throughout the country. There’s not dramatic differences. Obviously, year-over-year comps in some places like the Midwest are better because they weren’t as robust last year as this year but generally I would say that the volume weakness is fairly evenly spread throughout the country.

Scott Levine - J.P. Morgan

Turning to the trending on the waste-to-energy business, can you remind us of the percentage of your contracts where pricing is locked in and maybe steps that you can take to mitigate the impact of price volatility on the business there?

David E. Steiner

Sure. In the past year, we’ve gone from having 2% of our contracts float to having 28% of our contracts float. Obviously, we want to have a portfolio that’s balanced with some float and some fixed. That’s going to hurt you in days like today when you see energy prices going down. It’s going to help you when you see energy prices going up. So as we look forward, Scott, we will always look for opportunities to lock in energy prices at good rates. Certainly now is not the time to lock in those rates.

Scott Levine - J.P. Morgan

And customer recidivity levels you expect will be accommodating, what’s your expectation there?

David E. Steiner

You mean as far as waste-to-energy and selling the energy?

Scott Levine - J.P. Morgan

Yes.

David E. Steiner

No, we haven’t had any issues at all as far as selling the energy. Obviously, we’re selling it at spot price but we haven’t had any issues at all as far as the actual sales of the energy goes.

Scott Levine - J.P. Morgan

One last one on the CapEx budgets, it looks like that’s coming down by $100 million or so, is that right?

 

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