Waste Connections Rose 5.3% Before Its Q3 Report. So Did Every Big Hauler.
Waste Connections closed Thursday at C$235.10 in Toronto, up C$11.90 or 5.33% from Wednesday’s C$223.20. It gapped up at the open, ranged between C$225.92 and C$235.10, and finished at the session high. It did that six days before it reports third-quarter results, with no filing from the company and no meaningful change in what analysts expect of the quarter.
The S&P/TSX Composite rose 1.55% on the same session. At C$235.10 the stock sits 6.5% below its 52-week high of C$251.45 and 15.6% above the low of C$203.46, on our arithmetic on that range. Its beta is 0.48.
Step back further and the move looks smaller. On the day of the October 2024 third-quarter report the Toronto line closed at C$245.75. On the day of the October 2025 report it closed at C$241.17. Thursday’s C$235.10 is 2.5% below last year’s level and 4.3% below 2024’s, on our arithmetic. Even after a 5.33% session, the Toronto price is lower than it was on the day of either of the last two third-quarter reports.
Waste Connections reports in US dollars and trades in Canadian dollars in Toronto. Its New York line closed at US$165.51, up US$8.69 or 5.54%, against the 5.33% gain in Canadian dollars in Toronto. That difference is the currency, not the company. WCN.TO is an ordinary TSX listing and not a depositary receipt, but it poses the same question to a Canadian holder that Canadian depositary receipts exist to answer: what the exchange rate does to your return on a business that earns in US dollars.
The whole group moved, not just Waste Connections
The five largest publicly traded North American solid-waste haulers all rose on the same session. The lines below are the US listings in US dollars, so they compare directly.
| Company | Listing | Close, Oct 15 | Day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Casella Waste Systems | Nasdaq: CWST | US$86.50 | +5.68% |
| Waste Connections | NYSE: WCN | US$165.51 | +5.54% |
| Waste Management | NYSE: WM | US$224.19 | +3.91% |
| Republic Services | NYSE: RSG | US$229.65 | +2.32% |
| GFL Environmental | NYSE: GFL | US$43.55 | +1.35% |
Closing prices from StockAnalysis, October 15, 2026.
No sector bucket moved anything like the haulers did
A sector bid and a rotation into defensives are the two readiest explanations for a group day like that. The sector ETFs support neither.
| ETF | Day |
|---|---|
| Industrial Select Sector SPDR (XLI) | +0.51% |
| Real Estate Select Sector SPDR (XLRE) | +1.21% |
| Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR (XLP) | +0.72% |
| Utilities Select Sector SPDR (XLU) | -0.17% |
The SPDR S&P 500 ETF added 0.28% on the session and the S&P/TSX Composite 1.55%. Against that, four of the five haulers rose between 2.32% and 5.68%, and not one of the four buckets above managed more than 1.21%. Industrials added half a percent, so the haulers did not move because industrials moved. The two rate-sensitive groups split: real estate was the largest gainer in the table and utilities, the purest bond proxy on the list, finished slightly down, which is not what a bid driven by falling yields looks like. Consumer staples added 0.72%. ETF moves from StockAnalysis, same session.
Nobody in the group filed anything
We checked the SEC’s own EDGAR submissions API for each company on October 15. None of the five filed anything on October 14 or October 15. Waste Connections (CIK 0001318220) last filed a Form 4 on August 21, 2026, and its most recent 8-K is dated August 7. The last filing from Waste Management was a Form 4 on September 8, from Republic Services a Form 4 on September 14, and from Casella, whose own most recent filing is an 8-K, October 1. GFL Environmental, which files as a foreign private issuer, last filed a Form 6-K on October 8.
The estimates have not moved either. Consensus for the quarter about to be reported is adjusted earnings of US$1.52 per share from 23 analysts, in a range of US$1.49 to US$1.57, on revenue of US$2.608 billion from 21 analysts. Against the year-ago quarter’s US$1.44 and US$2.458 billion, that asks for earnings growth of 5.8% and revenue growth of 6.1%. The EPS consensus was US$1.5104 ninety days ago and is US$1.52363 now, a change of 0.9% across three months and essentially nothing in the past week. Consensus figures are from Yahoo Finance and are in US dollars.
Analyst price targets, quoted against the Toronto line in Canadian dollars and also from Yahoo Finance, average C$273.67, with a median of C$277.81 inside a range of C$230.35 to C$308.36. After Thursday’s move the low end of that range sits below the closing price.
So the stock added 5.33% on a quarter whose expected result has barely moved since July, and we could not establish what caused the move. This stock has run that disconnect the other way recently: on February 11, 2026 it beat consensus by 1.49% and fell 7.88% the next session. Our guide to what actually moves a stock price works through that case, where the earnings are fine and the tape disagrees.
What the October 21 report has to clear
The last quarter on the record is Q2 2026, the three months ended June 30. These are the company’s own figures, in US dollars, from its Q2 2026 earnings release, Exhibit 99.1 to the Form 8-K filed July 22, 2026.
| Q2 2026 | Figure | Year earlier |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | US$2,561.6M | US$2,407.1M |
| Adjusted EBITDA (non-GAAP) | US$840.1M | US$786.4M |
| Adjusted EBITDA margin | 32.8% | 32.7% |
| Adjusted diluted EPS (non-GAAP) | US$1.50 | US$1.29 |
| Reported diluted EPS (GAAP) | US$1.17 | US$1.12 |
| Operating income (GAAP) | US$437.6M | US$459.5M |
| Adjusted free cash flow (non-GAAP) | US$457.5M | US$367.0M |
Revenue grew 6.4% and adjusted EBITDA 6.8%, both on the company’s own rounding. Two things in that table need separating. Operating income fell while revenue rose, and the company’s explanation for that is US$58.5 million primarily in landfill closure and post-closure cost impairments plus US$7.9 million primarily in transaction-related expenses. The reconciliation below isolates US$7.588 million of that second figure as the transaction-related add-back.
The gap between the two EPS lines is a longer list, and the release reconciles it item by item. Reported net income of US$296.399 million, plus US$47.600 million of amortization of intangibles, US$58.466 million of impairments and other operating items, US$7.588 million of transaction-related expenses and US$0.267 million of fair value changes to equity awards, less US$28.629 million for the tax effect of those adjustments, gives adjusted net income of US$381.691 million. That is the distance between US$1.17 reported and US$1.50 adjusted, and it turns on an item the operating-income explanation does not include at all: the amortization of intangibles. Which of those earnings figures is the real one is the question our guide to how to read financial statements is built around, and the detail sits in the Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026.
Price is carrying the growth and volume is going the other way
Core price rose 5.6% in the three months ended June 30, 2026, which the release defines as revenue growth from price increases net of rollbacks. That is a separate disclosure from total internal growth, which came to 3.6% and is built from yield of 4.6%, surcharges of 1.1%, unit volume of -1.9%, recycling of -0.2% and no contribution from foreign exchange. The company is pushing price hard and shedding volume while it does it, and that trade is what the Q3 report gets judged on. Chief executive Ronald J. Mittelstaedt, in the Q2 release:
“… Most notably, adjusted EBITDA* margin expanded to 32.8% on 70 basis points of underlying margin expansion overcoming cost pressures primarily from rapidly spiking fuel and related costs, as well as ongoing drags from comparatively lower commodity values.”
Canada is the highest-margin part of the company
Note 10 of the same Form 10-Q breaks the business out by segment. Canada produced revenue of US$385.8 million in the quarter at a segment EBITDA margin of 43.5%, against US$343.4 million at 45.4% a year earlier. Consolidated segment EBITDA margin on the same basis was 32.1%, against 32.0%. That segment measure is the company’s own definition in Note 10 and is not the 32.8% adjusted EBITDA margin in the table above, which is a different calculation.
So Canada runs more than eleven points above the company average, and on our arithmetic its revenue grew 12.3% year over year, well ahead of the consolidated rate. Its margin fell 1.9 points while it did that. Both halves of that are worth watching in the Q3 segment note.
Capital returns did not change in the quarter
The dividend is US$0.350 per share per quarter, unchanged since the increase announced in October 2025 took it up from US$0.315, and the Q2 declaration continued that rate. The release also reported year-to-date share repurchases of US$614.5 million, which it put at roughly 1.5% of shares outstanding and described as a record. Every share bought back lowers the denominator under the per-share earnings figures above.
The raise asks for less than last year’s second half delivered
Under a heading of its own, “Updated 2026 Outlook”, the Q2 release raised the full-year guide to revenue of US$10.02 billion to US$10.05 billion and adjusted EBITDA of US$3.33 billion to US$3.34 billion, with adjusted free cash flow of US$1.40 billion to US$1.45 billion. Mittelstaedt credited the first half, recent commodity values and “ongoing fuel cost recovery, plus contributions from acquisitions closed to date”.
In the first half the company delivered revenue of US$4,932.2 million, adjusted EBITDA of US$1,609.6 million and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 32.6%, or 32.63% unrounded. Take the midpoint of each of its own ranges and subtract that reported first half, and the guide implies second-half revenue of about US$5.10 billion on second-half adjusted EBITDA of about US$1.725 billion. Those two imply a second-half margin of 33.81%. That is our arithmetic on the company’s own midpoints, and the figure barely moves across the guided range: run it at the bottom of both ranges and at the top and it comes out at 33.81% either way, because each range is only US$10 million wide.
The right comparison for that figure is last year’s second half, not this year’s first. On our arithmetic from the FY2025 Form 10-K and the prior-year comparatives in the Q2 release, Waste Connections earned US$1,625.9 million of adjusted EBITDA on US$4,831.7 million of revenue in the second half of 2025, a margin of 33.65%, after 32.33% in the first half of that year. That was a step up of 1.32 points. The implied step this year is 1.18 points, from 32.63% to 33.81%, and that 33.81% lands 0.16 points above what the second half of last year actually delivered. Last year the back half carried the higher margin and the guide implies the same shape this year, slightly less steep. The raise does not ask the company for something it has not just done.
Run the same figures year over year rather than half over half and a sharper question appears. The first half of 2026 came in 0.30 points above the first half of 2025, 32.63% against 32.33%. The implied second half sits 0.16 points above the second half of 2025. On the company’s own midpoints, in other words, the rate of margin expansion roughly halves in the back half of the year, against a chief executive who described the second quarter as 70 basis points of underlying expansion. Whether that is conservatism in the guide or the fuel cost catching up is the most useful thing the October 21 release can settle.
The outlook “excludes any impact from additional acquisitions that may close during the year”, so deals closing late in the year would add revenue the guide does not contain. What already-closed acquisitions contribute has come down: the release’s contribution table puts it at US$45.8 million of revenue in Q2 2026 against US$112.9 million in Q2 2025. That is a smaller tailwind than the company carried into last year’s second half, which is one reason the back-half step may be harder to repeat than the margin arithmetic alone suggests.
Adjusted EBITDA margin by fiscal year, from 30.8% in FY2022 to 33.0% in FY2025, a gain of 2.2 percentage points. Source: Waste Connections, Inc. Form 10-K for fiscal year ended December 31, 2025 (filed 2026-02-12, accession 0001104659-26-013700), Item 7 MD&A p.74 adjusted EBITDA reconciliation table, with FY2022 from the Form 10-K for fiscal year ended December 31, 2024 (filed 2025-02-13). FY2022 is our arithmetic.
That four-year climb, laid out in the Form 10-K for fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, is what the market pays this company for, and the Toronto share price is nonetheless lower than it was at either of the last two October reports. On revenue the Street is already at the top of the guide: consensus has Q3 at US$2.608 billion and Q4 at US$2.513 billion, which with the US$4.932 billion reported comes to about US$10.05 billion for the year on our arithmetic. Yahoo’s own full-year consensus of US$10.049 billion says the same.
Fuel is the cost the company itself named
Mittelstaedt named “rapidly spiking fuel and related costs” as the Q2 pressure, and the company recovers fuel through surcharges, which were 1.1% of internal growth in the quarter and lag the cost. NYMEX WTI, November contract, settlement-window price from Yahoo Finance trade data, settled at US$97.94 on Thursday, October 15, 2026, up 3.0% from US$95.09 on October 14. That 3.0% came on the same session the haulers rallied. The same contract was US$92.30 on September 25, so it is up 6.1% since then on our arithmetic, pricing both ends on one contract.
What the record says about the session after a report
Across its last eight reports Waste Connections has beaten consensus seven times and missed once, average surprise +3.58%. The next-session move averaged +0.53% and was positive in five of eight: +0.76% after a beat, -1.10% after the single miss. Thirty days later the average was +0.72%, and ninety days later -2.18%, positive in two of seven. Those percentages come from Yahoo Finance data.
The individual reactions, oldest to newest, were -0.77%, -1.10%, +0.51%, +2.57%, +2.54%, -7.88%, +8.26% and +0.09%. The spread inside that list matters more than the average. October 21, 2025, one year to the day before this report, was a 4.36% beat met with +2.54%. February 11, 2026 was a 1.49% beat met with -7.88%. April 22 was a 3.93% beat met with +8.26%. July 22, the most recent report, carried the largest surprise in the set at 10.66% and moved the stock +0.09%.
Two things follow, and only two. Beating is close to routine at this company, and the average reaction to a beat has been under a percent. Thursday’s 5.33% is larger than six of those eight post-report moves, so the stock has already travelled further in one newsless session than it did on the day the news arrived after six of its last eight reports. That is the record, not a projection.
The date
Waste Connections reports Q3 2026 results on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, after the close, with the conference call the next morning, Thursday, October 22, at 8:30 a.m. ET, both per the company’s own advisory. On results night there is the release and no management commentary.
Market data as of the close of Thursday, October 15, 2026. Share prices, the 52-week range, beta, index and ETF moves from StockAnalysis. Consensus, price targets, report-day closing prices and historical surprise and reaction figures from Yahoo Finance. Company financials, guidance and quotations from Waste Connections’ SEC filings as cited, and filing dates from the SEC EDGAR submissions API.
This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
Disclaimer: The content on bestcanadianstocks.ca is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. Share prices, the 52-week range, beta and sector ETF moves are closing figures for the session of October 15, 2026 from StockAnalysis. Analyst consensus, the 90-day estimate drift, price targets, the eight-quarter surprise and reaction history and the report-day closing prices are from Yahoo Finance, retrieved October 14, 2026. Filing dates are from the SEC EDGAR submissions API, read October 15, 2026. Every Waste Connections financial figure, the 2026 outlook, the internal-growth and core-price disclosures, the adjusted net income reconciliation, the share repurchases, the dividend and both CEO quotations are from the company’s own Q2 2026 earnings release, Exhibit 99.1 to the Form 8-K filed July 22, 2026; the Canada segment figures are from Note 10 of the Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026; the fiscal-year margin series is from the Form 10-K for fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, with FY2022 our arithmetic from the Form 10-K for fiscal year ended December 31, 2024. The implied second-half figures, the H1 and H2 2025 margin split, the distances from the 52-week range, the two-year price comparison, the Canada revenue growth and the Street’s implied full-year revenue are our arithmetic and are labelled as such in the text. The oil price is NYMEX WTI, November contract, settlement-window price from Yahoo Finance trade data. Waste Connections reports in US dollars and trades in Canadian dollars on the TSX.
