It was announced in a recent press release that you can access here that funeral home and cemetery operator Park Lawn Corporation (PLC) has made another acquisition in the greater Kansas City market. Just this week they have announced that they have acquired substantially all of the assets of the aptly named Park Lawn Funeral Home and Memorial Park Cemetery & Green Lawn Cemetery as well as the Park Lawn Northland Chapel and Glenridge Cemetery. The move will expand the […]
Matthews International, parent company of Matthews Cremation and Aurora Casket, announced their Fiscal Year 4th Quarter and Year End 2022 results last week. President and CEO Joseph C. Bartolacci said this in the opening statements of the report, “I am pleased with our operating results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended September 30, 2022. . . . consolidated sales for the current quarter were $457.1 million, compared to $438.8 million last year. . . .This growth primarily reflected […]
As we move into the final month of the calendar year it seems like no one has the financial markets figured out. In a year of rising inflation and rising interest rates, raised with the intention of curbing the inflation, the stock market indices have looked confused as to whether the worst is past or is yet to come. The major indices have all dropped on the year — from a 5.7% loss year-to-date for the Dow Jones Industrials to […]
Last week Hillenbrand Industries reported their Fiscal Year 4th Quarter of 2022 and their Year End results for Fiscal Year 2022. It is noted that Hillenbrand operates on an annual fiscal year calendar from October 1 to September 30. Over the years Hillenbrand has moved from a company predominantly based in the death care business via their operation of Batesville to a more well-defined manufacturing industry conglomerate with Batesville as a minority representative of sales and profits. For instance, 4Q22 […]
In the 3rd Quarter of 2022 earnings release for Security National Financial Corporation (SNFC) released earlier this week, Scott M. Quist, the company’s President stated, “2022 is continuing to be a challenging year for our Company due primarily to the dramatic rise in inflation and interest rates, and the dramatic fall in equity values. In the mortgage space, purchase transactions are down roughly 40% YOY and refinance transactions are down roughly 80% YOY. Equity values, as measured by the S&P […]
2022 marked a point in the history of Great Britain’s largest death care provider, Dignity plc, where they planned to increase consumer market share for their services by lowering their prices. What they maybe didn’t anticipate was the highest inflationary pressures in the last 40 years on the costs of their services to happen at the same time. It’s a certain mathematical formula that lower sales prices coupled with increased expenses will result in lower margins. . . and that […]
The 3rd Quarter of 2022 has shown a trend of less deaths than the comparable 3rd Quarter of 2021. As a matter of fact, as you can see from this report from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), provisional deaths for 3Q 2022 numbered 751,497 as compared to 874,495 in the same quarter of 2021. That’s a decline of 14.1%. And, that decline in deaths has resulted in a decline in revenues for public company death care companies. However, Park […]
Last week death care property owner and operator StoneMor announced, in this press release, that they had completed their merger with Axar Capital Management whereby StoneMor will become a private and wholly owned subsidiary of Axar Capital Management. Prior to this “take private” movement, which was announced in this May 25, 2022, press release, Axar Capital Management had owned approximately 75% of the outstanding StoneMor public stock. StoneMor’s stock was taken off the public exchanges as of November 4 and […]
North America’s largest business in the death care industry, Service Corporation International (SCI) reported their 3rd Quarter 2022 financial results earlier this week. The results show a decline of about 5.5% in total revenues for the quarter as compared to the same quarter of 2021. The 3Q 2022 revenue number was $977.7 million as compared to the 3Q 2021 revenues of $1.034 billion. You can see all of the financial results in this press release. The company also reported Net […]
In this press release from PR Newswire you can read about Orlando based Foundation Partners Group and its acquisition of Solace Cremation, the Portland, Oregon, based direct-to-consumer cremation services business. Solace operates in the Oregon, California, and Florida markets at this time. The purchase will allow, according to the release, Foundation Partners Group to have geographic proximity to offer digital cremation arrangements and services to nearly 50 million American households. Foundation Partners Group (FPG) is rapidly ramping up their digital platform. […]
