As Funeral Director Daily starts to roll-out our product to the death care industry we will continue to feature one article per day on an industry happening and give our opinion on that article to be used for the benefit of our readers.  While we have tested our ideas and system we have also realized that there is a lot happening in the industry that just doesn’t get reported.  To that end, we will be, periodically, offering a “Snip-It’ column on happenings in the industry.  When we do this we will not give as in-depth analysis as our daily articles but, most often, just give the link for our readers to connect to.

So, here is today’s “Snip-It” column on some news that occurred in the industry last week.

• California continues to report high cremation rates.  According to an article on Southern California Public Radio cremation continues to move upward in California.  They mention that the rate was 63.4% in 2015 and not expected to go down.  NFDA staffer Stephen Kemp is quoted as saying, “California families move around a lot.”  He also mentions that fact as a reason that Californians look for portable options to death care.  Finally, the article mentions a little about the potential for alkaline hydrolysis to be legalized as a form of disposition in the state.

• Profits at Dignity in the United Kingdom rose by 9% in the first half of 2016 to US $58m on sales of US $221m.  The number of deaths was up 2%.  Dignity UK also acquired 14 locations in the first half of the year for a total aggregate price of about US $30m.  You can read about here from the UK Telegraph.

• According to a story in the River City News, the city of Erlanger, Kentucky will be getting a new funeral home.  A small notice says that the old Aldi Grocery Store property in that city has had an application and issued a permit to a company named Kentucky Funeral Services, LLC and owned by an un-named company out of Topeka, Kansas.  The article also states that there will be no crematory at the new location.  Funeral Director Daily take:  This sounds like it may be a new location for national chain Newcomer Funeral Service.  They have been highly successful opening consumer conscious funeral homes in remodeled buildings and they are headquartered in Topeka.

• Carriage Services has been downgraded by Zack’s Investment Research to a sell position from a hold position following their latest earnings report.  You can read about it here.  Funeral Director Daily take:  As you remember from their quarterly earnings report of about 10 days ago, Carriage Services slightly missed the Revenue projections analysts had expected and also missed on the earnings estimates that analysts had projected.

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