Oksana Vakun

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
The study provides a comparative empirical assessment of the financial stability of waste management companies in Ukraine and the EU under geopolitical fragmentation and war-induced shocks. The sample includes 2,371 firms from the Orbis database operating in waste collection, recycling, and disposal from 2019 to 2023. The methodology combines correlation analysis, K-means clustering, and robustness checks using hierarchical and DBSCAN algorithms. Financial stability is measured by liquidity, solvency, and profitability. Wartime data gaps are addressed using median and k-NN imputation. The results identify three financial profiles (resilient, balanced, at-risk) in both regions but reveal profound structural asymmetries. In the EU, even at-risk companies maintain positive solvency (13.9%) and marginal ROA (0.81%), reflecting stable institutional conditions. In contrast, Ukrainian at-risk firms exhibit critical financial distress, with near-zero solvency (0.09%) and deeply negative profitability (ROA (–11.2%), ROE (–15.9%)), indicating capital destruction due to war-related shocks. A key finding is the weakening of financial coherence in Ukraine, with a significantly lower correlation between ROA and liquidity (0.60) than in the EU (0.78), confirming a structural break after 2022. Additionally, resilient Ukrainian firms show abnormally high liquidity (Current Ratio 7.91 vs. 3.51 in the EU), indicating precautionary cash hoarding and investment paralysis under extreme uncertainty. The findings confirm that geopolitical shocks transform financial behavior, whereby EU companies maintain efficiency-driven models and Ukrainian firms shift toward survival-oriented strategies. The study offers micro-level evidence of war-induced disruption to financial stability and proposes policy measures for recapitalization, green finance, and alignment with EU sustainability frameworks.