Waste Management, Inc.
WM · NYSE
Company research
Waste Management, Inc. (NYSE: WM) is North America's leading provider of comprehensive environmental solutions, headquartered in Houston, Texas, and serving more than 20 million residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers across the U.S. and Canada. Founded in 1968 and rebranded as WM in 2022, the company operates an extensive and vertically integrated network that includes 286 active landfills, 381 transfer stations, 431 collection operations, 119 recycling plants, and 17 waste-to-energy plants, making it the largest recycler of post-consumer materials and the largest disposal network and collection fleet in North America. Under the leadership of CEO James C. Fish Jr., WM generates revenue primarily through waste collection, transfer, disposal, and recycling services, with collection alone accounting for nearly 68% of its approximately $25.2 billion in fiscal year 2025 revenues. Beyond traditional waste management, WM has evolved into a sustainability leader, investing heavily in renewable natural gas plants, landfill gas-to-electricity facilities, and organics processing, while also expanding into regulated medical waste and secure information destruction services following its 2024 acquisition of Stericycle.
Research reports
Ultra Stock Analysis Pro · May 1, 2026Waste Management, Inc. (WM) – ANALYST REPORT
Report frames WM with a HOLD rating over a 6–12 month horizon, citing a 24.7x forward P/E, 13.3% earnings growth, and roughly 11.9% upside to a consensus target price of 256.04 dollars, but an unfavorable 0.79:1 risk/reward profile. It combines detailed technical backtests with institutional ownership data (84.1%), outlines key risks around competition, market conditions, regulation, and trading volatility, and recommends maintaining existing positions with conservative ATR-based stop-losses while awaiting stronger technical “confluence” signals.
Analystock.ai · January 28, 2026Waste Management’s Record Performance and 2026 OutlookThis note highlights WM’s record operating efficiency, with operating expenses falling below 60% of revenue for the first time, cash flow from operations rising to about 6.04 billion dollars, and free cash flow reaching roughly 2.94 billion dollars (up about 27%). It presents a positive 2026 outlook with projected operating EBITDA of 8.15–8.25 billion dollars, ongoing margin expansion, strong ROE and ROIC, and growing sustainability and healthcare businesses, while implicitly acknowledging valuation richness through elevated P/E and EV/EBITDA multiples.
Beanvest · December 29, 2025Waste Management stock (WM): Quality Investing ResearchBeanvest’s research portrays WM as a high-quality, moat-rich “permitted tollbooth” on North American waste, emphasizing its large landfill footprint, route-density cost advantages, recurring revenue, and pricing power that has supported margin expansion and compounding free cash flow (TTM FCF about 2.57 billion dollars, with 2025 guidance of 2.8–2.9 billion and management commentary that 2026 could approach 3.8 billion dollars). The piece is structurally an equity research-style profile, scoring WM highly on moat, pricing power, predictability, balance-sheet strength, capital allocation discipline, and management quality, while flagging key risks around recycling/RNG commodity exposure, PFAS and methane regulation, leverage post‑Stericycle, and integration of healthcare operations.