With the recent market pullback, I like GFL as a solid waste giant with very good macro tailwinds.
**Valuation Multiples & Guidance**
**Revenue:** $4.82 Billion USD
**2026 Guided Revenue:** 5.31B – $5.33B USD (excluding SECURE)
**Forward EV/EBITDA Multiple:** \~11.5x (excluding SECURE)
**The Upside:** GFL’s current discount to its peers WM, RSG and WCN is largely driven by its historical debt reputation and Canada listing, which was actively cleared up by management by proactively selling off slightly over half of their lower-margin liquid/soil assets as its own entity. Honestly looking at the deal they made, it seems quite well executed, selling off those assets at 16x EV/EBITDA multiples to Private Equity, while the company as a whole lowers debt to reasonable values and is now able to acquire higher margin Secure (in my opinion a higher quality asset) at just 12x EV/EBITDA with 80% stock 20% cash (remaining net leverage neutral), which also allows them to expand / build a stronger foothold into West Canada (where they had been historically weaker) by vertically integrating with their current assets.
Furthermore, the option to buyback those assets within 5 years also seems enticing, as they would largely complement the recent acquisition of SECURE.
**The Four Segments (Solid Waste Post-Divestiture)**
**Commercial & Industrial Collection (\~45% / \~$2.40B USD):** Services high-density commercial dumpsters and industrial/construction roll-off containers under highly resilient, multi-year service contracts.
**Residential Collection (\~30% / \~$1.60B USD):** Anchored by long-term municipal contracts, providing highly predictable, recession-proof solid waste collection.
**Landfill Disposal & Transfer Stations (\~20% / \~$1.06B USD):** Controls irreplaceable, highly permitted local landfill airspace and transfer infrastructure, generating lucrative third-party "gate" fees.
**Recycling & Sustainability Services (\~5% / \~$0.26B USD):** Operates modern Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs). Features insulated "fee-for-service" municipal contracts to shift commodity price risk away from GFL.
**The Sticky Moat:** Roughly **80% to 85%** of total revenue is highly resilient, multi-year contract or franchise-based recurring revenue. The residential contracts feature built-in, CPI-linked annual pricing escalators, while commercial accounts offer massive organic pricing power (pricing was up 7% in Q1 2026)
**The New Infrastructure Moat:** GFL's pending acquisition of **SECURE** adds a network of 12 industrial landfills and 98 deep-well fluid injection sites. Because these assets are virtually impossible to re-permit, they pull in strong **36% EBITDA margin** that is highly recurring due to mandatory production compliance.
**Regional Densification & "Texas Triangle" Growth:** GFL’s strategic takeover of **Frontier Waste Solutions** gives them instant scale across Dallas, Houston, and Austin. The US population and corporate move to the Sunbelt means localized trash volumes are expanding significantly faster than the national average. Instead of chasing broad, low-margin geographic lines, GFL is using targeted M&A to maximize "stops-per-mile" route density, which is the right way to go at it to have a chance to compete with WM and RSG. GFL‘s American Residential Waste are centered around the South, Southwest and Midwest.
**Corporate Relocation and Index Inclusion:** Moving the corporate headquarters to **Miami, Florida** and switching financial reporting strictly to USD is explicitly designed to kill off the "Canadian discount." It bridges the gap for major US institutional funds to buy the stock and sets up a clear path for future inclusion in major US indexes.