cremation
Last week I had a two hour drive and set my radio to a station on Sirius that featured a news talk show. What was highly unusual was that the group of well-known broadcasters started talking about death care and then started talking about what their wishes would be for their own…
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Funeral director Collin Bourgeois made this comment in this article from CBC, “I certainly tried to retire. It lasted three weeks.” Bourgeois is a funeral director and owner of and operator of a funeral business with three locations in northeastern Ontario. After 45 years in the business he’s staying on the job…
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Editor’s Note: This article was scheduled for earlier this morning but for some reason was not picked up by our email subscription service. . .Well, better late than never. Sorry for the inconvenience. Here is the article you should have received earlier today: Sometimes things happen that can turn a fundamental business upside…
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Last week North America’s largest funeral service company, Service Corporation International (SCI), announced in their 4th Quarter report “On the acquisition front, we had a very active fourth quarter investing $89 million in four separate transactions across the United States and Canada. These transactions added 14 funeral homes and 3 cemeteries, which included 3 combination locations.” And…
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The Washington Post recently printed this article which in part said, “. . . .a distinct shift is underway in how we approach death. More than half of Americans are seeking greener funerals, according to the National Funeral Directors Association, and the percentage is rising. The funeral industry is responding: You can now be entombed in a…
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The largest funeral home and cemetery operator in North America, Service Corporation International, reported 4th Quarter 2022 and Year End 2022 financials earlier this week and one of the things we noticed is that quarterly and yearly revenue was less than 4Q2021 and less than Year End 2021. However, that is not unexpected…
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Sometimes I just come across ideas for Funeral Director Daily articles by accident. On Saturday I was going out for my weekly “reward” of a time at a coffee shop and stopped to buy a newspaper to read while there. Since the local Naples Times-Herald was out, I had a choice of the…
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We will end this week with news of another acquisition in the Death Care space. This press release from earlier this week announced Park Lawn Corporation’s definitive agreement to acquire Kansas City metro area based businesses that include substantially all of the assets of Carson-Speaks Chapel in Independence, Missouri; Speaks Buckner Chapel in Buckner,…
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The last year has brought many changes to Death Care as it pertains to those companies that have been operated in the public markets. Both StoneMor and Dignity plc have been taken out of the public realm and into private ownership space and Batesville has been spun-out of Hillenbrand Industries and purchased by…
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This morning’s article related to the changing face of religion and how that has affected the funeral/memorial/tribute portion of the death care business over the past couple of decades. Over the weekend I noticed a couple of items that signaled current trends and put out the question as to whether or not these…
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