The Death Care Index and an Upwards Earning Trend

Funeral Director Daily has established the DCI or Death Care Index for eight publicly traded companies that operate in the death care industry.  The companies, all headquartered in North America, operate in the financial (preneed) sector, the manufacturing (caskets and monuments) sector, or the retail (funeral home and cemetery) sector.

The companies include Security National Financial Corporation, Service Corporation International, Hillenbrand Industries, Matthews International, Assurant, StoneMor Partners, Carriage Services, and Park Lawn Corporation.  The last time we tracked the stocks was six months ago on April 20, 2018, and if you owned one share of each stock you would have held a value of $292.24.  As of the close of business Friday the DCI Index stood at $289.04, down 1% from April 20.  In comparison, the S&P 500 had moved on those dates from 2670 to 2767 – a growth of 3.6%.

As can be expected with an almost flat DCI since April 20, four of our companies are up in share price and four are down in share price.  Assurant has led the way with a 13.6% increase in those six months followed by SCI, which has grown at a 12.5% clip.  Leading laggards include both Carriage Services and Park Lawn Corporation.

However, the very positive news for the DCI is that of the six companies that analysts have predicted earnings during this next earnings period over the next three weeks, five of those six companies are expected to have earnings that are higher than the same period of one year ago.  According to E-Trade this morning, predicted earnings per share for the quarter for the following companies are as such:

  • SCI                                        $0.36 per share as compared to $0.33 last year
  • Hillenbrand Industry       $0.67 per share as compared to $0.62 last year
  • Matthews International  $1.22 per share as compared to $1.06 last year
  • Assurant                             $1.62 per share as compared to a loss of ($1.40) last year
  • Carriage Services              $0.22 per share as compared to $0.25 last year
  • Park Lawn Corp                $C 0.18  per share as compared to $C 0.14  last year

StoneMor Partners and Security National Financial Corporation do not have earnings estimates via E-Trade analysts.

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1 Comment

  1. Duey on October 22, 2018 at 12:22 pm

    I can only imagine how much greater Batesville stock price would be if I was still selling for them! Ha Ha!



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