QualityDipStocks / Utilities · Environmental Services
Waste Management WM
Not in a dip by our rules: 5% below its 52-week high.
A quality company trading above our fair value estimate.
- Fair value est.
- $202.57−13%
- Market Value
- forming
- Off 52-wk high
- −5%
- Risk vs market
- Lowbeta −0.42
5 bullish · 5 bearish See why
Key levels
Every level vs today’s $233.45
- 52-wk lowlowest close, 1 year$196.77−15.7%
- Fair value est.base case$202.57−13.2%
- PriceFri Oct 30 close$233.45you are here
- 52-wk highhighest close, 1 year$246.51+5.6%
Fair value estimate
How the range is computed
Ten-year free-cash-flow DCF. Same 10-year free-cash-flow model as the base: discount rate 9.5% ±1 point and growth 8.6% ±2 points. Bear = 10.5% and 6.6%; bull = 8.5% and 10.6% (both fade to 3%). A model estimate from public filings, not a forecast of where the price will go.
Price sits inside the range.
What the price implies To be worth today’s price, WM’s free cash flow would need to grow about 11% a year for five years; our estimate uses 9%.
Risk vs market
How risk vs market is measured
One year of daily returns (Oct 30 to Oct 30, 252 sessions). Beta = how much WM moved for each 1% move in the S&P 500 (SPY); 1.0 moves with the market. Volatility is the yearly standard deviation of daily returns. Past behavior, not a forecast.
Has moved mostly independently of the market, but its own price swings are 1.7× the S&P 500’s (it moves on its own news).
- Beta vs S&P 500
- -0.42
- Volatility
- 21% vs 13% SPY
- Correlation SPY
- −0.26
- Correlation QQQ
- −0.42
Bull vs bear
Rule-based from the data on this page, strongest first. Not advice.
Top bullish points 5 of 5
Cash returnsFree cash flow grew 56% over the last 12 months vs the 12 months before.
ProfitabilityReturn on equity of 32% over the last 12 months.
ProfitabilityReturn on invested capital of 12%, above the 5.6% median for the 45 Utilities companies we cover.
GrowthSales grew 8.6% a year over the last three fiscal years, above the 3.1% median for the 56 Utilities companies we cover.
QualityPasses all four of our quality checks: cash generation, returns on capital, growth and balance sheet.
Top bearish points 5 of 5
ValuationOur DCF fair value estimate is $202.57, 13% below the price.
Balance sheetDebt rose 40% to $22.2B from FY2023 to FY2025.
ProfitabilityReturn on equity fell 6 points in two fiscal years, to 27% in FY2025.
Balance sheetDebt is 2.2× shareholders’ equity.
ValuationP/E of 30.4× vs a 21.2× median for the 55 Utilities companies we cover.
Who’s talking about it
Notable investors, executives, analysts and public figures on Waste Management in the last 48 hours. Headlines as published, each linked. Their words, not ours.
No notable mentions in the last 48 hours. Checked Nov 1, 9:09 PM ET.
Compare with peers
Closest in size in Utilities
All fundamentals
P/E 30.4 · FCF yield 4.0% · ROE 32%
Valuation
- P/E
- 30.4×3-yr-end avg 31.4× · Utilities median 21.2×
- Price / FCF
- 25.0×
- FCF yield
- 4.0%
- EV / EBITDA
- 14.8×
- Price / sales
- 3.58×
- Price / book
- 9.46×
- Market cap
- $93.3Bprice × diluted shares
- Enterprise value
- $115B
Growth
- Revenue, 12 months
- $26.1B
- Sales growth, 12 months
- +5.2%vs the 12 months before
- Sales growth, 3 yrs
- +8.6%/yrfrom FY2022
- Diluted EPS, 12 months
- $7.62
- EPS growth, last FY
- −1.6%
- Net income, 12 months
- $3.1B
- Net income growth
- +20%12 months vs before
Profitability
- Gross margin
- 40.4%
- Operating margin
- 18.4%
- Net margin
- 11.8%
- FCF margin
- 14.3%
- Return on equity
- 32%
- Return on invested capital
- 12%
Balance sheet
- Cash & short-term inv.
- $247M
- Total debt
- $21.8B
- Net cash
- −$21.6B
- Debt / equity
- 2.21×
- Interest coverage
- n/ainterest expense not tagged in SEC data
Cash flow & returns
- Free cash flow, 12 months
- $3.7B
- FCF growth, 12 months
- +56%
- Dividend yield
- 1.58%$1.5B paid
- Payout ratio
- 48%
- Buybacks, 12 months
- n/anot reported in its SEC filings
- Share count, 1 year
- −1.1%diluted shares vs a year ago
- Stock-based comp
- $173M
Trailing 12 months to Sep 30, 2026; balance sheet at Sep 30, 2026. From Waste Management’s SEC filings. Sparklines show up to six fiscal years. n/a means we don’t hold that number, with the reason. How each is computed.
Valuation details
DCF $202.57 · FCF value $237.77
Assumes 8.6% growth for 5 years (revenue grew 8.6% a year FY22–FY25), fading to 3%; 9.5% discount rate, 3% terminal growth. FCF base $9.35 a share (trailing 12 months to Sep 30, 2026), from the 10-Q filed Oct 28, 2026. Net debt $1.3B, not deducted.
Setup & signals
No setup armed
No setup armed, so there’s no trigger or stop to track yet. Reversal signal rules only arm once a company is in a dip.
Momentum & 52-week range
RSI 61 · 5 days −2.5%
The business
FCF $3.7B · Sales +6%
- Free cash flow, 12 months$3.7B
- Free-cash-flow yield4.1%
- Free-cash-flow margin14%
- Gross margin40%
- Operating margin19%
- Return on invested capital12%
- Return on equity31%
- Sales growth (latest quarter vs year-ago quarter)+6%
- Net debt / EBITDA3.0×
Information only, not investment advice. Fair value estimates and talking points are rule-based model output from public data and can be wrong; stop levels are reference points, not orders. How every number is computed.
Get a text when WM fires a reversal signal
One text when a published rule fires on WM or any of the 333 quality companies we track: the ticker, the price, the stop and a link to the numbers. Nothing else.