CASELLA WASTE SYSTEMS, INC.
CWST · Utilities · $5.7B mkt cap · FY2025 filings · No moat ·
Doesn't clear the bar
The five investor questions
2021–2025 (latest 5 aligned FYs; v3 window cap 5): revenue $889M to $1.8B, increasing; diluted EPS 0.80 to 0.12, decreasing.
Median gross margin 33.4% over 10y, very stable.
Median ROIC 6.2%, above the 12% hurdle in 0% of years.
Net debt/EBITDA 2.8x, interest coverage 1x.
Owner earnings +65.0%/yr.
Price vs. conservative owner-earnings floor
A cautious baseline, not a price target: what the shares may support if normalized owner earnings simply hold steady.
- Owner earnings (normalized)
- $45.2M
- Owner-earnings floor / share
- $7.90
- Capped-growth comparison / share
- $7.90
- Recent price
- $89.39
- Price vs. owner-earnings floor
- 1031% above owner-earnings floor
What today’s price assumes: owner earnings growing ~62%/yr over 5 years. The floor assumes owner earnings stay flat (0% growth).
How to read this
We solve for the constant annual change in owner earnings that would make the five-year floor equal today’s price. This keeps the existing model inputs and calculation unchanged; it is an expectations lens, not a forecast.
This floor assumes trailing owner earnings persist — unreliable for declining businesses. The recent FY revenue series does not trigger the three-consecutive-declines flag.
Among the current top-score group, the median current price is 239% above the floor across 48 of the current top 50 companies by Moat Score with both values.
Score records captured Jul 26, 2026.
Exactly which 50 companies?
FTNT, META, MEDP, IBEX, MSFT, GOOGL, LULU, ANF, IDXX, TXRH, FHI, QLYS, FFIV, ADBE, LLY, MANH, VEEV, GRMN, SSD, MNST, DOCS, MCO, CPRT, NTAP, LRCX, NVDA, CORT, SFM, MPTI, ULTA, SN, RMD, ROL, PAYC, IRMD, INTU, DECK, MORN, LGCY, DAL, GWW, ISRG, MPWR, CTAS, LOPE, MRK, CMG, FAST, BKNG, ORLY
Missing a usable price or floor: ANF, BKNG.
Model details under moat-index@3.0.0: zero-growth floor 11.1×, capped-growth comparison at no more than 18×; 9% discount rate; high-end growth 0% (capped at 4%) using min(5y revenue CAGR, 5y diluted-EPS CAGR), clamped to 0%–4%; maintenance capex uses min(capex, D&A); abstain when D&A is unavailable. This is a disclosed model range, not intrinsic value as fact.
17 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
CASELLA WASTE SYSTEMS, INC. booked $1.8B of revenue in FY2025 in the Utilities sector and kept 33.8% of it as gross profit — a moderate-margin business by that measure. After every other cost, 0.4% of each revenue dollar reached the bottom line.
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $458M (FY2010) to $1.8B (FY2025) — about 9.7% a year compounded over 15 years.
It earned 1.6% on invested capital in the latest filed year, FY2025. Across the full 16-year measurable filed record, median ROIC was 4.7%. Over the v3 recent window (10 measurable filed years), median ROIC was 6.2%. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 5/100.
The balance sheet carried $1.2B of total debt in FY2025 against $69.6M of owner earnings — roughly 16.6 years of owner earnings to retire it all. Balance-Sheet Safety scores it 17/100.
Put together: Capital Discipline is the strongest of the five filters (60/100) and Returns on Capital the weakest (5/100), which is how CWST lands at 39/100 — a None moat.
This breakdown is generated from the filed numbers and sub-scores above — no outside narrative, no estimates. Where a filing doesn’t disclose an input, the sentence that would need it is omitted instead of guessed.
Gaps in a line mean that item isn’t in CWST’s filings for that year — the series is never interpolated or estimated. The Table view lists every filed value, including operating and net margins, total debt, and share count.
Moat Score history
Breaks in the line mark methodology or normalizer upgrades — readings across versions aren’t compared, so a level shift there isn’t a change in the business.
Tier changesSame-methodology and same-normalizer crossings of the Wide / Narrow / Shallow bars
- Normalizer upgraded unstamped (version unknown)tomoat-xbrl-normalizer@1.1.0 — readings across versions aren’t comparedJul 26, 2026
- Methodology upgraded moat-index@2.0.0tomoat-index@3.0.0 — readings across versions aren’t comparedJul 23, 2026
- Methodology upgraded moat-index@1.2.0tomoat-index@2.0.0 — readings across versions aren’t comparedJul 20, 2026
Scores are logged append-only and never overwritten — this record cannot be reconstructed retroactively, which is exactly why it’s worth keeping.
Track record
How CASELLA WASTE SYSTEMS, INC.’s moat rated in each of the years we can reconstruct from its filings — scored only on what was knowable at the time — and what its price and returns did afterward. The score never saw a price; the two are joined only in hindsight, for education, not as a signal.
How to read this: each dot is what the engine would have scored CWST on that December 31; the line below is its total-return price path (dividends reinvested) in the years since.
Two tracks, one timeline: the score has its own 0–100 scale (top), the price its own 100-based scale (bottom) — never a shared axis. The price path is a total-return (dividends reinvested) index built from the same data the forward returns use; gaps in the score line are years with no reconstructed rating (see the table for why). The Table view carries every value.
What followed, in the years it rated Wide
In the reconstructed history shown, CWST did not rate Wide-moat in any year, so there is no wide-moat track record to report. That absence is itself the honest answer — we don’t manufacture a comparison where the rating never earned one.
Utilities context
#42 of 101 scored Utilities companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #40IDA IDACORP INC40.2 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #41VST Vistra Corp.39.4 out of 100, No moatNo moat
- #43CPK CHESAPEAKE UTILITIES CORP38.9 out of 100, No moatNo moat
- #44CETY CLEAN ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES, INC.38.6 out of 100, No moatNo moat
Compare CWST with its nearest peers →All Utilities companies on the Index →
Common questions about CWST
- Does CASELLA WASTE SYSTEMS, INC. have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2025 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores CASELLA WASTE SYSTEMS, INC. (CWST) 39.1 out of 100 — below the Shallow-moat bar, so no moat. The five questions behind that score begin at 20% each; if exactly one genuinely lacks data, the other four weights are renormalized and disclosed. revenue and EPS trend 55, pricing power 58, returns on capital 5, balance-sheet safety 17, capital discipline 60.
- Is CWST trading below the conservative owner-earnings estimate?
- The conservative owner-earnings floor is $7.90 per share. It capitalizes normalized owner earnings at a 9% rate and assumes 0% growth. Versus a recent price of $89.39, that is 1031% above owner-earnings floor. The model also publishes a capped-growth comparison, but the floor is the cautious baseline. It assumes trailing owner earnings persist and is unreliable for declining businesses. This is an educational estimate from primary SEC filings, not intrinsic value as a fact or investment advice.
- How has CWST's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 16 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 39.1 out of 100 (no moat). No tier changes on record yet. (Methodology or normalizer upgrades on Jul 20, 2026, Jul 23, 2026, Jul 26, 2026 re-based the score; readings across versions aren't compared.) The history is append-only — readings are only ever added, never rewritten.