Carriage CEO Quezada: “Carriage is well positioned to accelerate our return to purposeful growth”

May 8, 2026/Finance/

Carriage Services, an American public company and operator of funeral homes and cemeteries, reported on their 1st Quarter of 2026 on Wednesday. The report showed progress on the company’s three-year quest of strategic internal improvements leading to their ability to re-enter a growth phase of their business as CEO Carlos Quezada makes known in a statement which is our headline to this article.

Here’s what Quezada said in a prepared statement in the company’s press release, which you can access here:

“We are pleased by our first-quarter performance, particularly against a strong prior-year comparison. Total revenue of $106.1 million declined modestly by $0.9 million, driven primarily by a 5.8% decrease in comparable funeral volume. However, our cemetery portfolio demonstrated solid growth, finishing the quarter at $34.4 million, representing a $2.0 million increase in consolidated cemetery revenue, partially offsetting the volume headwinds.

Our teams demonstrated strong operational discipline, effectively managing costs, and driving improved profitability. Adjusted consolidated EBITDA increased to $33.8 million from $32.9 million last year, with margins expanding 100 basis points to 31.8%.

After three years of disciplined transformation, strengthening our processes, systems, and leadership while expanding margins and delivering improved shareholder returns, we believe Carriage is well positioned to accelerate our return to purposeful growth, which we launched last year with our strategic acquisitions in Florida. To support this next phase, we are announcing a $100 million at-the-market equity offering program that provides flexible, low-cost access to capital. Importantly, this program is not driven by immediate funding needs but rather designed to be used opportunistically to execute highly selective, accretive strategic acquisitions while also enabling us to further optimize our balance sheet, reduce leverage, and lower interest expense over time.”

Funeral Director Daily take: After my first glance at the financial performance of Carriage Services I thought to myself that the quarter’s performance is “rather unremarkable — but in line with what is happening in the funeral home, crematory and cemetery business today”.

By that statement I simply meant that, industry wide, funeral home performance is tough right now, cremation continues to grow especially in the lower-margin direct cremation mode, and there seems to be more opportunity with memorialization opportunities in the cemetery segment. And, I think Carriage Services 1Q2026 report illustrates that phenomena.

Overall, revenues were very flat for the company — $106.1 million in 1Q26 as compared to $107.1 million in 1Q25.

A couple of other metrics that were right on with my industry trend thoughts is that “Comparable Funeral Contracts” were down 5.8% for the quarter and “Average Revenue per Funeral Contract” was up only slightly — from $6,002 in 1Q25 to $6,099 in 1Q26.

As for the cemetery side, however, Preneed sales production of cemetery items was up 8.9% for 1Q26 over 1Q25 and the average price of that cemetery sale was up over 15% from the same period from a year ago.

Another high note of the report that jumped out at me was what Carriage Services now terms as “Financial Revenue”. That line-item grew 15.7% over 1Q2025 and is explained as revenue that includes insurance funded preneed commission revenue. For the quarter, the raw number of “Financial Revenue” was listed at $8.4 million — representing about 8% of total Carriage Service revenue for the quarter.

From my point of view, as the consumer seems to want to spend less and less on traditional funeral services, funeral homes need to replace that revenue and having a sound, profitable, and an “aggressive as you are comfortable with” insurance funded preneed program that throws off commission revenue to the funeral home is one way to help with that revenue replacement.

Finally, I noticed that Carriage Services reduced their overall long-term debt over $6 million dollars from a year earlier even though they completed a strategic acquisition in Florida. The result of that lower debt resulted in a 5.7% decrease in interest expense over the amount that they paid in 1Q2025.

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