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Reasons to Retain Waste Management (WM) Stock in Your Portfolio

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Waste Management, Inc. (WM - Free Report) has an impressive Growth Score of A. This style score condenses all the essential metrics from a company’s financial statements to get a true sense of the quality and sustainability of its growth.

The company has an expected long-term earnings per share (three to five years) growth rate of 10.9%. Its earnings for 2022 and 2023 are expected to improve 14.7% and 11.3%, respectively, year over year.

The stock gained 12.4% in the past year against 23.7% decline of the industry it belongs to.

Factors That Auger Well

Being a leading provider of comprehensive waste management environmental services, Waste Management should continue to benefit from ongoing trends such as increasing environmental concerns, rapid industrialization, increase in population and active government measures to reduce illegal dumping.

The company continues to execute core operating initiatives targeting focused differentiation and continuous improvement, and instill price and cost discipline to achieve better margins. While differentiation through capitalization of extensive assets ensures long-term profitable growth and competitive advantages, cost control, process improvement and enhancements to its digital platform help enhance service quality.

Waste Management has a steady dividend as well as share repurchase policy. In 2021, 2020 and 2019, the company had repurchased shares worth $1.35 billion, $402 million and $248 million, respectively. It paid $970 million, $927 million and $876 million in dividends during 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively. Waste Management plans to return significant cash to shareholders through healthy dividends and share repurchases in the future as well.

Some Risks

Waste Management's current ratio at the end of first-quarter 2022 was pegged at 0.80, lower than the prior-year quarter current ratio of 1.01. Decreasing current ratio is not desirable as it indicates that the company may have problems meeting its short-term debt obligations.

Zacks Rank and Stocks to Consider

Waste Management currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Some better-ranked stocks in the broader Zacks Business Services sector are Avis Budget Group, Inc. (CAR - Free Report) , Cross Country Healthcare (CCRN - Free Report) and Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP - Free Report) .

Avis Budget sports a Zacks Rank #1 at present. CAR has a long-term earnings growth expectation of 19.4%. 

Avis Budget delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 102%, on average. 

Cross Country Healthcare sports a Zacks Rank of 1. CCRN has a long-term earnings growth expectation of 6.9%.

Cross Country Healthcare delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 29.2%, on average. 

Automatic Data Processing carries a Zacks Rank of 2 (Buy), currently. ADP has a long-term earnings growth expectation of 12%.

Automatic Data Processing delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 6.2%, on average.

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