Part of our mission at Funeral Director Daily is to help the individual funeral home owner or operator understand all facets of their business better and in more depth so that they have the knowledge to make decisions moving forward.  In my 35 years of owning and operating a funeral home I tried to glean as much information about funeral home operations as I could to help me make those decisions.

 

One of the sources I used to get information for operating my own funeral home was to look to the public companies in the profession and what was written about them.  I think that really helped me in getting the “big picture” of funeral service across the country and looking at my own business through a wider scope.

 

Today Funeral Director Daily brings you this article published in late August by authors at Seeking Alpha.  The article is entitled “Park Lawn:  Decent Revenue and EBITDA Growth in Q2 2023 Thanks to M&A”.  The article is an overview on Park Lawn Corporation and one author’s opinion of where he thinks the company may be going.

 

Here’s a few quotes from the article:

 

• “If you aren’t familiar with Park Lawn . . .  here’s a short description of the business. The company was established in 1892 and it had a network of 179 funeral homes, 145 cemeteries, and 45 funeral homes on cemeteries (known as on-sites) as of August 22, 2023. It’s the sole publicly traded owner and operator of funeral home and cemetery properties in Canada but almost 90% of the locations are spread across 19 states in the USA.”

 

• “Park Lawn had just 81 locations in 2017 and it has been growing mainly through M&A over the past few years. . . . The company’s strategy is to invest an average of $75 million to $125 million in acquisitions per year.”

 

• “Looking at the Q2 2023 financial results . . . . acquisitions boosted revenues by 12.3% year on year to $85.3 million while the adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 150 bps to 22.1% . . . “

 

• “Looking at the balance sheet, net debt increased by $28.9 million compared to the end of 2022 and stood at $236.2 million as of June 2023. . . . . it’s at a manageable level as the net debt/adjusted EBITDA ratio is 3.05x on a TTM (trailing 12 months) basis.” 

 

• “Looking at the downside risks. . . .  the major ones are that organic growth could continue to be low and that the pace of acquisitions could slow down. This would result in lower revenue and EBITDA growth. . . .”

 

Funeral Director Daily take:  A really good snapshot of Park Lawn Corporation as of the August 29 publication place in time.  It’s a good read which also allows the reader to see a map of Park Lawn locations as well as a graphic of “who owns what” in what is called “North America’s $22 billion Death Care Industry”.

 

Finally, the article touches on the all-cash offer of Park Lawn Corporation to acquire Carriage Services and what the author thinks may happen with that situation.

 

A good article and my guess is that the reader will learn something that can be of value to them moving forward in the death care business.

Disclaimer — The author of this Funeral Director Daily article is a shareholder of Park Lawn Corporation.

 

More news from the world of Death Care:

• Liquid cremation?  Human composting?  They both could be available at Tri-Valley’s cemetery of the future.  The Mercury News (CA)
• Mayer Brown advises new client Epiris on the acquisition of Pure Cremation.  Mayer Brown press release.
• Christchurch company hoping to introduce water cremation to New Zealand.  Video story and print article.  NewsHub (New Zealand)
• Homewood trustees defer decision on proposed crematorium.  Homewood-Flossmoor Chronicle (IL)

 

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