Carriage Services, one of three public funeral home and cemetery companies that are required to release finanical information to the public did so for their 3rd Quarter of 2026 last week.  They also held an Earnings Call with stock analysts which included opening statements and a question and answer period with those analysts.  As is our custom at Funeral Director Daily we give you access to that Earnings Call and also highlight some of the statements and answers to those questions from company executives.

 

As always we do so without our commentary.  Following are what we believe to be highlights of the Earnings Call.

 

 

Vice Chairman an CEO Carlos Quezada explains the comparable revenue shortfall to the 3rd Quarter of 2025 in his opening statement.

 

“Turning to our financial results. Third quarter total revenue was $100.3 million, a decline of 2.4% compared to the prior year, primarily reflecting weaker cemetery preneed sales. Funeral comparable revenue increased 3.6% to $56.8 million, supported by improved contract volume and average revenue per contract. Cemetery comparable revenue declined 7.8% to $32.5 million. Comparable cemetery preneed sales totaled $25.7 million, a decline of 4.8% for the quarter, although production remains relatively flat for the first 9 months of the year. Our cemetery preneed performance has not made our standard this year, and we are taking decisive action to improve this area.”

 

In response to the question “Is the weakness concentrated in a few large properties or broad-based across the 28 cemeteries?”, Vice-Chairman and CEO Carlos Quezada gave this response:

 

“So as we look at the analysis, and we did — I’m going to give you some year-to-date numbers, it’s pretty clear that it’s highly concentrated in the California cemeteries. As we look at year-to-date, we look at California being down 7.1% on preneed cemetery property, where everywhere else is up 10.1%. And it seems like a very highly focused area, specifically, once you look into the different brackets of pricing within California. It’s pretty clear that the contracts between — below 10 — is really below $20,000 are the ones driving the most deficit on the preneed cemetery growth whereas contracts between $20,000 and $30,000 is up by 11 point — I’m sorry, 13.7%. So we are addressing these challenges. We’re looking if it’s an inventory issue, if it’s just a type of lead source issue to make sure that those, I call it, bread-and-butter contracts below the $20,000 average, we can target more and really get our contract count back on track in the California markets.”

 

Continuing on the preneed cemetery results this question was asked, “It sounds like you’re performing well broadly geography, except for California and it’s the low end of the market. Is it just that? Is everything operating smoothly elsewhere?”  Here is part of the answer given by Vice-Chairman and CEO Carlos Quezada:

 

“Yes. Historically speaking, we see that when there’s some discretionary spending pressures in the markets, California is one state that reacts perhaps more aggressively than other states, and it seems like we see a little bit of that there.

But that’s not the only reason why we see that decline. It’s pretty clear, and I said that in my prepared remarks and even on the release yesterday, that we — it seems like we have parted ways from some basic fundamentals for sales related to our head count target for recruiting, the training programs we have to elevate the skill set and been able to really improve the closing ratios that we have and the management of the activity related to lead generation in the sales funnel that drives the performance. And so from my point of view, we have some significant improvement to do broadly. That includes outside of the California states. But I do see it specifically to California, some additional pressure, we don’t see as much elsewhere. We are addressing that through pricing, crematory training, head count and even, as I mentioned on the prepared remarks, sales leadership improvement. But we do feel confident as we have proven in the past that our ability to drive preneed cemetery sales, diagnose the problems, execute with discipline. It is at a high level. And we believe we will be able to get back to that pretty soon.”

 

Senior VP, CFO, and Treasurer John Enwright responded to the following question regarding “margins” on the funeral side of the business, “I’m going to pop over to the funeral segment. Nice revenue growth there with some volume and revenue per service lift, but the margin didn’t expand correspondingly. So could you just speak, I guess, John, of what were some drivers impacting margin over on the funeral side in the quarter and what you think for that going forward? “:

 

“We saw some pressure in really kind of the salary and benefit line ultimately was the main driver of kind of the point erosion. There were some other pieces and parts that ultimately what I would call nonsignificant, we can work through. But ultimately, as we think about kind of the leverage and the loss of leverage, called the point, we saw that really being driven by salaries and benefits. So that will persist into the fourth quarter. But we are looking at ways to kind of manage that.”

 

In the 3Q2026 Financial Report Carriage Services announced that they have $14 million in annual revenues pretty well set in the “Acquisition pipeline” ready to close in 4Q26 or 1Q27.  A question about those pending acquisitions was asked and this is part of the answer from Carriage Services President and Chief Operating Officer Steve Metzger:

 

“So it’s funeral homes, it’s cemeteries, it’s crematories spread out through 5 different states, and it’s a mix of both new markets for us, which we’re really excited about, bigger markets that are growing that we’ve been working to get into but also increasing our presence in some markets that we’ve really been doing well in the past few years and so working to build out the presence in those markets. So it’s a really nice cross mix of all those things.

And when we talk about the pipeline, this is my ninth year at Carriage, and we’ve never been anywhere close to the number of quality conversations we’re having right now with businesses that align with our growth strategy.”

 

To access Carriage Services’ complete 3Q 2026 Earnings Call transcript from Seeking Alpha click here.  (The transcript may have a paywall).

 

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

 

More news from the world of Death Care:

• My mother donated her body to science.  I really wasn’t prepared for what came next.  The Guardian
• Small-town mortician rerouted from seminary to cemetery.  Fargo Forum (ND)
• Beck family says cemetery concerns addressed two months after Walmart construction complaints.  Video news story and print article.  WECT News Channel 6 – Wilmington (NC)

 

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