WM, Republic will announce results in February

The two largest waste and recycling hauling firms in the United States both will announce their 2022 fourth quarter and year-end financial results in February. Houston-based WM (formerly Waste Management) has selected Feb. 1 as its reporting date (and for its earnings call), while Phoenix-based Republic Services will follow two weeks later Feb. 15.

In this year’s third quarter, WM announced an 11 percent increase in adjusted operating earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) on collection and disposal volumes it says increased by “1.7 percent on a workday-adjusted basis” compared with one year earlier.

When announcing its third quarter results in late October, WM said during that quarter more than $800 million “was returned to shareholders, including $541 million allocated to share repurchases and $267 million of cash dividends.”

Less than two months later, in mid-December, WM announced its board of directors had approved a 7.7 percent increase in the planned quarterly dividend distributed to its shareholders 2023, from 65 cents to 70 cents per share.

For its third quarter, Republic reported total year-on-year revenue growth of 22.6 percent that it says included 10.2 percent of organic growth and 12.4 percent growth from acquisitions. The firm’s third-quarter revenue growth from average yield was 5.6 percent, and volume increased revenue by 2.2 percent, according to Republic.

In an August 2022 presentation to shareholders, Republic said it had invested $4.6 billion in acquisitions during the previous three years while also having returned $1.8 billion to shareholders in that same timeframe.

In a July 2022 presentation, WM said it had “completed 88 acquisitions over the past 5 years, adding $560 million of annualized revenue” while it also expected to complete another $300 million to $400 million worth of acquisitions in 2022.

In that same presentation, WM said it had a “projected capital investment of $275 million in 2022 and an incremental $525 million from 2023 to 2025” to “accelerate investment in technology automation across our single-stream material recovery facility (MRF) network and expand our recycling footprint.”