Waste Management, Inc.
Waste Management, Inc., through its subsidiaries, engages in the provision of environmental solutions to residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers in the United States and Canada.
It offers collection services, including picking up and transporting waste and recyclable materials from where it was generated to a transfer station, material recovery facility (MRF), or disposal site; and owns and operates transfer stations, as well as owns, develops, and operates landfill facilities that produce landfill gas used as renewable natural gas for generating electricity.
As of December 31, 2022, the company owned or operated 254 solid waste landfills, five secure hazardous waste landfills, 97 MRFs, and 337 transfer stations. It also provides materials processing and commodities recycling services at its MRFs, where cardboard, paper, glass, metals, plastics, construction and demolition materials, and other recycling commodities are recovered for resale or redirected for other purposes; recycling brokerage services, such as managing the marketing of recyclable materials for third parties; and other strategic business solutions. In addition, the company offers construction and remediation services; services related with the disposal of fly ash, and residue generated from the combustion of coal and other fuel stocks; in-plant services comprising full-service waste management solutions and consulting services; and specialized disposal services for oil and gas exploration and production operations.
The company was formerly known as USA Waste Services, Inc. and changed its name to Waste Management, Inc. in 1998. Waste Management, Inc. was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
Company profil
Waste Management (NYSE: WM) isn't an exciting business, but the combination of reliable recurring revenue and strong pricing power explains why it's a Gates favorite. The Foundation holds more than 32 million shares of Waste Management stock worth $7.1 billion. Beyond its trash collection roots, Waste Management has been spending heavily on automation projects to make its recycling operations more profitable. The company's renewable natural gas projects are also bearing fruit. Let's not forget Waste Management's dividend. The company has made dividend payments every year since 1998 and has increased its payout for 21 successive years. It boasts a yield of 1.3%, and with a payout ratio of just 45%, its track record of payout increases will likely continue.
Performance
(source: yahoo.com)
For more data and facts look at:
⇒ Key Statistics, updated and summarized.
(source: yahoo.com)
You can find the current annual report 2023 here:
⇒ Annual Report)
Press releases Waste Management publishes at:
⇒ Press Releases
You can get more facts worth knowing and extensive material directly from:
⇒ Waste Management.com
Outlook
Imagine the day/week /month they're not coming:
Just imagine, what will happen: Rats, mices, and other vermin will overtake your City, musty smell in your house, mountains of garbage, stinking and piling up in front of your porch, frogs croaaking beside your swimmingpool, Flies disturb your picnic, ... everywhere you look around the same horror-scenario...
Then you will see the benefit that WM provides for your prosperity and its preservation. Day after day, from dawn until late evening, the men and women of
WM do their irreplaceable work.
Impact Mill: Used for processing and separating different types of waste materials.
History
In 1893, Harm Huizenga, a Dutch immigrant, began hauling garbage at $1.25/wagon in Chicago.
In 1968, Harm's grandson Wayne Huizenga, Dean Buntrock, and Larry Beck founded Waste Management, Inc. and began aggressively purchasing many of the smaller garbage collection services across the country.
In 1971, Waste Management went public, and by 1972, the company had made 133 acquisitions with $82 million in revenue.
In the 1980s, Waste Management acquired Service Corporation of America (SCA) to become the largest waste hauler in the country.
Between the years of 1976 and 1997, the executive officers of Waste Management, Inc. began "cooking" the accounting books by refusing to record expenses necessary to write off the costs of unsuccessful and abandoned landfill development projects; establishing inflated environmental reserves (liabilities) in connection with acquisitions so that the excess reserves could be used to avoid recording unrelated operating expenses, improperly capitalizing a variety of expenses; failing to establish sufficient reserves (liabilities) to pay for income taxes and other expenses; avoiding depreciation expenses on their garbage trucks by both assigning unsupported and inflating salvage values and extending their useful lives; assigned arbitrary salvage values to other assets that previously had no salvage value; failed to record expenses for decreases in the value of landfills as they were filled with waste, used netting to eliminate approximately $490 million in current period operating expenses and accumulated prior period accounting misstatements by offsetting them against unrelated one-time gains on the sale or exchange of assets; and used geography entries to move tens of millions of dollars between various line items on the company's income statement.
Officers were accused of making "the financials look the way we want to show them." The top officers settled with the federal government for $30.8 million in 2005, without admitting guilt.
When a new CEO took charge of the company in 1997, he ordered a review of the company's accounting practices in 1997.
In 1998 Waste Management restated its 1992–1997 earnings by $1.7 billion, making it the largest restatement in history.
In 1998 Waste Management merged with USA Waste Services, Inc.
In late 1999, John Drury stepped down as chairman due to brain surgery. Rodney R. Proto then took the position of chairman and CEO. That year also brought trouble for the newly expanded company in the form of an accounting scandal.
In February 2022, Waste Management CEO Jim Fish announced that the company would officially shorten its trade name to "WM" as part of a rebranding to emphasize its growing focus on sustainability and environmental services, including compressed natural gas and landfill gas utilization. WM agreed a deal to acquire Stericycle Inc for $7.2 billion, in May 2024.
(Stericycle is a medical waste and paper shredding company based in Illinois, with the deal anticipated to close in Q4 2024))