Funeral Director Daily

Death Care outpaces Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P for first third of 2021

By Funeral Director Daily / May 5, 2021 /

For the first time that I can remember since I have followed what is termed the Death Care Index (DCI), the DCI for a period of time has outpaced the standard measures of America’s public companies, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Nasdaq, and the S & P 500.  For the time period of January…

Maine legislators want “safe” funeral utility vehicles

By Funeral Director Daily / May 4, 2021 /

An accident in 2017 that took the life of a funeral home worker has the State of Maine legislature searching for answers on how to make funeral vehicles safer for death care employees.  Last week, according to this article, the Maine Legislature Committee on Innovation, Development, Economic Advancement and Business “ordered the Board of Funeral…

Microsoft: “. . . digital adoption curves aren’t slowing down”

By Funeral Director Daily / May 3, 2021 /

I saw  that quote in Microsoft’s 1st Quarter 2021 report last week and wondered how that will affect the death care industry.  That’s not a unique thought for me because if you’ve followed my writing for any length of time you know that I like to look at other industries and then take what they…

Carriage Services 1Q 2021 Revenues rise almost 25%

By Funeral Director Daily / April 30, 2021 /

Carriage Services was the first of our public death care companies to report on their 1st quarter of 2021 (January thru March 2021 numbers) when they did so last week.  Even knowing that January 2021 had a high number of additional mortality in the United States because of the number of Covid-19 deaths, you have…

Funeral directors carried on. . . . .

By Funeral Director Daily / April 29, 2021 /

Since about 2010 I’ve been associated with a couple of non-profit Senior Housing, Home Care, and Hospice businesses, Knute Nelson and Ethos Home Care and Hospice.  I’ve chaired both organizations which have a combined revenue of about $60 million. I tell you that only because I try to stay up to date with those industries…

Will this concept have staying power?

By Funeral Director Daily / April 28, 2021 /

The longer I am affiliated in the death care profession it seems the less I know.  I know that is not true, but I am always amazed when I find some type of business out there in the death care profession that I did not know existed. There are a lot of concepts and a…

Report: Headstone market hot

By Funeral Director Daily / April 27, 2021 /

A big part of our mission at Funeral Director Daily is to look around the death care industry and report what we see happening in the profession back to our fellow funeral directors.  Our thought is that those fellow funeral directors were much like I was in my 35 year front-line funeral service career —…

April has been a busy month for StoneMor

By Funeral Director Daily / April 26, 2021 /

StoneMor, Inc.,  the Pennsylvania based consolidator and operator of cemeteries and funeral homes, has had a busy April.  We’ve seen Moody’s upgrade their credit rating, we’ve seen insider trading purchases of the stock, and we’ve seen an announcement of refinanced debt.  That and more leads a press release from Moody’s to state, “. . .…

Black funeral directors believe Covid may change funeral culture forever

By Funeral Director Daily / April 23, 2021 /

I visited, as I often do, with a former Senior Level Executive this week just to catch up on what was happening in his world and visit about a story Funeral Director Daily had recently ran.  We talked about a lot of things — including COVID-19, and because of it, we had not seen each…

Wilbert adds precast concrete company

By Funeral Director Daily / April 22, 2021 /

It’s not only funeral homes and cemeteries that are in the business of growing their businesses to better serve clientele. Last week we received word that Wilbert, Inc., the nation’s preeminent burial vault company, made an acquisition to bolster their presence in the Northeast corridor of the United States.  Here is the information that we…