Security National reports year end 2019

April 13, 2020/Finance/

Security National Financial Corporation (SNFC), the Utah public company that is partly rooted in the preneed funeral insurance and mortuary/cemetery business, recently reported its 2019 year end financial results. You can read the company’s press release on the results here.

The results do say, “For the twelve months ended December 31, 2019, SNFC’s after-tax earnings from operations decreased 49.8% from $21.6 million in 2018 to $10.8 million in 2019, on a 1.2% increase in revenues to over $283 million.

However, from our point of view at Funeral Director Daily, those numbers don’t really reflect the true nature of the company’s business in 2019. As the report states, “Excluding extraordinary items, meaning the gain from the sale of our Dry Creek Apartments in 2018 and the write down on our Wichita office building in 2019, our pre-tax Operational Earnings increased from $3.9 million in 2018 to $16.6 million in 2019 or a 322% improvement.” As a matter of fact, the report continues to state, “While it is true that much of that improvement was centered in our mortgage segment, all of our business segments experienced significant and measurable operational improvement in 2019.”

We also must herald that while we noticed the operational improvement in SNFC during 2019, they also accomplished the acquisition of the Kilpatrick Life Insurance Company. We expect this acquisition will make SNFC a bigger player in the preneed business of our profession going forward.

Finally, we read through the press release where Chairman of the Board, President and CEO Scott Quist commented on the changing face of the transactional side of pre-arrangements and funeral arrangements in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is what he said, “Traditionally a large percentage of our new customer sales activity has been consumer direct in-home sales. Such in-home transactions are becoming increasingly rare. We have reacted speedily with video and other remotely based sales presentation capabilities. The training of our sales force and the market acceptance of such new sales methods remains to be seen. Even where there is consistent demand, such as in funeral services, providing those services in today’s environment has been challenging.”

Security National Financial Corporation breaks out numbers in its financial report for the Life Insurance segment, the Cemetery/Mortuary segment, and the Mortgages segment of its operation. Security National Financial Corporation is a member of the Funeral Director Daily “Death Care Index” (DCI).

More from death care public company releases:

StoneMor completes sale of Olivet Memorial Park in Coma, California. Yahoo Finance.