By the numbers
Q1 net income: $723M
Up 13.5% year over year
Q1 operating adjusted EBITDA: $1.85B
Up 5.9% year over year, adjusted margin of 29.8%
- Financial picture: During a Wednesday earnings call, CEO Jim Fish called out “strong earnings and cash flow results” and reaffirmed the company’s full-year financial outlook. Growth in WM’s sustainability businesses and ongoing optimizations in the WM Healthcare Solutions sector played a role, he said. The collection and disposal business achieved operating earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization growth of 6.4%, he said on the call.
- Weather-related volume impacts: Collection and disposal volume declined 1.5%, which executives said was about half due to harsh winter weather. “We don't normally talk about weather because it happens every year,” Fish noted, but unusually severe East Coast weather shut down “a number” of facilities for as many as 10 days, including some Stericycle facilities, he said.
- Other volume offsets: Intentional shedding of lower-margin residential business also played a role in lower volumes, as well as comparisons with the year-ago period when WM had larger volumes of materials from wildfire cleanup, Fish said. But President John Morris added that these volume declines were partially offset by growth in MSW volume, which was up 2.7%. Special waste volume was up 6.7% when excluding wildfire volumes from the prior year.
- Price: Core price of 6.3% and yield of 3.9% “exceeded our expectations” for the quarter, Fish said. Core price growth for both commercial and landfill segments each exceeded 7.5%.
- Recycled commodity prices: Pricing for single stream commodities declined 27% in the quarter, but operating EBITDA grew by 18%, in part because automation helped lower labor costs and generate higher-quality material, Fish said. Chief Sustainability Officer Tara Hemmer added that blended commodity value for recyclables was $69 per ton for the quarter, which trended close to the company’s predicted $70 basket.
- Recycling facilities: WM generated 9% more recycling volume in the quarter, due in part to upgrades and expansions of its facilities, executives said. The company opened new recycling facilities in Ontario and Detroit and completed a recycling automation project in South Florida. These projects added about 300,000 tons of processing capacity.
- Renewable energy production: WM nearly doubled its year-over-year production of renewable energy from its natural gas plants, Hemmer said. The company has completed seven new renewable natural gas facilities since the first quarter of 2025. None came online in Q1 2026, but three more are expected to come online sometime in Q2, she said. About 80% of the company’s RNG volume for the year is locked in offtake agreements, up from 60% when WM announced its guidance in January.
- RIN prices: Since the U.S. EPA announced it raised the renewable volume obligation, RIN prices have held at about $2.40, “well above what we had anticipated for our long-term investment thesis at $2,” Hemmer said. “What we're tracking more broadly is what's happening in the voluntary market. Roughly half of our long-term offtake will be in the transportation market, and the other half is a voluntary market.”
- Healthcare Solutions improvements: WM continues to work on integrating Stericycle, which it acquired in November 2024, and its ERP system. Executives reported “positive” improvements in billing and customer service that had previously been an obstacle for the sector, but Fish noted WM lost one hospital customer in the quarter. The sector also closed on two big cross-selling deals for the quarter, which Fish said half benefitted the Healthcare Solutions sector and half benefitted the solid waste segment. Pricing continues to improve, and more efficiencies will roll out throughout the year, including a plan to move fleet maintenance in-house.
