Finance
I’ve watched the growth of direct cremation provider and preneed cremation business Pure Cremation from a start-up to, in my opinion, the most profitable investment in Death Care over the past decade. According to the Sun Life “Cost of Dying Report” in Great Britain, direct cremation has grown from a 2-3% market share in…
Last week Death Care supplier Matthews International held their First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call with interested parties including investment company representatives. You can access a full transcript of that Earnings Call courtesy of Seeking Alpha here. As has become our custom at Funeral Director Daily we will publish some excerpts from that transcript…
When it is all said and done, corporate conglomerate Matthews International, with a heavy presence in Death Care, will probably be glad that they have left Fiscal Year 2025 behind and are charging into Fiscal Year 2026. FY2025 found Matthews streamline their company by divesting their SGK unit and, while technically FY2026, the…
In a press release issued earlier in January 2026 out of Batesville, Indiana, ClearPoint Federal Bank & Trust made the following statement: “ClearPoint Federal Bank & Trust, a federally chartered savings bank that has been providing trust and recordkeeping services to the funeral and cemetery industry since 1998, announced today that Community…
We learned from this article written by Fort Erie Radio that Service Corporation International (SCI) recently purchased two funeral homes in the Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada, community. According to the article, the Williams Funeral Home and Benner Funeral Services were sold to SCI in January of 2026. According to the article the funeral…
When you follow the public companies in Death Care like I do it is unusual to find articles about them appearing very often. But, last week two separate authors of Seeking Alpha gave opinions on Death Care public company Service Corporation International (SCI). As is my custom with these types of articles I…
I guess “Private” means “Privacy” and that is probably why it is so difficult to get information on how the Private Equity market is doing. The status of the industry is, however, of much interest to those in the Death Care profession because so much money has entered Death Care through private equity in…
The first half of January 2025 saw two news releases come from Matthews International that probably, in a wide scope, are related to each other. First, in early January, this press release titled “Matthews International announces closing of of European Tooling and Packaging Businesses”. Then just last week Matthews International issued this press…
Today is January 20. It is the day that President Trump wanted to institute one of his ideas for making life more “affordable”. That idea is a 10% cap on interest rates on credit card balances for one year. A recent Debt.com survey about funeral expenses and death, which you can access an…
Back in 1971, according to this article from Pew Research Center, 61% of Americans fell into what was called the “Middle Class”. The same article lists that number as 51% in 1923, and according to Finance & Commerce magazine, “Most economists agree the K-shape (consumer divergence) isn’t a short-term anomaly but a continuation of…
