Upon the heels of a very profitable quarter and yearly report of funeral and cemetery consolidator Carriage Services, Moody’s Investor Services last week raised the credit rating of the company as you can see in this article here. A better credit rating should drive down borrowing costs for Carriage Services and, according to the Year End 2020 Annual report, Carriage Services management is counting on that to lower cash outlays for those needs. It’s also very interesting as to what […]
Where a person dies does have an effect on funeral home operations. One simple effect you can see is that of two person removal teams to homes rather than a one-person removal being done at a hospital or nursing home where there is always facility staff help if needed. This recent article from the Associated Press and bylined out of Mission, Kansas, takes the side that the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the amount of deaths occurring under hospice care in […]
Service Corporation International reported both their 4th Quarter 2020 and Full Year 2020 reports last week. Among the interesting items that you can find in the report, that can be accessed here, is that their total number of services increased from 319,616 in 2019 to 364,312 in 2020. . . .that’s an increase of 13.98%. That number in itself is interesting considering the fact that Service Corporation International (SCI) is the largest provider of death care services in the United […]
Sometimes it is difficult to take a public stand on an issue. You might feel strong one way or another, but you know that taking a public stance could possibly hinder the amount of business that you do. It is pretty evident in America right now that if you flew a Trump 2020 flag in your parking lot. . . you would show where you stand on the political side, but I would guess that it might cause some potential […]
A couple of weeks ago we brought our readers this article where Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were hopeful that the COVID-19 relief bill passed in December would bring funeral re-imbursements to many who lost loved ones to the pandemic. At that time they were hopeful that some of the $56 billion that had been allocated to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would be used for the purposes of reimbursing families who lost […]
A television show about the goings on in a funeral home is nothing new. I can remember the shows “Family Plot” and “Six Feet Under”. Last Friday night, Netflix premiered the newest franchise in funeral television when they aired the first episode of “Buried by the Bernards“. This article and video shows the family having a small viewing party at their funeral home to celebrate the occasion. “Buried by the Bernards” is a reality show that follows the Memphis based […]
Today we celebrate President’s Day 2021 in the United States. We’ve just been through an election. . .and an impeachment hearing. There is no doubt that the American president, whomever it is at the time, is the centerpiece of the most media attention of any human being on the planet during his time in office. Over my lifetime, I’ve seen that world-wide media attention be both good and bad. . . .showering positives on that president when some in the […]
Many of the decisions that have been made over the years in business have been made by “gut feel”. Lots of business people, including those in the funeral business, have made lots of money by following their hunches. I was a little bit like that as in the 1980’s I didn’t have a lot of information on how my client families felt about the services that I provided, the amounts I charged, and the how are facilities we provided were […]
We touched on the subject last week when we did an article questioning how some in authority view funeral directors and other death care professionals in light of large financial fines for a service going over the allotted number of allowed mourners in Great Britain and the death care professionals in Ohio trying to be included in an early tranche of the vaccine distribution. However, while we continue to hear disagreements about vaccine distribution, school openings, church openings, restaurant openings, […]
Back in October 2019 on an episode the television production of Shark Tank, serial investor and billionaire Mark Cuban became invested in a death care company. It was at that time that Cuban invested $600,000 for a 9% share of the “cremation carbon to diamond” company Eterneva. That $600,000 investment gave the company a valuation of almost $7 million at the time. Funeral Director Daily caught up with the company when we found this article in Insider. In the article, […]
