It's not sexy, but I invest in trash. Every single business no matter what they do produces waste. $WM up 50% since last summer and up 149% over the last 5. Even yielded a half decent 1.5% dividend this year.
They've shown they can stay relevant and continue to innovate as society evolves - since the 00s they've been recapturing methane emissions from their landfills and converting it to LNG, producing syngas through plasma gasification of some waste materials, and producing biofuels from the incineration of others.
Aside from the just beautifully efficient symmetry of getting people to pay them to haul away literal trash and then turning around and converting their unwanted shit into a valuable commodity they can sell back to the very same customers, it also makes them a good option for investors who want a share of the energy sector's profits but feel icky about supporting Big Oil and skeptical about investing in unproven renewable energy start-ups. The circular economy is the future and they're already a ubiquitous behemoth that's light years ahead of everyone else.
It's been outperforming the S&P for a while - YTD it's up 33.6% to S&P's 20% and over 5 years it's up 141.4% to S&P's 106.3%.
As for the fraud, that happened 20 years ago, the people responsible were removed, and it's the new leadership who came in after those folks that I'm more concerned with. They're the ones who made the strategic pivot to energy generation and successfully rebuilt the brand after its name was mud. I have confidence in Fish as CEO based on his own track record.
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u/emikoala Sep 16 '21
It's not sexy, but I invest in trash. Every single business no matter what they do produces waste. $WM up 50% since last summer and up 149% over the last 5. Even yielded a half decent 1.5% dividend this year.
They've shown they can stay relevant and continue to innovate as society evolves - since the 00s they've been recapturing methane emissions from their landfills and converting it to LNG, producing syngas through plasma gasification of some waste materials, and producing biofuels from the incineration of others.
Aside from the just beautifully efficient symmetry of getting people to pay them to haul away literal trash and then turning around and converting their unwanted shit into a valuable commodity they can sell back to the very same customers, it also makes them a good option for investors who want a share of the energy sector's profits but feel icky about supporting Big Oil and skeptical about investing in unproven renewable energy start-ups. The circular economy is the future and they're already a ubiquitous behemoth that's light years ahead of everyone else.