Challenges – yes, but lots to like at Carriage Services
Carriage Services, the large Houston-based operator of funeral homes and cemeteries, reported their 2nd Quarter 2024 financials last week. (You can access the report here.) The report marked the second straight quarter in which they have recorded over $100 million in revenue. . . posting revenue of $102.3 million in 2Q24 which compares favorably by about 4.7% over the $97.7 million that the company reported in 2Q23.
The company’s “Funeral” revenue was virtually even with last years, but their “Cemetery” revenue increased from $28.3 million in 2Q23 to $34.7 million in 2Q24. . . that’s an increase of 22.6%. And, CEO Carlos Quezada mentioned in his prepared remarks that the “. . . preneed cemetery sales team delivered another remarkable 31.1% year-over-year increase in preneed sales, highlighting the continued effectiveness of our cemetery sales growth plan”.
Continuing the good news on the cemetery side of the business, according to the company’s “Financial Highlights” report, on top of that 31.3% preneed number for the half-year was an “Average Price per preneed interment right sold” increase of $455 per sale. . .equal to a 9.1% increase over the average price for that product in the first half of 2023.
The news was a little more somber with the funeral operating metrics where for the quarter they showed a 4.6% decrease in the number of funeral contracts. Carriage Services did manage, however, to raise the average revenue per funeral contract, for the half-year, by $204 which is a 3.8% increase over the first half of 2023.
The company reported that Gross Profit (defined by Revenue minus Operating Costs) increased for both the quarter and half-year. However, General Corporate and Administrative costs have increased bringing a bottom line Operating Income (Net Income) below last year. CEO Quezada explained that in his remarks with this statement:
“Net income for the three months ended June 30, 2024 decreased $2.0 million compared to the three months
ended June 30, 2023. We experienced a $5.8 million increase in gross profit contribution from our businesses
and a $1.1 million decrease in interest expense, which was more than offset by an $8.4 million increase in general,
administrative and other expenses, primarily composed of one-time costs related to executive severance
payments and the Company’s review of strategic alternatives”.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily
Funeral Director Daily take: At the end of the day, this report shows a positive movement for Carriage Services. They are increasing revenue, limiting operating costs (2Q24 Operating Costs were less than 2Q23 Operating Costs by about $1 million), lowering interest rates, and understand that they have to get the Administrative costs (including one-time items lower).
They also understand that revenues need to keep moving up in order to keep up with the inflationary cost pressures that have been in existence for the past couple of years and their cemetery and funeral per case revenue increases show they are on their way to doing so.
The contraction of the number of funeral contracts by 4.6% in 2Q24 as compared to 2Q23 is troubling. I’m not sure if this is a universal number of deaths issue or part of the anticipated pull-forward death effect of the pandemic, but Service Corporation International has experienced the same phenomena in their 2nd Quarter 2024 report. Carriage Services is obviously aware of it as CEO Quezada makes this statement in the report, “As we continue to execute our five-year strategic objectives, we expect these trends to remain consistent for the remainder of the year with small declines in funeral volume and historical seasonality back in play”. (Bolded emphasis by Funeral Director Daily)
More news from the world of Death Care:
- Want to talk about death? A third of us can’t even bear to think about it. USA Today
- Richland County Verterans Commission to launch “Cremation Wall” at Mansfield Cemetery. Richland Source (OH)
- Funeral homes accommodating an increasing number of cremations. The Lebanon Reporter (IN)
- France’s OGF seeks refinancing with boost from Ontario Teachers. (Headline Only) Bloomberg
- Ontario Teachers buy additional stake in France’s leading funeral provider OGF from Pamplona, becoming majority shareholder. (Detail background information on above article, this is a 2017 article) Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (Canada)
- France’s OGF seeks refinancing. Twitter “X”
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