We took a look at the Funeral Director Daily Death Care Index (DCI) at the close of the market day on Friday, August 18, 2017, which is a three month time period from when we last looked at it on May 19.  The DCI Index, which consists of one share of six publicly traded death care industry stocks, has continued its downward value trend by closing at $261.55 as compared to a value of $265.59 on May 19.  The stocks in the index are Matthews International, Assurant, StoneMor Partners, Hillenbrand Industries, Carriage Services, and Service Corporation International.

If you owned one share of each of those stocks the asset would throw off a cumulative dividend (unchanged since May 19) of $5.74 which would represent a yield of 2.19% (up from the May 19 yield of 2.16%).  In essence, the yield has risen simply because the value of the DCI has been reduced.

If you look at the Death Care Index since we established it in March 2017 you would see that it’s value  has declined approximately 3.0% compared to an increase in the Dow Jones Industrial’s value of 3.1% and NASDAQ’s value increase of 5.3% in the same time period.

Here is some information from E-Trade on each of the company’s revenue projections and the Smart Consensus Report as reported by E-Trade on August 21.

Carriage Services – Carriage Services expects end of year 2017 revenues to be at $262 million.  That would be a 5.2% increase over fiscal year 2016 revenues.  Smart Consensus reports Carriage Services a Hold.

Assurant – Total revenue for the entire company is expected to be down to be down to about $6.4 billion from $7.3 billion in fiscal year 2017 and then hold flat at about $6.4 billion for 2018.  Individual revenue for the company’s Global Pre-Need Division – one of three Assurant divisions – is not broken out in that number.  Smart Consensus reports Assurant a Sell.

Hillenbrand Industries —  Hillenbrand – parent of Batesville Casket Company – expects total company revenue to be up a little over 6% to about $1.6 billion in fiscal 2017.  The company then sees flat revenue going forward in 2018.  Smart Consensus rates Hillenbrand Industries a Hold.

StoneMor Partners – StoneMor Partners expects end of fiscal year revenues to be about $351 million in 2017 which is slightly less than the $353  million recorded in  2016.  The company which operates 310 cemeteries and 100 funeral homes in 20 states and Puerto Rico has also seen its stock drop in the last year from a high of $25.58 per share to August 19’s closing price of $6.43.  The stock has a dividend of $1.32 per share which is a whopping 20.53% annual yield at the current stock price.   The Smart Consensus report rates StoneMor Partners a Hold.

Service Corporation International – Service Corporation International which, as of December 31, 2016, operated 1502 funeral service locations and 470 cemetery locations expects approximately a $100 million increase in revenues in both FY17 and FY18 going forward.  That relates to about a 3% increase in each year.  Service Corporation International holds a Smart Consensus Report of Buy.

Matthews International – Matthews International, which includes a Memorialization segment of products for funeral homes, cemeteries, and crematories looks for stable revenue in the final stages of FY2017 and an increase in revenue for FY18 of about $100 million or about 6.7%.  Smart Consensus rates Matthews a Hold.[wpforms id=”436″ title=”true” description=”true”]