Chris Lange
7 min read
Quick Read
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Fastenal’s 140,789 embedded vending units generate 76% contract revenue and compounded into a 529% ten-year price return.
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Costco’s 92% U.S. membership renewal rate and 604% ten-year return carry a 45x trailing P/E, leaving little margin for error.
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Rollins posted 7.9% revenue growth with no customer retention deterioration, yet fell 41% year to date as residential demand weakened.
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Just released. Our analysts combed the entire stock market and named the ten best stocks to buy right now, and Waste Management didn’t make the cut. Enter your email to see the names that beat WM. The report is free. Enter your email and see if any of your stocks made the cut.
The case for boring rests on arithmetic. Waste bills get paid. Elevators need annual inspections. Fasteners keep coming out of vending machines bolted to plant walls. As one small data point: over the last decade, Fastenal (NASDAQ:FAST), an industrial distributor most investors have never walked into, has returned 529.21% on a split-adjusted basis. Below are five US-listed operators whose customers do not leave in a hurry.
Waste Management: Pricing Discipline in a Bag
Waste Management (NYSE:WM) picks up trash, buries it in landfills it already owns, recycles what it can, and, following the Stericycle deal, hauls medical waste. Demand does not really turn off. In Q2 2026, with volumes soft, the company still posted core price of 5.7% and Collection & Disposal yield of 3.6%, and management noted that collection operating costs rose less than 1.7% against labor inflation of roughly 4%. That price-to-cost spread, held through a period management described as “not falling off a cliff in any way,” is the durable part of the story.
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On returns, the quarterly dividend has stepped up from $0.75 in 2024 to $0.825 in 2025 to $0.945 in the three 2026 records, extending an uninterrupted quarterly sequence that runs from 2020-03-05 through 2026-09-11. The ten-year price return is 300%. The risk worth noting is that commercial volumes were pressured by lost national accounts, and full-year collection and disposal volume is expected to decline by approaching 1%. In this case, the price is doing the work not so much the volume.
