Park Lawn makes acquisition, enters the state of Virginia

July 11, 2022/Finance/

This press release issued last week by Park Lawn Corporation (PLC) will tell you of their acquisition of Farris Funeral Service, Inc. and Affiliated Service Group, Inc. (collectively known as “Farris”). The businesses acquired include one stand-alone funeral home and one on-site funeral home and cemetery located in Abingdon, Virginia.

Here’s what Park Lawn Corporation CEO J. Bradley Green said of the transaction, “We are excited to continue our strategic growth in the southeast by entering into the Virginia market with the Farris businesses. Not only is Farris proximately located to our existing Tennessee and North Carolina businesses, but it is a premier business with a storied history of over 70 years of dedicated and compassionate service to its community. We are honored and look forward to having the Farris family and their team join PLC.”

Again, according to the press release, the transaction represents 358 annual death calls and 224 annual interments being added to the Park Lawn Corporation business profile. The press release also states that the Farris acquisition will “add approximately US $1,150,000 in Adjusted EBITDA to the Park Lawn Corporation financial resources.

Here is the website for Farris Funeral Home.

Park Lawn Corporation related: Here is an investor presentation put out by Park Lawn Corporation for its investors in May 2022. I found it very interesting and noticed that, at the time of the presentation, Park Lawn Corporation claimed 276 total facilities of operation in the presentation. Broke out into categories they claim 245 United States properties and 31 Canadian properties.

Further breaking down their operations they claim 110 stand-alone funeral homes, 106 stand-alone cemeteries, and 30 combination facilities.

One slide in the investor presentation makes note that in, what Park Lawn Corporation calls the $23 billion “Death Care Industry”, roughly 80% of the funeral home and cemetery locations in the United States and Canada are independently owned and operated. They also state that about $18 billion of the industry is from the funeral home side and about $5 billion is from the cemetery side.

It was also interesting that Park Lawn Corporation points out many of the largest players, by locations, in the profession. Here are the totals that they use in this presentation from May 2022:

Service Corporation International (publicly traded company) – 1,955 locations
Park Lawn Corporation (publicly traded company) – 276 locations
Foundation Partners Group (private company) – 215 locations
Carriage Services (publicly traded company) – 199 locations
Arbor Memorial Group (privately owned) – 106 locations
Legacy Funeral Group (privately owned) – 100 locations
NorthStar Memorial Group (privately owned) – 85 locations

Editor’s Note: For reasons unknown to me, StoneMor, who claims to be the 2nd largest, by facility, death care operator in the country was left out of Park Lawn Corporation’s presentation. According to the StoneMor website, they claim 370 total locations — 301 cemeteries and 69 funeral homes.

StoneMor is a publicly traded company that has recently accepted an offer by Axar Capital Management to be taken private. That offer is in the process of being completed with certain milestones requested by the company, such as an offer by StoneMor to listen to other potential offers before the Axar offer is completely consumated.

Here is a map of Park Lawn Corporation businesses.

More news from the world of Death Care: