Matthews 1Q Fiscal 2026: Streamlined company shows Memorialization Segment rise in revenue

February 6, 2026/Finance/

When it is all said and done, corporate conglomerate Matthews International, with a heavy presence in Death Care, will probably be glad that they have left Fiscal Year 2025 behind and are charging into Fiscal Year 2026.

FY2025 found Matthews streamline their company by divesting their SGK unit and, while technically FY2026, the announced the sale of their warehouse automation business in November 2025. The sale of those units helped lower debt levels and, in the case of SGK, Matthews continues to own a 40% financial share of the new company formed by that divestiture, Propelis.

Those divestitures led to an anticipated drop in FY1Q sales for 2026 to $284.7 million as compared to FY1Q 2025 corporate sales of $401.8 million. That’s a decrease of over 29%. You can access the company’s FY2026 1Q report here.

Undoubtably, the highlight in the sales department for Matthews International for the 1st Quarter of FY2026 (which encompasses the months of October, November, and December 2025) would be the increase in sales for the company’s Memorialization Segment. The Memorialization Segement recorded sales of $204.1 million as compared to the same period a year ago of $190.4 million — that’s an increase of almost 7.2%,

Furthermore, the importance of the Memorialization Segment was illustrated as those $204.1 in segment sales represented almost 72% of overall company sales. That’s the largest percentage that we remember for as long as we have been reporting this news with Funeral Director Daily.

Here’s what Matthews International President and CEO Joseph C. Bartolacci said of the Memorialization Segment in prepared remarks from the company’s earnings statement, “Sales for the Memorialization segment for the fiscal 2026 first quarter were higher than a year ago primarily reflecting the recent acquisition of The Dodge Company. We expect this acquisition to be nicely accretive to earnings as we leverage the benefits of our Memorialization commercial platform and have already begun to realize cost synergies from integration. Inflationary price realization and higher sales volumes for caskets and cemetery memorials also contributed to sales growth in the quarter. The earnings impact of these sales increases and benefits from the segment’s ongoing productivity initiatives were significant factors in the segment’s improved operating margins.”

Related Information — Press Release: Matthews International declares Quarterly Dividend

Funeral Director Daily take: It will be interesting to see where Matthews International goes from here. It appears, that with the sale of the SGK brand unit, that they are down to two operating segments: Memorialization and Industrial Technologies. However, while the Industrial Technologies Segment may have some promising things in the pipeline, the sales of the segment dropped from $80.5 million in FY2025 1Q to $69.0 million this past quarter.

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