Matthews International Fiscal 3Q report: Challenges seem to be everywhere

August 11, 2026/Finance/

You don’t have to rely on my perception to come to the conclusion about the headline for this article. . . . Here are the prepared remarks from Matthews International’s CEO Joseph Bartolacci as presented in the company’s fiscal 3rd Quarter report of 2026 which you can access here:

“The fiscal 2026 third quarter was a challenging quarter for us across all business segments. We continue to experience delays in the energy storage solutions business which are expected to extend through the balance of the fiscal year. Despite winning a significant new coating & converting order this quarter, the project has not contributed significantly to our financial results as of yet. In response to these challenges, we have taken difficult but necessary action to reduce the cost base of this business by $10 million annually. Additionally, our flagship Memorialization businesses continue to experience headwinds in terms of lower volumes combined with input costs escalating beyond inflationary price increases. Lastly, while the anticipated synergy benefits at The Propelis Group (“Propelis”) are now beginning to scale, our expectations of the timing to realize those synergies has not been achieved, resulting in an estimated $5 million shortfall to our full year forecast. . . . ”

And, Bartolacci’s comments didn’t seem to get any better when he spoke of the Memorialization segment on its own merits as his prepared remarks about that segment included the following statement:

“Sales for the Memorialization segment for the fiscal 2026 third quarter were higher than a year ago primarily reflecting the recent acquisition of The Dodge Company. This acquisition continues to be nicely accretive to earnings as we leverage the benefits of our Memorialization commercial platform and have already realized the majority of targeted cost synergies. Sales volumes of caskets and cemetery memorials continued to be a headwind in the quarter due to lower estimated U.S. casketed deaths, which was compounded by escalating input costs. Inflationary price realization only partially offset the impact of these factors on our profitability for the quarter.”

As you may know, Matthews is known in the Death Care business for their Matthews Aurora Funeral Solutions division which includes Aurora Casket, their Matthews Cemetery and Granite units, Matthews Environmental which includes the Matthews cremation products, and more.

As Matthews International, overall, makes substantial changes to its business it is difficult to assess the comparisons with previous years. However, the Memorialization segment has remained pretty much intact and shows a growth in Sales Revenue for the first nine-months of Fiscal Year 2026 of 4.7% from $599.8 million in Fiscal 2025 to $627.4 million in Fiscal 2026.

EBITDA for the Memorialization segment has also increased from $124.4 million in Fiscal 2025 to $130.0 million in Fiscal 2026.

The entire company has reported sales of $1.178 billion so far for the first nine months of Fiscal 2026. Of those sales, $627.4 million are atrributed to sales in the Memorialization segment. That means that Memorialization has contributed about 53% of the total sales of the company.

Reliance on Memorialization seems to be getting stronger, however. For the three-month period ended on June 30, 2026, Memorialization segment sales totaled $208 million out of the total company sales of $246 million or a whopping 84.6% of total sales.

In the near future we will continue with coverage of Matthews International by publishing exerpts from the company’s Earnings Call with stock market analysts.

Funeral Director Daily take: