Waste Management, Inc
WMHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITYWaste Management, Inc reads as an High Velocity (composite 78/100); Programmatic Roll-Up deploying $8B across 12 disclosed transactions, up 77% vs the prior cycle · primary market Waste, ranked #1 on disclosed spend.
Lens
Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)
$8.1B
vs $4.5B in 2020–2022
Disclosed transactions
12
3/3 active fiscal years in window
Buyer archetype
Programmatic Roll-Up
High recurring acquisition cadence, usually with many smaller targets.
Composite score
78
High Velocity dominates · Filing Intensity
Waste Management (WM) is a public-company acquirer in waste management with $17.2B of disclosed M&A spend across 206 acquisitions over 19 active years. Strategy mix is led by Geographic Expansion (48%), Horizontal Consolidation (24%), Tuck In (16%). Current capacity: $158M cash, $22.9B total debt, 3.1x net leverage (high yield range). Currently $515M above the IG 3.0x threshold; $14.3B of remaining debt capacity before the 5.0x HY ceiling. Disclosed median deal size sits at $84M.
- “Execution of our strategy, including growth through acquisitions and our planned expansion of our recycling and renewable energy businesses, may cause us to incur substantial additional indebtedness”- 10-K FY2022
- “growth through acquisitions, may cause us to incur substantial additional indebtedness”- 10-K FY2021
- “Execution of our strategy, particularly growth through acquisitions, may cause us to incur substantial additional indebtedness”- 10-K FY2020
- ▸Entry into adjacent geographies via platform acquisitions
- ▸Bolt-ons into existing geography for route density
- ▸Room for a $14.3B debt-funded acquisition before HY 5.0x.
Behavioral posture, nine reads.
Each index scores the issuer 0–100 against an EDGAR-anchored definition. Scores ≥ threshold elevate the issuer into the index's constituent set; the dominant index drives the masthead label.
Active Acquirer
Companies actively deploying disclosed capital into M&A
- $17.9B disclosed buyer spend
- Filed within 27d
Buyer Cadence
Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity
- Filed within 27d
- 236 acquisition-history signals
- 351 8-Ks
Target Probability
Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings
- 12 activism filings
Spin/Carve
Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture
- 12 activism filings
Pressure Watch
Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure
- 12 activism filings
- Latest activism 27y ago; heavily discounted
Distress Watch
Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns
- 12 activism filings
Restatement Risk
Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings
Capital Velocity
DominantIssuers with the highest filing-activity intensity
- 351 8-Ks
- Filed within 27d
- 5 form types
Quiet Power
Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence
- Enterprise value $109.2B
- 10-Q 27d ago
- 2 active signals
Capital cadence.
Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($MM); ticks show recorded transaction count. Disclosure tier annotated where v6 audited corpus carries an entry.
Disclosed spend $MM Disclosed transactions (right axis)Peak spend year: $7,488M · Peak count: 32
| FY | Disclosed buys | Disclosed spend | Avg ticket | Audited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | N/A | $395M | N/A | N/A |
| 2024 | N/A | $7.5B | N/A | N/A |
| 2023 | 12 | $170M | $14M | N/A |
| 2022 | 13 | $377M | $29M | N/A |
| 2021 | 11 | $75M | $7M | N/A |
| 2020 | 4 | $4.1B | $1B | N/A |
Strategy posture.
The buyer's playbook in terms of strategic archetype: what each disclosed move says about how they're deploying capital.
Archetype mix
- Geographic Expansion20%
- Horizontal Consolidation20%
- Tuck In20%
- Bolt On20%
- Platform20%
Strategy keywords
Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.
- geographic_expansion
- horizontal_consolidation
- tuck_in
- bolt_on
Filing language.
Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.
“Execution of our strategy, including growth through acquisitions and our planned expansion of our recycling and renewable energy businesses, may cause us to incur substantial additional indebtedness”
“We continue to pursue the acquisition of businesses that are accretive to our Solid Waste business and enhance and expand our existing service offerings”
“Execution of our strategy, particularly growth through acquisitions, may cause us to incur substantial additional indebtedness”
“In recent years, the industry has seen some additional consolidation, though the industry remains intensely competitive”
“The industry also includes companies that specialize in certain discrete areas of waste management”
Market context.
Where this issuer sits inside its SE-Cluster rollup wedge, with disclosed-spend rank plus trading comparables against the public peer set.
Primary market
Waste
- Market spend (2023–2025)
- $24.4B
- Market spend (2020–2022)
- $21.3B
- Recent vs prior
- +15%
- Issuer rank in market
- #1 of 38
- Share of market capital
- 28.2%
Valuation positioning
WM trades at a +1.6-turn premium to the Waste peer median of 13.2×.
- EV / Revenue
- 4.3×
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 3.1×
- Peer median EV / EBITDA
- 13.2×
Trading comparables
FMP market data · 2026-05-10
| Company | EV / EBITDA | EV / Rev | Net debt / EBITDA | Revenue | M&A 2023–2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17.3× | 5.0× | 3.3× | $9.6B | $3.6B | |
| 15.7× | 3.4× | 2.5× | $1.9B | $1.5B | |
Waste Management, IncWM | 14.7× | 4.3× | 3.1× | $25.4B | $8.1B |
| 13.2× | 2.5× | 1.9× | $6.1B | $598M | |
| 12.7× | 3.7× | 2.8× | $16.7B | $3.1B | |
| 12.0× | 3.9× | N/A | $6.7B | N/A |
Trading multiples from FMP market data; disclosed M&A spend from the SE-Cluster EDGAR 10-K corpus. Peer set = top disclosed buyers in Waste. Bars scaled to the highest EV/EBITDA in the set.
Target landscape.
Public-issuer targets that fit this buyer's archetype and target categories from filing-derived signal. Scores reflect cross-signal fit; reasons cite the EDGAR-anchored facts that drove the match.
No qualifying public-issuer targets surfaced from the current signal mix.
Stated target categories
No target categories enumerated in the audited corpus for this issuer.
Filing activity & signal stream.
Filing cadence and event-driven signals visible on EDGAR. The signal stream below is curated from restatement / spin-carve / activism categories, providing context for any near-term call.
Filing cadence
- 10-K (annual)342026-02-09
- 10-Q (quarterly)982026-04-29
- 8-K (event)3512026-04-28
- Proxy / DEF 14A502026-03-31
- Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)121999-08-26
Signals on file
- elevated
Activism on file
1999-08-2612 activist filings on file (13D, DFAN14A, PREC14A series).
- info
Signal
Disclosed acquisition spend
- info
Signal
10-K strategy themes
Audited corpus.
No audited record on file for this CIK in the current v6 corpus.
This issuer has not been extracted into the v6 audited acquirer corpus yet. The brief above pulls from ranking-level aggregates and issuer-index signal only.