What is a cash flow waterfall?

A cash flow waterfall is a bar chart that walks from operating cash flow through capital expenditure to free cash flow, then shows how the remaining cash is allocated — acquisitions, buybacks, dividends, debt, and other financing — ending at the net change in cash. Each step is colour-coded: green bars add to the running total, red bars subtract.

How does Waste Management (WM) spend its free cash flow?

For TTM through Q1 2026, Waste Management generated $6.34B of operating cash flow and $3.29B of free cash flow — a free cash flow margin of 51.9% of operating cash flow. The waterfall breaks down how the remaining cash was allocated across investing and financing activities.

How much did Waste Management (WM) return via buybacks and dividends?

The waterfall shows buybacks (share repurchases) and dividends paid as separate steps in the financing section. Together these represent Waste Management's shareholder returns for TTM through Q1 2026. You can compare these against free cash flow to assess the capital-return payout ratio.

Waste Management (WM) Cash Flow Waterfall

Operating CF

$6.34B

Capex

-$3.05B

Free Cash Flow

$3.29B

FCF Margin

+51.9%

Cash flow waterfall for Waste Management (WM) — TTM through Q1 2026

Free cash flow: $3.29B

Cash flow breakdown for Waste Management (WM) — TTM through Q1 2026

Line item	Amount	Running total
Operating Cash Flow	$6.34B	$6.34B
Capital Expenditure	-$3.05B	$3.29B
Free Cash Flow	$3.29B	$3.29B
Acquisitions	-$379M	$2.91B
Other Investing	-$43M	$2.87B
Share Buybacks	-$345M	$2.52B
Dividends Paid	-$1.38B	$1.14B
Net Debt Change	-$1.24B	-$100M
Other Financing & FX	-$9M	-$109M
Net Cash Decrease	-$109M	-$109M

Operating Cash Flow$6.34B
Capital Expenditure-$3.05B
Free Cash Flow$3.29B
Acquisitions-$379M
Other Investing-$43M
Share Buybacks-$345M
Dividends Paid-$1.38B
Net Debt Change-$1.24B
Other Financing & FX-$9M
Net Cash Decrease-$109M

Want to see what drove the FCF change?Free Cash Flow Bridge

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