Funeral Director Daily published this article about 17 months ago that was headlined “Carriage Services’ Mel Payne transitions to advisory role at company”.   The article went on to say that Mr. Payne, who was the founder, Chairman, and CEO of Carriage Services had been in those positions since 1991.

If you have watched Carriage Services since the time of that article 17 months ago you would notice that the leadership team of Carlos Quezada, John Enright, and Steve Metzger have been, in my words, “putting the house in order“.  It appears that in the last year and a half the leadership team has been busy building partnerships with suppliers, strategically reducing debt, and selectively divesting of funeral homes and cemeteries that don’t seem to fit the company’s criteria.

One of the criticisms of Carriage Services in that time of adjustment has been that some in the investment community have not had the patience that the management team has had about future acquisitions to grow the company.  The 2nd Quarter 2025 report, that you can read here, should quiet that group down as in the report Carriage Vice-Chairman and CEO Carlos Quezada made this prepared comment, “. . . .we are excited to announce that we are under contract to acquire new businesses, which we anticipate will close this quarter. Combined, these premier locations served more than 2,600 families and generated more than $15 million in revenue last year. We are excited to return to our long-term strategy of adding shareholder value through high-quality acquisitions.”

The financial results for the quarter for Carriage Services show Total Revenue slightly down — from $102.3 million in 2Q24 to $102.1 million in 2Q24.  However, if you deduct a $2 million revenue figure in 2Q24 for “Divestment” Revenue, then Total Revenue would be up about 2%.

For the first-half of 2025 Total Revenue came in at $209.2 million . . slightly up from the first-half of 2024 where Total Revenue came in at $205.8 million.  Again, the 2025 revenue number would is more impressive when you consider that one-time “Divestment” revenue from the first-half of 2024 is about $3.3 million greater than the same category in 2025.

When it comes to Net Income from Consolidated Operations Carriage Services 2Q25 number in that category came in at $11.7 million as compared to the 2Q24 number of $6.2 million. For the first 6-months of 2025 Carriage showed a Net Income of $32.6 million as compared to the 2024 Net Income for the same period of $13.2 million.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  What do they say?  Patience is a virtue?  I think that this report continues to illustrate how the management team at Carriage Services has a plan and are executing on that plan.  And, they believe in what they are doing.

From my point of view, as an outsider but also as an individual stockholder, I can visualize the plan.  To me, it appears that the management team has analyzed the company’s situation and are taking the steps to make it better.  I see a management team that values “quality” over “quantity”.  In June of 2024 Carriage Services stated that they had 165 funeral homes and 31 cemeteries under their umbrella.  In this latest report they have stated that they have 159 funeral homes and 28 cemeteries — that’s almost a 5% reduction in number of facilities.

So, there has been some divestitures of properties for some reason.  Maybe because of underperformance, or maybe a facility was not located in the geographical sphere that the group wants to be in, or maybe the facility was not located in a demographically advantageous area.  Whatever the reason, one number that I ascertain from that is that even with about 5% less facilities the revenue numbers between 2Q24 and 2Q25 are almost equal.

One conclusion to that mathematical equation could be that Carriage Services must be getting, on average, more revenue per location which can only be a positive in my eyes.  And, if you are gaining revenue per location that beats the alternative and one can be hopeful that Carriage can duplicate that feat with the new acquisitions they are pursuing.

Disclaimer —  The author of this article for Funeral Director Daily is a shareholder of Carriage Services.

More news from the world of Death Care:

• North Country at Work:  Helping people through loss in a Booneville funeral home.  Podcast and print article.  North Carolina Public Radio  (NC)
• Funeral home cremates woman’s remains, 13 years later gets gets unexpected call.  Newsweek
• Fired Texas Funeral Commission staffers allege unethical behavior, retaliation by agency head.  Podcast and print article.  KERA News — National Public Radio for North Texas (TX)

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