Toronto based funeral and cemetery services provider Park Lawn Corporation announced last week that they have entered into agreements to acquire the assets of Horan & McConaty Funeral Services and the assets of the Baue Funeral Home Company.  The press release and more information that you can read from Yahoo Finance here, indicate that the purchase price of the two operations will total approximately $101.5 million in U.S. funds.

“The acquisitions of Horan and Baue are a unique and extremely exciting opportunity for Park Lawn,” said Park Lawn CEO Andrew Clark.  He continued, “I am delighted that both families will remain involved in the businesses into the future.”

Highlights of the acquisitions according to the press release:

• Horan and McConaty Funeral Services operates two cemeteries and eleven funeral homes in the Denver, Colorado market.
• Baue Funeral Home Company operates a large cemetery and four funeral homes in the Greater St. Charles County area of Missouri.
• The purchases offer decades of cemetery inventory capacity and offer Park Lawn a strong portfolio of real estate.
• Both transactions fall with Park Lawn’s publicly stated purchase price multiple range and are in line with the company’s stated growth strategy.
• The acquisitions are expected to immediately be accretive to the company’s bottom line earnings per share.
• The acquisitions are being financed with cash on hand

Funeral Director Daily take:  Park Lawn continues to surprise us with the size and scope of its acquisitions.  Last year at this time it was the Signature Group and CMS deals.  They are certainly aggressive and we believe, aggressive on price in their pursuit of company properties.

For those of us who have been around for some time it reminds us of the early 1990’s when we had Service Corporation, Stewart Enterprises, the Loewen Group, and upstart Prime Succession kicking the tires on all the funeral homes in the country looking for acquisitions.

Park Lawn will report quarterly earnings tomorrow and we will look forward to the analysts call to see what the officers say about this large transaction.

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