NEW YORK | September 5, 2026 | 3:31 p.m. EDT — Bill Gates’ Cascade Investment bought 534,000 Republic Services shares across September 1 and 2. The latest Form 4 values those purchases at $119.1 million.
Republic Services NYSE:RSG closed Friday at $222.71. That was about 0.15% below Cascade’s $223.04 weighted purchase price, calculated from the filing. The near match gives investors a useful live reference point.
The headline dollar amount needs scale. Cascade finished September 2 with 115,021,527 shares. Its latest buying increased the prior position by only 0.47%.
The $119 million headline, measured against the position
TS2 calculation from the eight open-market purchase lines. The percentage compares 534,000 shares with the 114,487,527-share position immediately before them.
Scale changes the signal.
An August 20 ownership filing identified Gates as Cascade’s sole member. It said Cascade’s shares may therefore be deemed beneficially owned by him. The filing reported 36.7% ownership through August 19.
That percentage used 306.2 million outstanding shares reported on July 30. Applying the same denominator to the newest holding implies roughly 37.6%. The estimate could shift if Republic’s share count changed later.
A giant holding, then a small incremental step
Ownership is an approximation using the July 30 share-count denominator. Position value uses the September 4 close.
The accumulation extends beyond two trading days. Cascade reported 1.60 million open-market purchases during the 60 days through August 19. Its latest holding is another 2.62 million shares above that filing’s total.
Those filings describe a series, rather than one block trade. They do not disclose Cascade’s target ownership or intended buying pace. Form 4 records transactions, not investment rationale.
At Friday’s closing price, that complete position was worth about $25.6 billion, more than two hundred times the cost of the newest shares.
The purchase sits almost exactly at market
Cascade paid across price bands ranging from $220.66 to $224.43. Friday’s session traded from $220.47 to $224.55, then settled at $222.71. The buyer has neither a large paper gain nor loss yet.
The stock rose 0.81% during the holiday-shortened week. It finished 3.77% above its August 10 close, when Cascade’s disclosed buying stretch began.
Cascade’s latest average lands beside Friday’s close
. Daily closes from FinancialContent; the purchase average is TS2’s calculation from SEC data.
Pricing carries the operating case
The ownership filings show who kept buying. Republic’s operating report explains the asset underneath. Second-quarter revenue grew 4.6% to $4.43 billion.
Adjusted EBITDA reached $1.42 billion, while its margin held at 32.1%. Chief Executive Jon Vander Ark said, “Pricing in excess of cost inflation” supported faster revenue and EBITDA growth in the company’s August release.
The detail is less tidy. Average yield added 3.4% to revenue, while volume subtracted 1.6%. Republic’s pricing engine did most of the work.
Net income rose to $566 million from $550 million. Diluted EPS increased faster, reaching $1.84 from $1.75. A lower diluted share count helped widen that per-share gain.
Price is outrunning volume pressure
Company metrics and guidance come from Republic’s Q2 release. The last figure is a TS2 estimate, not company guidance.
Management lifted full-year adjusted free-cash-flow guidance to $2.54 billion through $2.575 billion. An illustrative yield using the midpoint and July’s share count is about 3.75% at Friday’s close.
That yield is an analytical shortcut. Republic says adjusted free cash flow excludes required items such as debt service and dividends. Investors should treat it as a comparison tool rather than spendable cash.
The company also repurchased $651 million of its own shares during the first half. Cascade’s two-day purchase equaled roughly 18% of that six-month total. The periods differ, yet the comparison shows the buyer’s scale.
Republic also invested about $860 million in acquisitions during the first half. That spending competes with buybacks, dividends and debt reduction. The cash-flow guide therefore carries several capital-allocation demands.
The premium still needs defending
RSG traded around 31.5 times trailing earnings after Friday’s close. Waste Management NYSE:WM stood near 31.7 times. Those similar multiples leave little obvious peer discount.
Republic’s $7.23 to $7.28 adjusted EPS guidance implies roughly 30.7 times at $222.71. That multiple prices in resilient service demand and continued margin control. Cascade’s buying does not make the valuation cheaper.
Concentrated ownership may reduce the shares available for other investors. Repeated open-market buying can support sentiment, yet it cannot guarantee future returns. The buyer already controls an unusually large economic interest.
Operational risks remain visible. Volume cut quarterly revenue growth by 1.6 percentage points. Recycled commodity prices fell $13 per ton, while long-term debt reached $13.5 billion at June 30.
Open-market price increases reached 7.8%, versus 4.1% in restricted business. That gap makes contract mix important. Volume weakness could become harder to offset if customers resist another pricing round.
Republic’s next public checkpoint arrives at the Jefferies Global Industrials Conference on September 10. Pricing, volume and acquisition spending deserve close attention there.
The latest filing confirms commitment, not a bargain entry. At $222.71, investors can buy near Cascade’s newest average. They still pay for durable pricing and expect management to keep its margin promise.
