We reported in our morning edition on last week’s happenings in Great Britain pertaining to the proposal that Pure Cremation will be acquired by private equity firm Epiris.  We thought with that news we would try to let you know about the two other major potential acquisitions in the Death Care profession around the world.

 

Breaking as of Monday August 7 —  InvoCare stock trading has been stopped as has been reported by the Australian Financial Review (AFR) that suitor TPG Capital is “ready to walk” unless the two camps can agree to a deal at a lower price.  We will keep readers updated as this news moves forward.  This news was just reported this morning. . . the following article was written prior this news. . . . It’s possible that you can access this article from the AFR, but many times it has a paywall on it.

 

The InvoCare/TPG Capital proposal and the Carriage Services/Park Lawn Corporation proposal:  As we mentioned there have been two other high profile acquisition proposals floated since May.  One of them has United States private equity firm, TPG Capital,  proposing to purchase and take private Australia’s largest death care and pet death care provider Invocare.  The other was a June 29, 2023, proposal from public death care company Park Lawn Corporation to acquire public death care company Carriage Services.

 

 

There has been very little public comment by either of the companies involved.  Here is what we know right now.  TPG Capital reached a AUS $13 per share value in its proposal and eventually asked for more time for due diligence from InvoCare.  Since that time InvoCare’s stock price has dropped about 10% to AUS $ 11.78 per share.  You can learn more from the InvoCare website here.

 

 

We also know that the original purchase offer for Carriage Services by Park Lawn Corporation was at $34 per share.  As of Friday’s closing price Carriage Services was trading about 8.5% off of that price at about $31.12 per share.  Carriage Services had their 2nd Quarter 2023 Earnings Call last week and the situation was briefly touched on by President Steve Metzger in his opening remarks.  Pertaining to the Park Lawn Corporation offer and more he made these comments:

 

“. . . Finally, as we announced on June 29, our Board has initiated a process to explore potential strategic alternatives, possibly including a merger, sale or other potential strategic or financial transaction to maximize shareholder value. As we noted at the time, there can be no assurance that this process will result in a transaction. While the Board continues this review process with the support of outside advisers, we don’t have further updates at this time and will have no further comment on the topic. We will, however, provide an update when we have more news to share.”

 

Funeral Director Daily has commented that once these types of transactions are “in play” something usually happens.  However, when the stock prices start dropping it may indicate that agreements are not imminent at this time.

 

Disclaimer — The author of this article holds a stock position in Park Lawn Corporation

 

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