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By the numbers: Q2 2025
Revenue: $6.43B
Up 19% year over year
Net income: $726M
Up 6.8% year over year
Operating EBITDA: $1.86B
Up 19.8% year over year, with an adjusted margin of 29.9%
- Financial Picture: WM saw some recovery from a first quarter impacted by weather, reporting revenue growth in the collection and disposal business that delivered what CEO Jim Fish called the company’s best-ever operating expense margin. Certain volume categories showed improvement, especially MSW, and executives were largely upbeat about progress integrating Stericycle into WM’s Healthcare Solutions business. “It's our sustained, strong results across all market cycles that we believe makes us a forever stock, the type of stock you buy and hold indefinitely,” Fish said on the company’s earnings call.
- Volumes: WM saw MSW volumes rise 4.5% year over year. The company also saw special waste volume growth related to wildfire cleanup in California. Other volumes declined over the same period: commercial was down 0.1%, industrial was down 1.2% and residential was down 5.7%. The company attributed some of those declines to the loss of a sizable franchise contract in Florida — WM President John Morris said the company let that contract go due to unfavorable pricing.
- Industrial improvements Fish also noted that an industrial recession had kept roll-off and industrial waste volumes depressed for the last few years, but WM was seeing signs of improvement in those categories. He also noted signs of improvement in the C&D space. "That's a positive for us and a positive for the economy," Fish said.
- Recycled commodities: The company's blended average price for single-stream recycled commodities in Q2 was $82 per ton, down about 14.5% year over year. WM is now projecting commodity prices for the year to be about $80 per ton, down from its earlier projection of $85 per ton.
- Recycling investments: Chief Sustainability Officer Tara Hemmer said the segment still saw growth in its earnings before income, taxes, depreciation and amortization due in part to automation investments coming online. She said those investments have driven volume growth in WM’s recycling business as the company attracts new customers. “That clearly is us differentiating in the marketplace where we're able to add more customers in those key geographies,” she said.
- Healthcare Solutions: WM's integration of Stericycle continues, and executives now expect the segment to net the company near the higher end of the $80 million to $100 million range in targeted synergies they projected for 2025. Benefits from internalizing the business will start to manifest in the second half of 2025, CFO Devina Rankin said. Fish also noted some issues related to integration, including customer onboarding and billing challenges, but he expected WM to resolve those issues in the coming months.
- Labor: WM achieved a turnover rate of 18.8% in the quarter for drivers and technicians, an improvement that executives attributed in part to modernizing maintenance shops and improving career opportunities within the company. Rafael Carrasco, president of WM Healthcare Solutions, said the turnover rate in the segment has improved post acquisition, though some managerial roles were eliminated as part of the company's SG&A integration strategy. Carrasco said workers "are really eager" to complete the integration.
- M&A: WM is staying the course on its acquisitions strategy for the year, which the company projects will total roughly $500 million in 2025 for the full year. The company's M&A pace is up year over year; it reported spending $366 million on acquisitions in the first half of 2025. In Q2, WM acquired WB Waste Solutions, a commercial and industrial hauler with post-collection assets in the Washington, D.C. area. Morris said WM is eyeing another “fairly sizable” acquisition in the second half of the year, and it will continue to pursue tuck-ins. On pipeline, “We talked about last year being probably one of our strongest years, and a lot of that has carried over into this year,” Morris said.
- Guidance: The company decreased its revenue guidance for the year to between $25.275 billion and $25.475 billion, which it attributed to lower commodity prices and the impact of harsh winter weather on Q1 volumes. It increased its free cash flow guidance to between $2.8 billion and $2.9 billion thanks to the recent tax bill restoring 100% bonus depreciation. WM's adjusted EBITDA guidance remained essentially the same, with a midpoint of $7.55 billion.
