Waste Management has picked up meaningful momentum into its July 24 Q2 print, with the stock up 6.4% on the week and 7.6% over the past month to close at $237.21 — a noticeably sharper move than the steady grind described in last week's note.
The fresh catalyst is on the Street. CIBC upgraded WM to Outperformer on Tuesday, initiating a $244 target — meaningful because it adds a new constructive voice rather than merely tweaking an existing one. Oppenheimer trimmed its target a dollar to $263 while holding Outperform, a technical housekeeping move that barely registers. The broader analyst setup remains firmly bullish: TD Cowen carries a $275 target, Barclays $270, Wells Fargo $268, and JP Morgan $270, all with positive ratings. The mean target runs at $256, implying modest upside from current levels with the stock having closed the gap materially over the past month. Bulls point to the SRCL integration boosting pricing leverage and a planned ~$3.8 billion FCF return to shareholders in FY26. Bears flag near-term revenue growth below 5%, recycled commodity headwinds, and margin expansion that leans on non-core accounting reclassifications rather than operational improvement. The EPS surprise factor score of 70 and a 12-month forward EPS growth rank of 71 suggest the fundamental backdrop is quietly solid, while the value pillar — with PE near 25.7x and EV/EBITDA at 13.4x — flags a stock that investors are pricing for defensive quality rather than a bargain.
Positioning remains loose, and that story has not changed materially since last week. Borrow availability has tightened slightly from the ~3,775% reading a week ago to roughly 2,938% now — still vastly oversupplied, meaning the lending market places no friction on new short positions. Cost to borrow has drifted up to 0.46%, from 0.43% a week ago, but remains near the floor of its 30-day range and carries no meaningful squeeze signal. Short interest is 1.6% of the free float, edging up about 1.6% on the week after being down 2.3% over the past month — this is noise rather than a directional rebuild. The ORTEX short score holds at 32.4, essentially flat all week and well below any level that would indicate crowded bearish conviction. Options are slightly more defensive than usual, with the put/call ratio at 0.56 against a 20-day average of 0.51, but the z-score of 0.55 puts that well inside one standard deviation — nothing alarming ahead of the print.
Peers moved broadly in WM's direction this week, but WM led. RSG gained 3.6%, WCN added 3.5%, and CWST rose 5.0%. GFL was the standout outlier, surging 12.5% on the week, likely driven by a company-specific catalyst rather than sector rotation. The sector tone is unambiguously positive, but WM's 6.4% weekly gain puts it near the top of the peer group — a move that pulls the stock closer to, rather than further from, consensus targets.
The earnings history offers a reference point without implying a direction: the last two Q1 prints each produced a modest positive day-one move of roughly 2%, followed by a mild giveback over the subsequent five days. Q2 on July 24 will be the first test of whether the SRCL pricing thesis is showing up in organic revenue growth, and whether the recycled commodity drag is tracking at or below the guided $14 million EBITDA headwind — those two items, more than any macro read-across, are what the Street will be watching.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open WM on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
