Finance

DCI shines. . .outgains some composite indexes year to date

By Funeral Director Daily / February 13, 2023 /

    Funeral Director Daily’s Death Care Index (DCI), which is reflective of Death Care public companies public stock prices, has grown at a pace of about 9.7% for the first six weeks of calendar year 2023.  That rate of increase surpasses both the Dow Jones Industrials and the S&P 500 indexes during the same…

Park Lawn makes another Kansas City market acquisition

By Funeral Director Daily / February 10, 2023 /

  We will end this week with news of another acquisition in the Death Care space.  This press release from earlier this week announced Park Lawn Corporation’s definitive agreement to acquire Kansas City metro area based businesses that include substantially all of the assets of Carson-Speaks Chapel in Independence, Missouri; Speaks Buckner Chapel in Buckner,…

What’s next for Matthews?

By Funeral Director Daily / February 9, 2023 /

    The last year has brought many changes to Death Care as it pertains to those companies that have been operated in the public markets.  Both StoneMor and Dignity plc have been taken out of the public realm and into private ownership space and Batesville has been spun-out of Hillenbrand Industries and purchased by…

LongRange Capital announces completion of Batesville acquisition. . . . retains Trainor as CEO

By Funeral Director Daily / February 3, 2023 /

    Earlier this week we received notice that LongRange Capital has completed the acquisition of Batesville.  The transaction of purchasing the Batesville Company from public company Hillenbrand Industries was announced late in 2022 and apparently now has been completed.   In addition, the private equity firm announced in this press release that Batesville CEO…

Ohio funeral home expands by purchasing a neighbor

By Funeral Director Daily / February 2, 2023 /

    This article from the Canton Repository announced last week the purchase of Canton, Ohio, based funeral home Kreighbaum-Sanders Funeral Homes by Alliance, Ohio, based Cassaday-Turkle-Christian Funeral Home.   Cassaday-Turkle-Christian’s Adam Christian made the following comment, according to the linked article, “We are honored that the Sanders family has given us the opportunity to…

Matthews International reports Fiscal Year Q1 . . . increases total revenue, but Memorialization sales fall

By Funeral Director Daily / February 1, 2023 /

  Public company Matthews International, with a stake in the death care business, reported their Fiscal Year 2023 First Quarter last week and in doing so reported a company-wide quarter over quarter sales revenue increase of about 2.4%.  The entire revenue increase, however, comes from their much heralded investment in the energy storage solutions business.…

Dignity plc accepts buy-out offer

By Funeral Director Daily / January 24, 2023 /

  According to this article from Yahoo, Great Britain’s largest public death care company, Dignity plc, has accepted a buyout offer from a consortium that includes its largest shareholder group and one of the country’s wealthiest and well-known entrepreneurs.  The shareholder group is Phoenix Asset Management Partners (PAMP) which, in another interesting twist, is managed…

Albuquerque’s historic French Funeral and Cremation business sold to executive employees

By Funeral Director Daily / January 20, 2023 /

  We learned last week that Albuquerque, New Mexico, based French Funerals & Cremation was sold.  The company, founded in 1907 by Chester French, and operated by descendants for the past 115 years, elected to keep the company private and sold to long-time French company executives Tom Antram and Alice Brousseau according to this article…

British funeral/cremation provider Dignity plc in takeover talks with private parties

By Funeral Director Daily / January 11, 2023 /

  Reuters reported last week that Dignity plc, Great Britain’s largest provider of death care services “(was) in advanced talks with a consortium compris(ed) of investment firms SPWOne V Ltd. and Castelnau Group Ltd.  after it received unsolicited buyout proposals from the consortium in October and November last year.”   The talks centered on the…

A promising future for Matthews International?

By Funeral Director Daily / January 9, 2023 /

  Last week a press release came out of Matthews International that seemed to show them on their way to executing their plans in the energy storage solutions business.  CEO Joseph Bartolacci commented in the release as such, “We are very pleased to see continued strength in orders for our energy storage solutions. This order…