Carriage Services Announces Acquisition

Earlier this week public funeral home consolidator and operating company Carriage Services announced the acquisition of the Presley Funeral Home in Cookeville, Tennessee.  You can see the company press release here.

According to the release, Presley Funeral Home owner Bryant Presley will continue employment as the Managing Partner of the firm.  Presley said, “My family and I are very excited and very much look forward to our partnership with Carriage Services so that we can keep growing Presley Funeral Home and become even better positioned to offer high value personal service to even more families in our community and its surrounding areas.”

Carriage Services now operates 181 funeral homes in 29 states and 32 cemeteries in 11 states.

Funeral Director Daily take:  We believe that we have an idea of the funeral homes that Carriage Services target and this funeral home appears to be in alignment with our thinking.  Presley Funeral Home is located in Tennessee, a state that ranks as one of the lowest in percentage cremations conducted.  Latest CANA statistics (2016) indicate that the state of Tennessee has a 33.1% of cremations to all dispositions.

In our opinion, one downside of acquiring a low percentage cremation business is that the trend is that these firms will move upward in cremation rates that will will bring downside pressure on revenues per case.  However, it also appears to us that Carriage Services targets fast-growing population centers that can somewhat remediate this issue.

This acquisition also works into Carriage Services ever increasing clustering process.  According to their web-site it will be the 11th funeral home either located in Tennessee or just over the border in the adjoining states of Georgia and Kentucky.

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