Park Lawn Corp reports 2023. . . Revenues increase 6.6%

We finance caskets CLICK HERE and send it directly to the funeral home of your choice. Or go directly to the application HERE.

Park Lawn Corporation (PLC), a publicly-held funeral home and cemetery operator reported their 2023 4th Quarter and 2023 Full-Year financial results last week.  In those results, which you can see here, the company reported revenues for both the 4th Quarter and Full-Year of 2023 increasing from the comparable quarter and year.  They did, however, report a Net Loss for both both time periods, explained by the completion of the sale of 83 properties to Everstory Partners which happened in December 2023.

You can read a Funeral Director Daily story about that event here.

In a prepared statement in the Park Lawn Corporation press release PLC Chief Executive Officer J. Bradley Green explained that Net Loss this way:

• “Net (Loss) Earnings for the quarter and year ended 2023 reflect a loss as a result of the disposition of certain legacy businesses completed in December.  However, Adjusted Net Earnings for the three-month period ended December 31, 2023 increased by approximately 5.3% while decreasing by 10.1% over the comparable prior year, principally as a result of the normalization of the death rate. “

A positive attribute of that Everstory transaction was also explained by CEO Green in this manner:

• “At closing, Park Lawn received $70M consisting of $55M in cash and the remaining in deferred compensation, bearing interest at 10% per annum, to be received by PLC within 5 years following the close of the transaction.  The cash proceeds were used to pay down debt resulting in a reduction of Park Lawn’s leverage ratio to  1.95x and 2.75x, including Park Lawn’s outstanding debentures.”

CEO Green also commented on what the divestiture of those 83 properties would do the the company’s previously disclosed aspirational plans:

• “Given the recent completion of the transformational disposition of certain legacy businesses at the end of December, as well as the current macroeconomic environment, we no longer believe that our previously announced five-year long-term aspirational financial targets are achievable by the conclusion of 2026. . . Rather than long-term targets, in an effort to enhance the insight and disclosure around our operating performance, we believe annual guidance will provide improved near-term transparency of our financial expectations and strategic direction to our investors, shareholders and stakeholders.”

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  Now that we have seen the Full-Year reports for the “Big 3” public funeral home and cemetery operators it is interesting to try to decipher their individual ambitions and plans for moving forward.  It appears to me that the last couple of years have been about “Right-sizing” the ships following what was learned in the pandemic.  I think each of those companies — Park Lawn, Carriage Services, and Service Corporation International — have plans on where they hope to bring their companies and each has a definite path that they want to follow to continue to build out the operations.

Once the Service Corporation International moratorium on selected acquisitions (see Funeral Director Daily article here) is lifted, I think we will get a pretty good idea of where those destinations are.

In the meantime, here’s a little chart I put together on the Revenue increases for each of those companies for the 2023 4th Quarter and the 2023 Full-Year.  The percentage listed is the company’s revenue over the same periods in 2022:

And here is the total revenues as reported by each of the companies for the Full-Year 2023.  You can see, in round numbers, the extreme size of SCI as they continue to have annual revenue of more than 10 times the other companies.

2023 Reported Annual Revenue

• Service Corporation International                  $ 4.09 billion
• Carriage Services                                               $  382.5 million
• Park Lawn Corporation                                    $  347.6 million

More news from the world of Death Care:

Enter your e-mail below to join the 3,484 others who receive Funeral Director Daily articles daily:

“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”