I’m taking the time today and tomorrow to re-run articles from last November on funeral home budgeting. I posted these articles last year and had many positive comments and since we have many new readers since then, I figure that maybe my thoughts on budgeting — both the expense side and the revenue side — may be of interest to some. I like numbers, planning, and budgeting. It was always somewhat of a game to me and I always enjoyed […]
Now that I’ve finished reporting on the quarterly reports of the large “established” companies in the death care realm, I thought it would be interesting to give my insight on a couple of companies that I think have a great potential to “grow” into larger companies or services in the future. And while Tribute Technology reportedly just sold for over $1 billion, you will probably see that my short list is a little light in, what would generally be considered […]
I’m kind of tired of the word “unprecedented”. It seems every time that I turn around someone is using that term in relation to the world and times we have been living in since February in the United States. Yes, 2020 is different, but I’m not so sure that it is “unprecedented” for the upstaging of people’s lives. No doubt, for most of us living as adults in 2020 this is a year unlike any other we have probably faced. […]
The first thing I will comment on is that if you look at the image I have put on this article, it should come with a question mark at the end. If you have followed my writings for any length of time you know that I like to try to spot trends and then hypothesize on what those trends may mean in the future. Sometimes trends show the future and sometimes they sputter out and become short term changes of […]
I woke up this morning (Monday as I write this) to see the Dow Jones Industrial average futures up over 5% on the news that Pfizer has had tremendous success with its Covid-19 vaccination drug trials. It’s a rainy day in Minnesota so I did my daily run on the treadmill watching Jim Cramer on CNBC talk about this event. Cramer commented that even with Pfizer’s announcement of its trial success so far, all we have over yesterday is increased […]
Back in September we published this article about Providence Strategic Growth (Providence Equity) planning to put their funeral software firm, Tribute Technology, on the market. At that time. the article that we had read from Barron’s mentioned that Providence believed that they could get a $1 billion offer for their assemblage of companies that they have turned into Tribute Technology. This article, published the other day, from PE Hub (provide your email to PE Hub to get access the article) […]
We are in the period of public companies reporting their 3rd Quarter results to the world and it is only a couple of weeks before Hillenbrand, parent company of Batesville Casket Company, and Matthews International, parent company of Aurora Casket Company will give us those results. As most of you know, those businesses have generally continued to remain profitable even in the face of downward unit sales over the past several years as cremation has cut into the number of […]
So, I warned you earlier in the week that I would be doing a column on what was happening with Starbucks and why I thought there was enough general information in what I had heard that it would be useful to people who operate businesses in the death care realm. To refresh you, I had told you that last Friday I had heard Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson be interviewed by CNBC’s Jim Cramer on his morning show. Johnson went through […]
This isn’t what I was planning to write about an hour ago. It’s Friday as I write this and earlier this morning I was on the treadmill watching CNBC with Jim Cramer as he was interviewing Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson. I thought the interview was very informative on how Starbucks was using the pandemic, that they had no control over, to analyze and pivot their business model to a structure that would be even better post-pandemic than it was prior […]
We are in the season of elections and when I was younger there was an old adage of Presidential elections that went like this, “As Maine goes, so goes the nation.” I recently read this article in the Los Angeles Business Journal entitled, “Business Slows for LA Funeral Homes”, and wondered if as the funeral business in California is going. . . . will that be the pattern for the nation moving forward? The old Maine adage made note that […]
