Park Lawn Corporation reports 1st Quarter 2023 — increases revenue by 4.3%

May 16, 2023/Finance/

The last of the major public funeral home and cemetery operating companies reported their 1st Quarter 2023 financial report last week. Park Lawn Corporation (PLC) bucked the trend of less revenue for the quarter as compared to the 1st Quarter of 2022 by posting a 4.3% increase in total revenue.

Park Lawn Corporation reported 1st Quarter 2023 revenue of $86.7 million as compared to 1Q 2022 revenue of $83.1 million — which, as indicated, is a 4.3% increase. That bucks the trend of less total revenue of the other two large public companies for comparative revenue compared to the same quarter last year.

Service Corporation International (SCI) reported a decline of 7.6% in total comparative revenue and Carriage Services also reported a decline, of 2.7%, for the comparative quarters. It should be noted that the United States had about 14.4% less deaths in the 1st Quarter of 2023 than the country did in the 1st Quarter of 2022 — most likely because of pandemic deaths subsiding.

On the side of fairness, Park Lawn Corporation did report that this increase in revenue is “primarily as a result of Acquired Operations as compared to the three-month period ended March 31, 2022″. Park Lawn Corporation did report that their “Comparable Operations” revenue for the quarterly comparison did decrease by a 5.6% number.

However, that 5.6% “Comparable Operations” decrease in an environment where deaths decreased about 14.4% is, in our opinion, a pretty good number. Carriage Services reported that their contracts were down 8.1% for the comparable quarter and in SCI’s earnings report we noticed that their “performed services” for the comparable quarter were down about 10.5%.

Even though revenues were up at Park Lawn Corporation for the quarter their Net Earnings came in at about $4.6 million which is only about half of where those earnings were for 1Q2022. That probably not only reflects the lower number of deaths at comparable operations but also the difficulty in keeping margins up in an environment where costs are continually rising.

Park Lawn Corporation CEO J. Bradley Green made these comments in the quarterly press release which you can access here, “We are pleased with our operating performance from the first quarter as it demonstrates strength against a tough comparison under challenging macroeconomic conditions. As the impacts of COVID-19 wane, our focus continues to be on implementing incremental improvements in our operations and making selective and strategic growth decisions that drive shareholder value. Overall, for the quarter, this strategy resulted in a slight increase in our average revenue per call on the funeral home side and continued strong pre-need cemetery sales from our larger cemetery businesses. . . . . (as for acquisitions) We have a strong pipeline and we remain confident in our opportunities for continued strategic growth in 2023.”

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

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