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 enhances our portfolio of businesses in the strategic market of Long island.”

The press release, which you can read here, indicates the the company began serving the people of Long Island in 1924 from a single facility.  It also indicates that the five chapels serve over 900 client families annually.

Funeral Director Daily take:  The acquisition certainly fits in what Carriage Services told their investors in their last quarterly report.  That is, they will be acquiring businesses in what are strategic markets for them.  This acquisition certainly helps them with their foothold in Long Island, albeit the number of families served through five funeral home buildings averages out to be only about 180 per building — which we believe, in general, is smaller on a per building scale than most national funeral home acquisition companies prefer.  On the other hand, this is a sizable cluster and there is room to grow out from this cluster.

This marks the second strategic market that Carriage Services has either entered or shored up in the last month.  It was only a month ago that they announced acquisitions to enter the Colorado market.

It is our opinion that strategic acquisitions are happening at a rapid pace in the industry as family owned businesses are seeing the value of succession planning more and more and when the time is right for them are moving ahead with those plans.  We expect not only the public and private company national consolidators to be active for some time but also the smaller regional players to be active in pushing their boundaries farther away from the home base.  We continue to believe that if you are a seller, it is a good market.

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