Park Lawn Corporation, the Toronto based funeral home and cemetery consolidator, released their 4th quarter and Year End 2017 results last week.  Andrew Clark, Chairman and CEO of the company stated in the release, “Overall the company continued to grow in 2017, while improving its margin profile.”  He continued, “Our goals for 2018 include increased organic revenue growth across the entire portfolio while enhancing per share numbers and continuing to explore accretive acquisition opportunities.”  You can read the company press release here.

The company included the following among their highlights for 2017:

• Completing a financial raise of over $80 million in June 2017.  As of March 2018 the company states that this capital is completely deployed.
• Acquiring Saber Management which operates 19 cemetery and four funeral home properties in the United States.
• Closing a credit facility bringing borrowing capacity to $125 million
• Acquiring 10 funeral homes in Canada expanding their footprint there.
• Opening a new mausoleum at a cemetery in Toronto

The company also noted, however, that their Midwest Memorial Group subsidiary, which consists of 28 Michigan cemeteries, experienced a decline in revenue for the year.

The press release ends noting that Park Lawn Corporation and its subsidiaries own and operate 102 businesses in five Canadian provinces and six U.S. states.

Funeral Director Daily take:  We sensed that when Park Lawn Corporation went public they would be aggressive in their nature.  As you can see, they have been – and they continue to be.  Not done in 2017, but closed in March 2018 was their $50 million purchase of CMS Mid-Atlantic — a group of six cemeteries in New York and New Jersey.

It will be interesting to watch the company moving forward.  With Midwest Memorial Group, Saber Management, and now CMS Mid-Atlantic they have jumped into the United States “traditional” cemetery business pretty heavily.  How they manage those entities going forward will tell a lot about how the future will go for them.

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