🚀 Why Waste Management Stock Is Skyrocketing in July 2025

Trash just became treasure. Waste Management (WM) shares are ripping higher today—here’s why the market’s dumping cash into garbage.

The dumpster fire that’s actually printing money

Landfill operators are the new tech unicorns. With inflation pushing disposal costs up 18% YoY and ESG funds desperate to greenwash, WM’s crushing earnings by monetizing methane and recycling bottlenecks. Who knew trash collection could be sexier than crypto?

Short sellers getting compacted

Bears thought recession fears would trash the stock. Instead, WM’s up 32% YTD—outperforming 90% of S&P 500 components. The ultimate ‘defensive growth’ play: people won’t stop generating waste even if the economy implodes.

Wall Street’s latest ‘conviction buy’ rating smells suspiciously like institutional FOMO. But when even garbage stocks moon, maybe it’s time to question what’s really trash in this market.

Image source: Getty Images.

Waste Management rises on strong Q2 results

Waste Management posted non-GAAP (adjusted) earnings per share of $1.92 on revenue of $6.43 billion, topping the average analyst estimate's call for per-share earnings of $1.89 on revenue of $6.33 billion. Revenue was up roughly 19% year over year, with the company's acquisition of Stericycle being a major contributor to the growth. Adjusted earnings per share were up 5.5% year over year, and improvements for the business's collection and disposal segment helped the company notch a best-ever operating expense margin of 59.6%.

What's next for Waste Management?

Waste Management is now guiding for free cash FLOW to come in between $2.8 billion and $2.9 billion, a $125 million increase over the company's previous guidance range. On the other hand, the company lowered its full-year revenue target to between $25.28 billion and $25.48 billion -- down from its previous guidance for sales between $25.55 billion and $25.8 billion.

Management attributed the decline in sales guidance to some lower volumes in the collection and disposal segment as well as lower recycled commodity prices and the impact that's having on its recycling brokerage business. Despite the lowered sales target for the year, the company's recent margin improvements bode well for the long term.