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By the numbers
Q3 net income: $286.3M
Down 7.1% year over year
Q3 adjusted EBITDA: $830.3M
Up 5.5% year over year, a margin of 33.8% of revenue
- Financial picture: During a Wednesday earnings call, CEO Ron Mittelstaedt noted “better than expected” results in the third quarter, highlighting “the team’s efforts to overcome incremental commodity headwinds and ongoing uncertainty in the economy.” The company continues to maintain low employee turnover and logged another record quarter for low safety incident rates, he said. Strong pricing retention and a solid waste margin expansion of about 80 basis points were other highlights of the quarter, he said. The company confirmed its full-year outlook.
- Recent acquisitions: Waste Connections has closed on or is under agreement for acquisitions worth about $300 million in annualized revenue so far this year. Waste Connections is expected to close on a “nice sized” Florida company sometime in Q4, he said. The company also recently acquired Florida-based Great Waste, according to state documents.
- New York commercial waste zone updates: Soon, the company also expects to close on a large New York transfer station that serves the Queens area, which Mittelstaedt said will complement the company’s ongoing presence in New York City’s commercial waste zone rollout. The transfer station deal had been in the works since May, and regulatory approvals are now complete, he said.
- Price: Core price for the quarter was 6.3%, which CFO Mary Anne Whitney said puts Waste Connections on track to achieve its full-year goal of 6.5%. Stronger pricing retention in competitive regions helped drive that trend, she said.
- Volume: Overall volumes were down 2.7%, similar to Q2, and due in part to an ongoing strategy of shedding “low margin” contracts. Whitney also noted “continued sluggishness” in areas like roll-off business and lower construction-related disposal volumes. But landfill tons were up almost 3%, led by higher MSW tons up 2% and special waste tons up 10%. The increase in special waste tons was due mainly to timing of certain jobs. C&D tons were down 4%, due also to project timing.
- Commodities: Values for both recycled commodities and renewable energy credits were down in Q3, with both ending the quarter down 30% to 35% YoY(year over year), Whitney said. Waste Connections had expected to spend between $100 million and $150 million in 2025 on RNG-related capital expenditures, but has pulled that back to between $75 million and $125 million.
- Recycling strategies: Waste Connections has been working with a nationwide broker to get better prices for recycled commodities, Whitney said, and Mittelstaedt added that the company is considering investing in some more in-depth “plastic separation treatment technologies that could make sense for us” to further sort commodities.
- E&P business: Waste Connections’ E&P business saw a 7% increase in waste revenues, which Whitney said was driven in part by production at its R360 Canada business and some related remediation projects. That’s compared to the “steady” E&P performance from Q2. Meanwhile, its legacy U.S.-based E360 business was down “nominally.”
- Chiquita Canyon updates: Waste Connections continues to manage an ongoing “elevated temperature landfill” event causing odor issues at Chiquita Canyon Landfill in California, which closed earlier this year. Work on that project is going “about as we expected,” Mittelstaedt said, adding that ongoing leachate removal has reduced some of the reactions causing odors. Odor complaints have reduced by 95%, he said, and the company has capped about 42 acres of the landfill and has plans to cap an additional 50 acres over the next three years as a preventative measure, he said.
- Rail updates: Waste Connections continues to ramp up tonnage at its Arrowhead Landfill in Alabama, which accepted about 7,500 tons a day in Q3. Improved rail line track work at that facility has paved the way for “incremental, continued improvement” in 2026 and 2027. Norfolk Southern also made rail improvements at Waste Connections’ Newark, New Jersey, loading facility outside of New York City. By the end of the year, Waste Connections expects to have a dedicated unit train that will run multiple days a week, which could reduce transit times by between 25% to 30%, Mittelstaedt said.
