This article published last week from Bloomberg Law alleges that when former Park Lawn Corporation CEO Andrew Clark resigned and left the employment of the company he carried trade secrets with him to his new employer, Plot Box, Inc. The article from Bloomberg Law notes that a lawsuit was filed in a Delaware federal court on October 30, 2020. Here’s what that article says, “the company (Park Lawn Corporation) said rival PlotBox, Inc. induced Andrew Clark to violate nondisclosure and […]
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) […]
The history of funeral directing and funeral home ownership in the United States has been one of passing the torch to the next generation of the family to carry on. My family was no different. . . .we carried our cabinet shop, furniture store, funeral home from the 19th Century into the 21st Century. That was a time period that spanned 141 years, from 1872 when our roots were planted until 2013 when the majority of our firm was sold […]
Service Corporation International (SCI) sometimes takes shots from others in the industry simply because of their size. Being the largest in any business category simply makes you an easy target. Being the largest also means you need great leadership to get on top and eventually stay there. SCI reported record revenues and earnings in the past quarter and, while that could be something to really crow about, at Funeral Director Daily we recognize SCI’s President Tom Ryan as one of […]
Last week Assurant, the large financial conglomerate with operations in 21 countries, announced that they would acquire mobile device software as a service (SaaS) business HYLA. You can read about that in this Associated Press release. In conjunction with that announcement, Assurant also made other announcements including a strategy to divest themselves of what they term their Global Preneed Division. Assurant has been in the preneed business for over 50 years and you can read about that division here. Here […]
Earlier this week funeral home and cemetery consolidator Carriage Services, based in Houston, Texas, produced their 3rd Quarter 2020 report and in it they recognized the quarter as record breaking for revenue and EBITDA. According to Chairman and CEO Mel Payne the company blew through milestones which they did not expect to reach until sometime in 2022. Here’s some of what CEO Payne had to say, “The last six months have been a remarkably historic performance period for Carriage, as […]
Service Corporation International (SCI) 3rd Quarter 2020 revenue jumped almost 20% (19.37% actual) over the same period from 2019. In a statement issued yesterday, October 28, here is what SCI’s President and CEO Tom Ryan said of the results: ” . . . the impact of COVID-19 has increased the number of funeral services performed as well as the number of burials in our cemeteries. As community restrictions lifted over the last few months, we have experienced unprecedented growth in […]
If you watched the stock market last week you would see that it bounced around a little bit. That happens all the time dependent on world events and the business environment, but also four times per year we get in a period where public companies report the business results for the past three month period. And, we are in that period right now. Funeral Director Daily will follow those reports as they come out and the first company to report […]
In a press release that we received last week, Foundation Partners Group announced that they had expanded and repositioned their leadership team. According to the release that you can read here, this will “position the company for continued growth and innovation.” The release explains that Bob Bukala, formerly the President and CEO, will remain CEO and also assume a role as Vice Chairman of the Foundation Partners Group Board of Directors. The release also explains that Kent Robertson, the company’s […]
Last week Vrishali Bagree of Zacks presented an article that appeared on Nasdaq.com. It was entitled “Rising demand keeps funeral industry going: Four stocks to watch”. You can read that article here. In essence the article tells that the Zacks Funeral Services industry is housed within the broader Zacks Consumer Staples sector. According to the article, Zacks ranks 250 different industries and the Funeral Service industry ranks quite high at #25. Zacks also says this about the Funeral Services industry, […]
