Funeral Director Daily

Service Corporation Announces New Debt Arrangement

By Funeral Director Daily / December 8, 2017 /

Service Corporation International (SCI), a funeral care public company and a component of the Funeral Director Daily Death Care Index (DCI), on Tuesday announced a new debt arrangement moving forward.  The company announced that it has priced an underwritten public offering of $550 million Senior Notes due in 2027.  The notes have been priced at…

Image Watch — Don’t Let this Happen to Your Firm

By Funeral Director Daily / December 7, 2017 /

Funeral Director Daily recently received an article and video clip from a New Zealand source that captures via dashcam a New Zealand hearse driver going through an intersection.  While that is an every day occurrence anywhere in the world what makes this clip different is that the back door of the hearse flies open and…

Park Lawn Corporation Makes Strategic Saskatchewan Purchase

By Funeral Director Daily / December 7, 2017 /

Park Lawn Corporation announced last week that they had purchased Christie’s Funeral Home and Crematorium in Yorktown, Saskatchewan.  The announced purchase price was $1.96 million (Canadian).  You can read the press release here. The company announced that it was a strategic fit and will build upon their operations in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.  They also announced…

Carriage Services Announces Long Island Acquisition

By Funeral Director Daily / December 6, 2017 /

It was announced at the close of business yesterday that Carriage Services, a publicly traded death care industry consolidator, had acquired the five funeral homes under the ownership of the Thomas F. Dalton Funeral Homes on Long Island, New York.  According to Carriage Services CEO Mel Payne, “The partnership with Thomas F. Dalton Funeral Homes…

These People are Serious About Digging Graves

By Funeral Director Daily / December 6, 2017 /

What do you do if you live in a land where most people’s religious beliefs forbid cremation and the land that you live in is so small that it is running out of room for proper burials?  People in Israel are in the midst of confronting that situation and have already built cemetery towers –…

It Doesn’t Get Much Stranger Than This

By Funeral Director Daily / December 5, 2017 /

A recent article and news feed that you can see here describes that Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf is set to sign a bill into law which lets loved ones visit the graves of their deceased relatives in private cemeteries.  My take is that you should not need legislation to be able to do that. As…

Checking Up on the Death Care Index

By Funeral Director Daily / December 4, 2017 /

It’s been a little over three months since we visited the Death Care Index or DCI.  The DCI is Funeral Director Daily’s gauge for checking up on the investment return of death care companies who operate in the public ownership market.  At the close of business on November 30, a day in which the Dow…

Who is Your Target Customer and What do They Want?

By Funeral Director Daily / December 1, 2017 /

I posted an article yesterday that showed that even when you think you are an asset-based or value customer you can also be, at some times in some situations, an experiential customer.  By experiential customer I mean that you, as a customer, will pay more for something because you value the experience that it gives…

How Can Funeral Homes Sell “The Experience”?

By Funeral Director Daily / November 30, 2017 /

Trends and surveys show us that the younger the person is in America the more apt they are to value “Experiences” over “Assets”.  It is an interesting subject to me – as a younger part of the Baby Boom generation – I’ve always valued assets and usually have watched my money on the experiences.  Experiences…

Matthews Posts Record Revenues — Casket Sales Decline

By Funeral Director Daily / November 29, 2017 /

Matthews International issued a press release last Thursday, November 16, reporting on their 4th quarter and 2017 year end results.  It is a report eerily similar to Hillenbrand’s 2017 year end report in that the report was overall excellent but both companies saw sales in their casket units drop.  You can read Matthews press release…