Investors, how do you view Waste Management and at what price would you buy $WM+1.0% stock?
For me, this company is great and the stock is very stable and growing over the long term. The current price is not too bad, however I will be buying when the price drops below $150.
$172.62
$1.63
+0.95%
Capital Structure
Market Cap
68.9B
Enterpr. Val.
84.0B
Valuation
P/E
30.3
P/S
3.4
Dividends
Yield
2.0%
Payout
48.5%
WM would like to be below PE 20 (max PEG 1.5), I seriously do not know why I should pay for them as a technology company when they have a net margin of 11.5% and profits are growing up to 10%. For similar money I can buy a technology monopoly ASML, GOOGL or TSMC, which has a net margin somewhere else. The last 10 years beat SPY, but how it will be the next decade I have no idea (performance since 2000 is almost the same). The fact that waste disposal will always be needed is nice, but you never know what kind of environment they will operate in and if they will even exist in 10-20 years.
Yeah, I get it. I personally believe this company can be around for a long time. It doesn't have to be here for 20 years but maybe 5-10 years, which is still a long time and I would say this particular stock is great for diversification in a portfolio and the stock will be stable and grow over the long term.
I don't want to question the quality of WM at all, they do what they do best and have a very strong position. But to argue that it's a fine company for diversification and will continue to grow is not very reasonable in my opinion. The company may well grow 5-10% a year, but that doesn't mean the shareholder will benefit. The fact that this company was paying similar money in the cheap money era as it is today does not mean that it will be the same with the high bond rates we have today. And as I wrote for similar money I can have companies with double the EPS growth so why bother with WM.