Waste Management (WM) Stock Price, Fundamentals & Analysis

What WM does

Waste Management (NYSE: WM) is a leading environmental solutions provider serving residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers across the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. The company collects, transports, and disposes of waste and recyclable materials, operates transfer stations, and owns landfill gas-to-energy facilities that generate renewable electricity and natural gas. It also processes and recycles commodities such as cardboard, paper, glass, metals, and plastics, and offers recycling brokerage services for third parties.

Key numbers explained

• WM trades at 207.88 USD per share, with a marketCap of 83.09B USD, placing it among the largest companies by market value.
• The trailing P/E ratio of 29.4 shows how much investors pay per dollar of past earnings; the forward P/E ratio of 22.8 reflects expectations for future earnings.
• The dividend yield of 1.82% indicates the annual dividend income relative to the share price, with 50% of earnings paid out as dividends.
• Beta of 0.43 suggests WM has historically been less volatile than the overall market.
• The price-to-book ratio of 8.38 compares the share price to the company's book value per share.
• WM generated 25.67B USD in revenue over the last 12 months, growing 4% year over year, with a profit margin of 11.1% and operating margin of 19%.

Recent news

Recent headlines include a Q2 teardown comparing WM to its peers, a piece on the stock's fall amid a broader market uptick, and an insider alert noting a WM vice president sold 1,365 shares for $300,000. Other stories highlight WM among reliable income stocks and in a broader look at five stocks across different industries.

What to watch

As a large-cap industrial stock, WM is sensitive to changes in waste generation, recycling commodity prices, and fuel costs. Investors often track its dividend yield and payout ratio to assess income sustainability, while its beta and debt-to-equity ratio of 235.3% are used to gauge financial risk. Because WM is part of the S&P 500, it can be affected by broad market moves and sector rotation. For comparison, peers such as Dover Corporation (DOV) and Union Pacific Corporation (UNP) operate in related industrial and logistics spaces.