Commodity Prices Affect Waste Industry Performance
Waste industry economics are relatively easy to understand. Municipal solid waste has to end up somewhere, and therefore whoever has the most diverse disposal operations can set the bar with respect to pricing, which impacts tipping fees and the economics of transfer facilities and collection operations. After all, garbage pick-up operators won’t be in business for long if they pay more to dispose of waste than they charge to pick it up. We view disposal operations as having oligopolistic tendencies, even if collection operations face some of the most intense pricing competition of any industry. As for the players, Waste Management (WM) and Republic Services (RSG) have the largest disposal operations in the US. At the end of 2014, Waste … Read more