A review of 2025 from a “Change/Trend” perspective

December 29, 2025/Business/

Tomorrow Funeral Director Daily will unveil its “2025 Business Story of the Year” where I will tell you what I believe is an interesting trend in the Business and Finance of the Death Care profession. It is a trend that I believe will change Death Care ownership in larger volume and faster than I think we anticipate.

Today, however, as America’s most widely read Death Care profession daily newsletter I will re-cap and comment on some of the Funeral Director Daily articles that have been written about business and finance in 2025. These articles generally have to do with interesting acquisitions, private equity funding into differing areas of Death Care, and just some interesting topics.

These Funeral Director Daily articles are chronologically presented with rank of interest or importance not being a consideration. The commonality of these articles is that the news presented in each article has the potential to change some direction of Death Care.

Private Equity makes investment in Alkaline Hydrolysis — An article about 3 Boomerang Investments making an investment in alkaline hydrolysis supplier Bio Response Solutions. Private equity money taking a positive stance and flowing into this niche disposition method should allow for more rapid growth in the alkaline hydrolysis space.

Matthews acquires The Dodge Company— This article announces that Matthews International has acquired The Dodge Company, best known for their line of preparation room chemicals. Taken from the context that Matthews International has been criticized by some stockholders for their overall corporate management, my point of view is that this acquisition which grows their Memorialization Segment confirms that the Memorialization Segment is “here to stay” with Matthews.

Memorialization is Matthews’ largest by revenue segment and it is my opinion that the company should try to strengthen it even further rather than spinning it off. I think this acquisition was one way to do so.

Death Care is “Expanding”. . . .this articles points to the areas where — The expression that “a rising tide lifts all boats” could be attached to this article. For years, “Death Care” has brought in revenue in the funeral home and cemetery markets and most of the growth of one player was the result of lost revenue by another player — i.e. market share shifts and a small annual population growth were the only real growth that the market saw.

This article points out that Death Care, by defininition is expanding, and the entire industry will have growth that will come from technological offerings and other new products and services being sought by consumers. This article creates a positive vibe that “Death Care” expenditures will grow in totality via these new offerings. A funeral home or cemetery’s job is to find out how they can prosper from this anticipated increase of revenue.

Foundation Partners Group announces new ownership — For years there have been lots of speculation surrounding Foundation Partners Group and their private equity partner about being able to turn a “cremation centric” national acquistion company into a profitable venture. So, it didn’t come as a surprise to many in the profession that a news release from the company announcing new ownership came out in August 2025.

According to this recent article from the Foundation Partner Group website, CEO John Smith says the company “(is) going to pause on acquisitions and take all this stuff we have and turn it into a real operating company. We’re going to grow our market share and profitability by serving families better than our competitors — with the team we already have.”

So. . new owners, new direction. . . .and now, it seems the challenge will be in turning a cremation-centric Death Care company into a profitable Death Care company.

Pension funds investment in cremation is an interesting development — Pension funds historically invest for the “long-term”. They invest money that is intended to grow and then be paid out to pensioners over what can be a 40-year period. In practicality pension investments don’t need to be “home run” investments overnight but need to be, in baseball lingo, “a continual barrage of singles”.

Pensions have historically invested in Death Care company stock holdings such as Service Corporation International. However, what makes one of British pension fund manager Railpin’s latest investments unique is that it is the purchase of a company named Horizon. Horizon operates three crematoria in Great Britain in a B2B operating model much like United States use of trade crematories.

In the article fund manager Railpin makes the case that Great Britain’s cremation infrastructure is very old and they see a “clear demographic need” for new high-quality crematoria that can win business over time.

In the USA we’ve seen the influence of private equity on the purchase of funeral home and cemetery operating companies. . . . Will we soon see pension funds join the Death Care enterprise with investments such as Railpins purchase of Horizon in Great Britain?

More news from the world of Death Care: