Pollution & Treatment Controls · market cap $23.6b. 8% off the 52-week high of $105.75. 15 sell-side analysts rate this a Buy with a mean 1-yr target of $114.00 (implying +18% upside).
Moat
Net margin 17% beats the market median by a meaningful margin — the company is keeping more of every revenue dollar than the average S&P constituent. ROE 32% — top-decile capital efficiency. Either pricing leverage, low capital intensity, or aggressive buybacks; the durability story depends on which. FCF converts 108% of net income — earnings translate cleanly into cash.
Risk
Mature compounder — the risk is paying up for quality at a moment when growth is decelerating. Watch for sequential revenue + margin trends; the inflection from "compounder" to "ex-compounder" is hard to spot until the multiple already started compressing.
CWSTCasella Waste Systems, Inc.
Waste Management · $83.78 · beta 0.78
Why now
Waste Management · market cap $5.3b. Down 22% from 52-week high of $107.96 — deep drawdown territory. Revenue growing +18%, comfortably above the S&P median. 10 sell-side analysts rate this a Buy with a mean 1-yr target of $108.40 (implying +29% upside).
Moat
Free cash flow runs well ahead of reported net income, mostly because of depreciation and amortization ($325m) — non-cash charges that hold down reported earnings while cash generation stays strong.
Risk
Net margin 0.3% is thin — operating leverage cuts both ways; input-cost inflation or pricing pressure hits the bottom line first. ROE 0% is below the long-run sustainable threshold of ~10% — capital efficiency would need to improve for the equity base to compound at the market rate.
Verdict — model-derived comparison
Generating verdict… typically 5–10 seconds
Not investment advice. The Bull Rankings publishes a quantitative ranking model and accompanying analysis for general informational purposes only. Nothing on this page is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security; nothing is personalized to your circumstances, risk tolerance, or tax situation. Investing carries the risk of loss — invest at your own risk and consider consulting a licensed financial professional before acting on anything you read here. See terms and methodology for full disclosures.
Where VLTO and CWST diverge
On the headline score the gap is 22.8 points in favor of VLTO. They get there differently, though — each leads on a different pillar, so the better pick depends on which you weight.
QualityVLTO 81.2 · CWST 33.5VLTO +47.7
ValueVLTO 48.2 · CWST 20.6VLTO +27.6
GrowthVLTO 61.0 · CWST 87.4CWST +26.4
Pillars run 0–100. Value is judged against each company's own sector, so a Value score is a statement about a company relative to its own industry rather than to the other name here. A wide Value gap usually means the market already prices the difference in quality or growth — which is the trade-off this comparison comes down to.
Common questions
Is VLTO or CWST the better stock?
VLTO scores higher: VLTO 62.0, CWST 39.2 out of 100 on the Bull Rankings quality-growth score, which blends business quality, growth and valuation into one number. A higher score means a stronger business at a more reasonable price — it is not a price target or a recommendation.
Where do VLTO and CWST differ most?
The widest gap is quality, where VLTO leads by 48 points on the 0–100 pillar scale. Neither name sweeps: they trade the lead across the three pillars, so the comparison is a trade-off rather than one being better on every measure.
How are VLTO and CWST scored?
Each carries the same 0–100 quality-growth score used everywhere on the site, built from three pillars — quality (profitability and returns on capital), growth (revenue and earnings), and value (what you pay for them) — combined as a geometric mean, so a weak pillar cannot be papered over by a strong one.
How current is this comparison?
The whole universe is re-scored every trading day after the US market close, so the scores and fundamentals here reflect the latest published edition.