Park Lawn Corp purchases business assets of historic Texas funeral home. . . .Strategy may start a trend of facility closures

October 5, 2026/Finance/

This recent article from the Waco (TX) Tribune-Herald will give you full information on the recent purchase of the business assets of the historic Connally-Compton Funeral Home in Waco, Texas, by the Park Lawn Corporation.

The purchase is interesting in one sense because it appears to be from Service Corporation International (SCI) and the funeral home assets being purchased come from one of the first acquisitions of SCI founder Robert L. Waltrip. According to the article Waltrip bought the funeral home out of an estate in 1960 and it became one of the very first acquisitions for the business that eventually became SCI.

According to the article, Park Lawn Corporation purchased only the business assets and the real estate associated with the business remains on the market at a price of $2.5 million.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take: There is more to take out of this transaction than the simple transaction. In even just a quick look at this transaction one probably gets a take on a couple of trends that are beginning to move forward at a more rapid pace. The transaction illustrates the trend of acquisition and then merging facilities, making for less funeral facilities overall, and a move toward larger concentration density of death calls under one roof.

Concentration of Service Areas – One has to look no further than this map from the Park Lawn Corporation website to see that the company appears to be making a determined effort to “cluster” funeral homes in certain areas where they already have a presence. It makes a lot of sense, because the more you can monopolize a trade are and a funeral business can get the realities of saving at scale as well as less price-point competition.

The map seems to indicate that Park Lawn Corporation likes metropolitan areas of the growing Southwest and Southeast United States with the exception of very price-conscious Florida. They do have some concentration of operations in the midwest as well . . . which I would guess that they would plan to expand those present “clusters” as businesses become available in those metropolitan areas. And, of course, there is a heavy concentration in the Canadian northeast metropolitan areas where the company was founded.

Less Funeral Facilities — As you read of this business asset acquisition you will notice that Park Lawn Corporation evidently bought the business assets, including preneed cases, but did not buy the physical building structure. They will market the historic name of Connally-Compton but will fulfill all service needs out of present locations of their holdings in the greater Waco, Texas, market.

This move serves two purposes in that regard in my opinion. First of all, the acquisition costs will be less because they are not purchasing the real estate. Secondly, by serving Connally-Compton clients out of existing locations they drastically reduce the overhead of the Connally-Compton services by merging them into other facilities.

Think about it. . . . they are able to pick up service revenues of Connally-Compton at their existing facilities and save on all kinds of expenses that the former Connally-Compton physical facility incurred. Those saved expenses would include property taxes, maintenance, utilities, staffing, property insurance and on and on.

Over my career as a funeral home owner I did a transaction very similar to this one that worked out very well for me. I purchased the business assets of a 100-call funeral home at the time my local funeral home was doing about 250 calls. The funeral homes were about one mile from each other and I had the opportunity to operate two separate funeral homes in the market.

However, when looking at the pro-forma financial opportunities it was very apparent that the combined profitability was exponentially greater if we could add the 100 calls into our present facility rather than operate out of two separate facilities. A call to a local commercial realtor indicated that the acquired property would have great value to a group of businesses looking for that type of property.

Working through an intermediary with the real estate I was able to purchase the business assets only, including hiring a very good and well thought of local funeral director from the acquired firm as well. The real estate was then sold to a large bank, demolished, and a new bank was built on the property. The real estate sale made my net cost (acquisition cost) for the business much smaller than the business was worth to me. The result was exponential profits on the bottom line to my existing business.

I think those opportunities are still out there today.

The biggest risk to me was that another funeral home would come into the area and compete with me as the area continued to grow. We solved part of that by putting a deed restriction on the acquired property before the bank purchased it. And, that new competitor never appeared in the ten years or so from that acquisition until I sold my business which now featured a much increased EBITDA.

Today, with lower revenues per service and the the costs associated with building and marketing a traditional funeral home from scratch, my inclination leads me to believe that there is even less probability of a new competitor opening up in this type of scenario today than there was in 2006 when it worked for me.

It’s why I still think that buying a competitor can be a great business move for smaller funeral homes.

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