Funeral home and cemetery products supplier Matthews International reported their January thru March 2026 earnings on April 30.  The next day company CEO Joseph Bartolacci and company CFO Daniel Stopar answered questions from stock analysts pertaining to that earnings report.  As you may know Matthews International is the parent company of Matthews Environment Solutions (cremation products), Matthews Aurora Caskets, Matthews Bronze (cemetery products), and the Dodge Company (chemicals and more).

 

As is our custom Funeral Director Daily provides you with what we believe are highlights of that call for our profession and also offer the transcript of that call in its entirety here.

 

Here are what we believe some of the highlights pertaining to the Death Care profession were:

 

CEO Joseph Bartolacci in his opening statement referring to the company’s Memorialization segment:

“The Memorialization business continues to be the engine that drives this company. Our Cornerstone (Memorialization) segment reported sales of $215 million for the second quarter, an almost 5% increase over the prior year and adjusted EBITDA of $49 million, up 8% year-over-year. For the first half of fiscal 2026, sales grew to $419 million and adjusted EBITDA grew to $88 million. This segment continues to perform well. The Dodge acquisition continues to contribute meaningfully, adding approximately $10 million in sales per quarter and is ahead of our EBITDA targets.

 

Our team has done an excellent job integrating Dodge, and we are now realizing the cost and commercial synergies we expected when the deal was first identified. After accounting for asset monetization and working capital actions, we expect the adjusted purchase price of Dodge to be under $50 million with EBITDA contributions exceeding $12 million. This will stand as another highly accretive acquisition for our shareholders.

 

We are also seeing continued strength in mausoleum construction orders through our Gibraltar Mausoleum business, which not only generates good margins directly, but pulls through demand for bronze letterering, bases and other memorialization products. Pricing realization remains solid in the business, and we continue to benefit from productivity improvements across the segment. We believe there are more M&A opportunities in the memorialization space that look like Dodge, highly accretive, strategic, defensible market positions. Our relationships in this industry are deep and long-standing, and we are positioned well to move when the time is right.”

 

CFO Daniel Stopar in his opening remarks pertaining to the company’s Memorialization segment:

“Sales for the Memorialization segment for the second quarter of fiscal 2026 were $215.3 million compared to $205.6 million for the same quarter a year ago. The Dodge acquisition contributed sales of approximately $11 million to the quarter. Sales volumes for caskets and cemetery memorials declined in the quarter due to lower estimated U.S. casketed death rates. Sales of cremation equipment and mausoleums were also lower in the current quarter.

 

These volume declines were partially offset by the impact of inflationary price increases. Memorialization segment adjusted EBITDA for the current quarter was $48.8 million compared to $45 million for the same quarter last year. The increase was primarily contributed by the Dodge acquisition. Benefits from inflationary price realization and cost savings initiatives were partially offset by the impact of lower sales volume, combined with higher labor and material costs.” 

 

CEO Joseph Bartolacci answers a question about integrating Aurora Casket customers into Dodge customers and other cross-selling opportunities for Matthews:

“First off, with regard to our forecast looking for the balance of the year, I would tell our volume to be stable to modestly down. If you listen to some of our customers’ earnings calls, you will recognize that Casket has had a pretty low period this past quarter. We performed better than that because of some things that we’ve done internally, both the addition of Dodge and pricing and frankly, some better execution in other markets that we serve.

 

As we move forward through the balance of the year, we are in the midst of doing some cross-selling activities trying to get both Dodge customers to become our customers on the Casket and Bronze side and our customers become Dodge customers as well. That — those efforts are baked into our forecast looking forward. Hopefully, they will be successful, but that’s part of the synergy expectations we’re going again.”

 

CEO Joseph Bartolacci answer a question about other opportunities that may be in the market to acquire that would offer more of this “synergic” qualities such as the Dodge acquisition has:

“Yes. I mean, obviously, we are always in the market, and there’s always a few things that are floating around. I wouldn’t say there’s a lot of inbounds, but there are opportunities out there. We’ll pick timing based on when it’s right for us as well as when others are ready to sell. There still are small opportunities like that.

 

As I said in my portion of the call, I mean these are highly accretive over a wonderful base that we have. So we expect to be able to pull those off. I just can’t pick the timing of them all the time.”

 

CEO Joseph Bartolacci answers this question, “On memorialization, did it actually perform better than you expected in the quarter or about in line?”

” . . .the quarter actually performed better at an execution level, worse at a revenue level. If you listen to one of our customers yesterday report, they reported a 4.5% decline in casketed deaths. We are well below that. Our volumes and Memorial — and our volumes in the casket business are well below that number. So we’ve overperformed that level, but we were not anticipating that.

 

Largely that had to do with an early flu season. We had strong results in our November and December period that we did not carry forward. So volumes were modestly lower than we would have expected. Price is consistent with what we had expected and — but execution was even better.”

 

Funeral Director Daily take:  Maybe it is just perception but I sense a movement at Matthews International to take their Memorialization Segment more seriously as a great asset moving forward.  Earlier in 2026, Matthews International reached an agreement with hedge fund Matthews International investor Barington Capital.  Prior to that time, Barington Capital had been advocating for Matthews International to increase shareholder value via better allocation of the company’s capital.

 

It’s my opinion that the Memorialization segment will benefit from this apparent re-direction of capital allocation at Matthews.

 

More news from the world of Death Care:

• New Digital platform helps funeral directors tackle Uk’s reluctance to plan for death.  Newsby Wire (Great Britain)
• “They’re reunited with the earth”:  Plainfield Township permits green burials in cemetery.  Video news story and print article.  Fox 17 – West Michigan (MI)
• Stones River National Battlefield Cemetery preservation workshop at historic Lytle Cemetery.  National Park Service

 

Enter your e-mail below to join the 3,201 others who receive Funeral Director Daily articles daily

“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”