Four of 147: One Holder Is 52.2% of the Tracked Waste Connections Stake, and the Verified Cohort Grew 5.5% in a Quarter When the Price Rose 2.6%

GetCoattail Research — The Filing Tape #124. Waste Connections surfaced on a trending-stocks screen this week listed as a Strong Buy with three Buy ratings and one Hold, and the filings describe a small, concentrated tracked register that grew modestly in the second quarter: 4 of the 147 superinvestors held the stock at June 30, 2026, totalling 3,906,829 shares, verified against the first quarter for a combined increase of 5.5%. Insiders recorded exactly one purchase in the entire parsed record, Congress has no row at all, and short interest stands at 1.36% of the share count.

The Hype

Waste Connections' attention this week is a screen story. The stock appeared on TipRanks' Trending Stocks by Analyst screener — SCHW and SMTC topped the page's order, followed by names already covered in this series, among them BAC, RKLB, JBHT, BNY, BLK, ARWR, TRGP, EQT and TXRH — and Waste Connections followed them, listed as a Strong Buy with a price target of $197.65 (17.72% upside as printed), 3 Buy, 1 Hold and 0 Sell ratings, a printed change of +7.28%, a market value of $42.21B as printed, in Industrials, dated October 15, 2026. TipRanks Our price file shows the path behind the screen: the stock rose 2.6% in the second quarter, from $162.44 on March 31 to $166.69 on June 30, then fell to $153.82 by October 2 — down 7.7% from the June 30 close and 13.8% below the 252-session high of $178.54 (December 29, 2025).

The Tape

For Waste Connections — the one hundred and twenty-fourth Filing Tape audit — the tape shows a June register of four holders growing 5.5% on a verified basis, a September early filer reported separately, a full market adding filers and shares, an insider record with exactly one purchase in 109 filings, no Congress row in any aggregate, a 5% register with no activist-family filing, and a borrow that rose through August before easing.

Lens 1 — the superinvestors: four June holders, one at 52.2% of the stake, a verified cohort up 5.5% — and one September filer kept separate. We track 149 managers whose 13F portfolios we collect from SEC EDGAR — 147 are in the collection (144 at a June 30 period-end, 3 early filers at September 30) — and the June 30, 2026 register for the common stock (CUSIP 94106B101) is 4 distinct managers holding 3,906,829 shares worth $651,229,326, long only, with no option rows: 2 are labelled INCREASED, 1 UNCHANGED and 1 DECREASED. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust is the largest: 2,039,175 shares worth $339,910,081 — 52.2% of the tracked June stake — at a 0.99% portfolio weight, labelled UNCHANGED at 0.0% (filed August 14, 2026). The second holder, Skye Global Management, holds 1,148,000 shares (29.4%, INCREASED +23.2%, at the register's largest weight, 3.72%), so the top two hold 81.6% between them. The rest are Sands Capital Management (609,721 shares, DECREASED -4.0%) and Sustainable Growth Advisers (109,933, +12.0%). The growth verifies row by row under two register methods that agree exactly (methodology): the four continuing holders held 3,704,226 shares at March 31 and 3,906,829 at June 30 (+5.5%), with no unverified holder. No tracked manager is labelled NEW, and one exited — First Eagle Investment Management, on a prior position of 25 shares. One further tracked holder sits outside the June register and is not merged into it: Montrusco Bolton Investments, an early filer at a September 30, 2026 period-end, holds 744,195 shares worth $114,553,937 at a 1.99% weight, labelled DECREASED at -23.7% (filed October 13, 2026) — a second-to-third-quarter change that verifies against its own second-quarter register row of 974,830 shares (methodology). Because that row is in the pipeline register, the full register fell 11.7%, from 5,526,451 shares — a different figure from the June cohort's +5.5%, because Montrusco's earlier reduction and the 25-share exit sit in the earlier register. Every June row implies $166.69, the June 30 close; the September row implies $153.93, its own close. 13F figures are as of June 30, 2026, published up to 45 days later.

Lens 2 — institutions: 50 more filers reporting 18.32% more shares. At June 30, 2026, 834 institutions reported positions, up 50 from 784 at March 31 (+6.38%); 831 are long. Reported shares rose 18.32%, from 182,080,796 to 215,433,951 (+33,353,155 shares), and reported value rose 19.70% to $34,056,347,894, labelled "reported" because the aggregate includes option rows (methodology). Flow counts agree: 770 entered, 720 exited, net +50, and the single by-CUSIP row matches the by-ticker row on every field. The reported value implies $158.08 per share against a June 30 close of $166.69 (-5.16%), so filer and share counts are headlined.

Lens 3 — insiders: exactly one purchase in the whole record, against 28 sales. The parsed Form 4 record holds 109 filings through October 2, 2026, and it contains exactly one purchase transaction: 50,000 shares for $7,611,750.00, by 1 buyer, an officer purchase — the same single purchase in the one-year window and the full record. The last 90 days hold 0 purchases and 6 sales: 8,061 shares for $1,358,603.96, by 4 sellers, all 6 of them officer sale transactions, across 5 filings. The one-year window holds 16 sales (38,966 shares, $6,460,355.45, 10 sellers, 15 officer sale transactions) across 58 filings, and the full record holds 28 sales (84,565 shares, $15,132,015.44, 13 sellers, 26 officer sale transactions). The purchase implies $152.24 per share and the sales imply $168.54 (90 days), $165.79 (one year) and $178.94 (full record), each inside its window's close range on our price file — so the dollar totals are cited for every window.

Lens 4 — Congress: no row in any aggregate. The combined record (as of October 3, 2026), the House aggregate (as of October 3, 2026) and the Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) each carry no row for this name. That absence is itself the finding.

Lens 5 — the 5% register: three filings, all passive, and a 12.28% maximum that later printed zero. Our full parse holds 3 SC 13D/G filings matching the site aggregate — 0 SC 13D family, 3 SC 13G family (1 SC 13G, 2 SC 13G/A); 2 amendments, 2 reporter names across 3 reporter rows. The register maximum is 12.28%: The Vanguard Group printed 31,584,815 shares at 12.28% as of September 30, 2025 (filed October 31, 2025, SC 13G/A) — and the same name later printed 0 shares at 0.0% as of March 13, 2026. The latest filing, filed April 28, 2026, prints Vanguard Capital Management at 19,908,434 shares (7.78%), as of March 31, 2026 — a separate Vanguard name, not summed with the other prints.

Lens 6 — short interest: a small borrow, up sharply year over year, easing at the latest settlement. The latest FINRA settlement, September 15, 2026, records 3,421,015 shares sold short — 1.36% of the 252,049,532 shares outstanding — at 3.68 days to cover, down 10.84% from the prior settlement (3,836,909 on August 31, 2026). Against the June 30, 2026 settlement (2,969,730) the latest is up 15.2%, and against the year-ago settlement (1,896,540 on September 15, 2025) up 80.4%. The series maximum across 137 settlements is 4,010,024 on November 15, 2022, so the latest sits 14.7% below that peak; the minimum is 948,550 on March 31, 2022. The recent path runs 2,969,730 (June 30), 3,084,063 (July 15), 3,199,435 (July 31), 3,677,228 (August 14), 3,836,909 (August 31) and 3,421,015 (September 15) — four straight rises, then a fall. The series is published as collected.

The Gap

The narrative arriving this week is an analyst-consensus story: a Strong Buy trending listing, 3 Buy ratings against one Hold and no Sell, a printed target above the last close, on a stock that rose only 2.6% in the second quarter on our price file and has since fallen 7.7%. The June tape is quieter than the listing. The tracked register is small — four holders — and concentrated, with one holder at 52.2% of the stake and the top two at 81.6%; its verified growth of 5.5% is real but modest, and the largest holder's position did not change at all. The one tracked name with a fresher, September snapshot cut its position by 23.7% in the third quarter, after cutting it in the second as well. The broad market did add both filers and shares — 50 more institutions and 18.32% more shares. The insider record is nearly one-way: a single officer purchase of 50,000 shares in a 109-filing record, against 28 sales. Congress is absent entirely, and the 5% register holds no activist-family filing. The borrow, at 1.36% of the share count, is small in level even after an 80.4% year-over-year rise, and it eased at the latest settlement. One plausible reading is that the trending case rests on breadth the filings do not show: the tracked money is few and concentrated, the freshest tracked snapshot is a cut, insider confirmation is a single purchase, and two lenses — Congress and the activist register — are simply empty.

What Would Change the Picture

Nothing above is a recommendation. These filings would change it:

• 1. The 2026Q3 13F season (filing window closing mid-November 2026). The four June holders all verify, so the cohort's +5.5% is a clean baseline, and Montrusco Bolton Investments' September snapshot (744,195 shares, -23.7% in Q3) is an early read on the season. Whether the Gates Foundation Trust's 2,039,175-share stake — 52.2% of the tracked June total, unchanged in Q2 — moves at all, and whether Skye Global Management's increase continues, decides whether this lens stays a concentrated, near-still register.

• 2. A second insider purchase, or a first in 90 days. The record holds exactly 1 purchase in 109 filings — none in the last 90 days — against 28 sales.
• 3. A first Congress row in any aggregate. All three aggregates carry no row. A first recorded transaction in any of them would change this lens from absent to present.

• 4. A first SC 13D, or a new 5% print above 12.28%. The register holds no activist-family filing, and its maximum — The Vanguard Group's 12.28% print as of September 30, 2025 — was followed by a 0.0% print under the same name.
• 5. Short interest back through the June 2026 path in either direction. The borrow stands at 3,421,015 shares, up 15.2% from June, at 1.36% of the share count. A reading below the June 30, 2026 settlement of 2,969,730 would unwind the summer rise; a move toward the series maximum of 4,010,024 would change this lens the other way.

Related reading: Seven of 147: Eagle Capital Holds 78.1% of the Tracked EQT Stake, and the Verified Cohort Grew 168.5% in a Quarter When the Price Fell 16.5% — Filing Tape #123; One of 147: First Eagle Holds All of the Tracked Texas Roadhouse Stake, and the Cohort Cut 20.5% in a Quarter When the Price Rose 17.0% — Filing Tape #122. Waste Connections' own page: Waste Connections (WCN) on GetCoattail.

Methodology and data notes

• As-of & limits: The lenses rest on different clocks, none live: 13F is a June 30, 2026 snapshot published up to 45 days later (with one tracked holder's September 30, 2026 early filing reported separately); Form 4 runs through October 2, 2026; Congress aggregates run through October 3, 2026 (Senate through October 1, 2026); 13D/G through April 28, 2026; short interest through September 15, 2026; the price file ends October 2, 2026. Six limits are specific to this audit. First, the roster expanded before the recent audits — from 85 managers (83 filing) to 149 (147 filing) — so "of 147" counts are not comparable to earlier pieces' "of 83" figures. Second, the tracked collection mixes period-ends for this name: four holders sit on a June 30, 2026 period-end and one early filer, Montrusco Bolton Investments, sits on September 30, 2026, so the June figures here are single-date figures and the September row is always labelled and never merged into them (the blended collection total — 5 holders, 4,651,024 shares, $765,783,263 — is not a single-date figure and is not used as one). Third, the full pipeline register moved the other way from the June cohort: the register fell 11.7% (5,526,451 shares at March 31 to 4,881,659 at June 30) because it also contains Montrusco's register rows, which fell from 1,822,200 shares in the first quarter to 974,830 in the second, and the exited 25-share First Eagle position in the first quarter only; both figures are stated wherever the cohort change is cited. Fourth, the full-market reported value implies $158.08 per share against the $166.69 June 30 close (-5.16%), and filer and share counts are headlined. Fifth, the Congress lens is empty in all three aggregates — an absence of a row, not a row of zeros — and it is reported as a finding, not omitted. Sixth, the TipRanks screener listing (dated October 15, 2026 on the page for this name) postdates the 13F snapshot and the short-interest series; the listing is known to this audit only from outside coverage, not from our own files, and none of its price figures are cited here beyond the listing's own printed target and market value, which are reported as screen content in The Hype; every other price figure here is from our own price file.
• Superinvestor lens: 147 managers in the collection (of a 149-manager roster; 144 at a June 30, 2026 period-end and 3 early filers at September 30, 2026, one of them holding this name) collected directly from SEC EDGAR Form 13F (managers_13f collection, regenerated October 15, 2026 for the expanded roster); Waste Connections positions are counted on the common-stock CUSIP 94106B101, long rows only. Four distinct managers hold a long position at June 30, 2026, totalling 3,906,829 shares worth $651,229,326, with a direction count of 2 INCREASED, 1 UNCHANGED and 1 DECREASED and no option rows. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust's share of the June stake is 52.2% = 2,039,175 / 3,906,829, at a 0.99% portfolio weight; Skye Global Management's is 29.4% = 1,148,000 / 3,906,829, and the top two together are 81.6% = 3,187,175 / 3,906,829. All four June holders are continuing holders, and every one verifies row by row against the first quarter under two independent methods that agree exactly. Under the rule used in the previous audits — a holder's first-quarter row accepted only when its implied shares-change reproduces the EDGAR shares-change label at one decimal place — the verified continuing total is 3,704,226 shares at March 31 moving to 3,906,829 at June 30 (+5.5%): Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust 2,039,175 → 2,039,175 (0.0%), Skye Global Management 932,000 → 1,148,000 (+23.2%), Sands Capital Management 634,903 → 609,721 (-4.0%), Sustainable Growth Advisers 98,148 → 109,933 (+12.0%). Because two recent audits found the generic accession-prefix method failing on shared filing-agent prefixes, the check was also rerun identifying filings by accession (filing total equal to the manager's collection total, unique) and pairing second- and first-quarter filings of the same manager by maximum CUSIP-set overlap under the same agent prefix (Sands Capital Management overlap 58 CUSIPs, Sustainable Growth Advisers 44, Skye Global Management 30, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust 22 — each uniquely the maximum); the corrected method returns the identical first-quarter rows, so no correction changes any figure here. The September early filer is handled under the precedent set by the BNY, IDEXX and LHX audits: Montrusco Bolton Investments' collection row is at a September 30, 2026 period-end (744,195 shares, $114,553,937, 1.99% weight, DECREASED -23.7%, filed October 13, 2026), and its label is a second-to-third-quarter change; the pipeline second-quarter register row not used by any June holder's accession prefix (accession 0001475940-26-000006, 974,830 shares, $162,494,412) reproduces that label exactly (744,195 / 974,830 − 1 = -23.7%), and its first-quarter register row is 1,822,200 shares. The pipeline register then reconciles in both quarters (first quarter: 6 rows and 5,526,451 shares = the verified June continuing total of 3,704,226 plus Montrusco's first-quarter row of 1,822,200 plus the exited First Eagle Investment Management position of 25 shares, prior value $4,061; second quarter: 5 rows and 4,881,659 shares = the June cohort's 3,906,829 plus Montrusco's second-quarter row of 974,830 — so the register change of -11.7% differs from the June continuing cohort's +5.5% because Montrusco's register reduction and the exit sit across the two registers). Implied per-share value: every June long row implies $166.69, the June 30, 2026 close, so the June cohort implied price is $166.69, 0.0% against the close; the September row implies $153.93, the September 30, 2026 close, also 0.0% against its own period-end close. The blended implied price across both period-ends ($164.65) is not cited. No tracked manager is labelled NEW for this name.
• Full-market lens: SEC Form 13F Data Sets full-market aggregation. The primary table is the full13f collection's by-ticker file (holders = distinct filers reporting the ticker's CUSIP; 831 reported long positions out of 834 filers). Waste Connections carries a single CUSIP in this aggregation (94106B101), and the backfill fixtures' by-CUSIP row matches the by-ticker row exactly on every field — holders (834), long holders (831), shares (215,433,951), reported value ($34,056,347,894), prior holders (784) and prior reported value ($28,452,165,816). The by-ticker file's entered/exited fields (770 and 720, a net of +50 that matches the change in holder count) are gross flows, so this audit headlines the net change. Reported-value caution: the aggregate value ($34,056,347,894 over 215,433,951 shares) implies $158.08 per share against a June 30, 2026 close of $166.69 in our price file, a gap of -5.16%. The aggregate sums the VALUE of every information-table row — including put and call option rows — while the share count covers long common-stock rows only, so we headline filer and share counts and label dollar values "reported."
• Insider lens: full-parse Form 4 aggregation (agg_by_ticker), record as of October 2, 2026 (109 filings). Sale and purchase counts are transaction-code counts (S and P) in non-derivative rows; grants and exercises are not counted as purchases, and one filing can contain many transaction rows. The 90-day window (July 5 to October 2, 2026) holds 0 purchase transactions and 6 sale transactions (8,061 shares, $1,358,603.96, 0 buyers, 4 sellers, 6 officer sale transactions) across 5 filings. The one-year window (October 3, 2025 to October 2, 2026) holds 1 purchase transaction (50,000 shares, $7,611,750.00, 1 buyer, 1 officer purchase transaction) and 16 sales (38,966 shares, $6,460,355.45, 10 sellers, 15 officer sale transactions) across 58 filings, and the full record holds the same single purchase and 28 sales (84,565 shares, $15,132,015.44, 13 sellers, 26 officer sale transactions). The site's insider aggregate (90-day window, as of October 18, 2026) matches the full parse's 90-day window for this name exactly: 0 purchases, 6 sale transactions, 4 sellers and $1,358,603.96 of sale value on both sides. Window price checks on our price file: the single purchase implies $152.24 per share (the exact division is $152.235), inside the one-year close range ($149.02 to $178.54) and the full-period range ($114.80 to $199.95); the sales imply $168.54 per share in the 90-day window, inside its close range ($150.66 to $174.33); $165.79 over one year, inside its range ($149.02 to $178.54); and $178.94 over the full record, inside its full-period range ($114.80 to $199.95) — so dollar totals are cited for every window.
• 13D/G lens: full-parse SC 13D/G parsed filings (3 filings matching issuer CIK 1318220 on CUSIP 94106B101: 0 SC 13D family filings, 3 SC 13G family filings — 1 SC 13G and 2 SC 13G/A, 2 of them amendments), filings through April 28, 2026. The site aggregation carries this name under a ticker-keyed row; that row (3 filings, 0 D-filings, 3 G-filings, 2 amendments, 2 reporters, latest date April 28, 2026, maximum 12.28%, total reported 51,493,249 shares) matches the parsed filings on filings, form mix, amendments, latest date, maximum and the cross-date reported total. The total sums reporter rows across filings and dates, so it is a filing-volume total, not a stake; the separate Vanguard names (The Vanguard Group, Vanguard Capital Management) are reported exactly as they appear in each file and are never summed. The maximum of 12.28% is The Vanguard Group's print of 31,584,815 shares as of September 30, 2025 (filed October 31, 2025, SC 13G/A); the same name printed 0 shares at 0.0% as of March 13, 2026 (filed March 27, 2026, SC 13G/A). The latest filing prints Vanguard Capital Management at 19,908,434 shares (7.78%) as of March 31, 2026 (filed April 28, 2026, SC 13G). The parsed coverage for this issuer holds these 3 filings; a 5% holder that has not filed in the covered window would not appear here.
• Congress lens: Senate PTR archive and House PTR archive as maintained on this site. The combined record (as of October 3, 2026) carries no row for this name; the House aggregate (as of October 3, 2026) carries no row; the Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) carries no row. No member count, transaction count or date can be stated for this lens, because the aggregates hold no entry at all — the lens is reported as "None" in the summary table and in the text, as this series requires for an absent lens.
• Short interest lens: FINRA Equity Short Interest files (biweekly settlement dates), collected directly from FINRA's public distribution. This is the standard single-symbol case: the series is every row under symbol WCN, all 137 of them under the single issuer name "Waste Connections, Inc." exactly as printed in the files (the market-class column reads NYSE on every row), covering 137 settlements from January 15, 2021 (1,678,511 shares) to September 15, 2026, with all 137 settlement dates distinct. The latest reading is 3,421,015 shares on September 15, 2026, down 10.84% from the prior settlement (3,836,909 on August 31, 2026), up 15.2% from the June 30, 2026 settlement of 2,969,730 and up 80.4% from the year-ago settlement of 1,896,540 on September 15, 2025, at 3.68 days to cover. The series maximum is 4,010,024 on November 15, 2022 and the series minimum is 948,550 on March 31, 2022. Series discontinuity check — none: no single-settlement step in the series reaches 2 times (the largest step is 1.506x, on July 31, 2023) and none falls to 0.5 times or below (the smallest step is 0.557x, on March 31, 2022), and our own daily price file holds no single-day move of 1.5 times or more, or 0.6 times or less, anywhere in its history. Exactly two rows in the series carry a FINRA flag — a revision flag ("R") on June 15, 2021, at 2,066,084 shares, and on November 28, 2025, at 2,190,567 shares — and no row carries a stock-split flag. The full series is published as collected, with no smoothing or rebasing. The recent path runs 2,969,730 (June 30), 3,084,063 (July 15), 3,199,435 (July 31), 3,677,228 (August 14), 3,836,909 (August 31) and 3,421,015 (September 15). FINRA publishes each settlement about two weeks after the fact, so the October price action is not yet in this series. The share-count ratio (1.36%) uses the fundamentals file's shares-outstanding figure below.
• Fundamentals note: our fundamentals collection carries Waste Connections' revenue of $9,466,915,000, net income of $1,076,557,000 and assets of $21,129,363,000, all three sourced to the financial-series cache and all labelled fiscal 2025, so this name carries no fiscal-vintage split. The file is marked ok for this name, with no missing fields: shares outstanding of 252,049,532 (sourced in the file to the DEI entity-common-stock shares-outstanding count, with a shares-end date of July 10, 2026) and a file-computed market value of $38,971,897,407.13. The file does not flag the issuer as a foreign private issuer, and it carries SIC 4953, Refuse Systems, and a NYSE listing. The file's price for the name is $154.62 as of October 6, 2026; our daily-close file ends October 2, 2026 at $153.82, and we keep the two files' figures separate rather than blending them.
• Prices: our own daily-close file for WCN through October 2, 2026 ($153.82 close, -12.3% year to date on that file; the 252-session closing high is $178.54 on December 29, 2025, so the last close sits 13.8% below it; the 252-session closing low is $149.02 on May 29, 2026, so the last close sits 3.2% above it; closes of $162.44 at March 31, 2026 and $166.69 at June 30, 2026, a second-quarter change of +2.6%; change from June 30 to October 2 of -7.7%; change from the September 30, 2025 close of $175.80 of -12.5%). The series in our price file begins June 1, 2021 at $120.68 and holds 1,342 rows.
• Market context sources: the TipRanks Trending Stocks by Analyst screener (full-page crawl, October 19, 2026), on which Waste Connections followed SCHW and SMTC at the top of the page's order, covered names (BAC, RKLB, JBHT, BNY, BLK, ARWR, TRGP, EQT and TXRH among them) and skipped names (TSM, IBKR, PNC, TTE and EADSF, skipped as recorded in earlier runs; AZN, FHN and ARBFF, skipped in this run as recorded in the selection notes), and was listed as a Strong Buy with a price target of $197.65 (17.72% upside as printed), 3 Buy, 1 Hold and 0 Sell ratings, a printed change of +7.28%, a market value of $42.21B as printed, in Industrials, dated October 15, 2026 on the page. Figures we could not confirm were left out; the external items above are reported speech from that outlet, not GetCoattail measurements, and none of its price figures are cited in this audit beyond the screener's printed target and market value as reported in The Hype.
• Waste Connections is in the GetCoattail stock-page universe: Waste Connections (WCN) stock page. Series data: wcn_lens_data.csv · wcn_short_interest_series.csv. Earlier audits: EQT Corp · Texas Roadhouse.

Past patterns are not a promise of future results. For education only — not investment advice.

This article describes public filings as of the dates stated. It is not investment advice and makes no recommendation. Filings lag reality: 13F positions are as of June 30, 2026, and later trading is not yet public.

Revision history: v1.0 — October 19, 2026: first publication.