10 Stocks Every Retiree Should Own

Waste Management

Symbol: WM

Share price: $71.01

Dividend yield: 2.3%

Price/earnings ratio: 24

Waste Management has the advantage of a wide moat: Cracking into its business of collecting garbage and hazardous material isn’t easy. Investing in trucks and dump sites is costly and fraught with red tape, helping the company defend its turf from rivals. The firm controls 30% of the waste collection market, 47% of the landfill market and 63% of the waste transportation market. It also has avenues of growth, thanks to increasing concerns about the environment leading to more demand for recycling and waste disposal services. The company is doubling down on using garbage as a renewable energy source, too. Waste Management currently makes enough energy from refuse to power the equivalent of 1 million homes each year. That should rise to 2 million homes by 2020.

Waste Management’s revenues aren’t particularly sensitive to economic cycles for one simple reason: There will always be garbage. That steadiness has helped the company lift its dividend annually for 12 consecutive years. The firm also generates buckets of cash (after operating expenses and capital spending), which should keep the payouts coming.

SEE ALSO: 10 Best Stocks of the Dow for Dividends

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