It’s the end of summer in Minnesota and lots of our friends get ready to embark on the journey to warmer climates soon.  So, it is a good time to say good-bye to our summer Minnesotans and wish them well until we see them again next Spring. Angie and I did that last week and went out to a micro-brewery for pizza and drinks with some neighbor couples.

When you get to be our ages the talk sometimes takes on the realities of enrolling in Social Security and Medicare.  As our conversation turned that way I was surprised to hear that every couple we were with had attended a recent seminar, generally put on by an insurance agency or financial planner, to learn more about their options for those programs.

When I asked, somewhat tongue in cheek, if they had been attending the preneed funeral seminars too, they all said that they haven’t been invited yet.  That was surprising to me because they were in or over the age brackets  that I generally started sending invitations to when I operated our funeral home — 55 years and older.

And then I received my weekly recap of articles from Great Britain’s Funeral Service Times where the lead article had this headline, “Prepaid funeral plan sales surpass 100,000 in record H1 (Half-year) of 2025”.  The article featured statistics furnished by the National Association of Funeral Plan Providers (NAFPP).

Turns out that in Great Britain and Wales, which had a combined 568,613 deaths in 2024, a total of 111,887 funeral plans were sold in the first half of 2025.  The article states that is a 13.7% increase over the same period of 2024 and it marked the first time a half-year total was over the 100,000 mark.

Just to state a numerical situation, if the country totaled the same amount of preneed plans sold in the 2nd half of 2025 preneed plans would total about 39% of the number of deaths recorded the previous year (568,613 deaths in 2024).

It should also be noted that during the first-half of 2025, existing preneed plans funded over 62,000 funeral services in the UK — about 18.3% of all services during that time period according to the NAFPP.

According to the article “The figures reflect the sector’s continued expansion following full regulation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). During the period, 787 existing plans were transferred from non-regulated entities to NAFPP member firms. These customers are now covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and Financial Ombudsman Service.”  (The Financial Conduct Authority started regulating fuenral plans in Great Britain in July 2022)

Barry Floyd, Chairman of the NAFPP had these comments about the increased preneed planning in Great Britain, “. . With consumer confidence in the product buoyed by the reassurance provided by our regulator, more people than ever are aware of the advantages. The first half of 2025 has set a new benchmark for the prepaid funeral planning sector, with record new plan sales, strong performance across all indicators, and customer preferences evolving toward flexible solutions.”

The NAFPP also reported an increase in the use of its plan tracing service, with around 7,000 enquiries expected this year. The service is used by families who cannot locate funeral paperwork following a relative’s death.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  Two things come to mind when I think about our dinner discussion and this report out of Great Britain.  First of all, people really do want to know what their options are — they may not be ready to purchase as indicated that our friends had not yet applied for Social Security and/or purchased Medicare supplement coverage.  However, they are all going to the seminars to learn about their options.

Secondly, when it comes to preneed funeral coverage people are willing to step up and purchase the product when they have the confidence that their investment will be there for them in the future.  When it was an unregulated product in Great Britain sales lagged the pace where they are today.

Another thought that I had from our discussion was that our friends had never really thought through the possibility of their death care choices.  I’m guessing that they all have life insurance and other financial issues under control but they all told me that they would be “cremated and have no idea what would be done with their ashes”.

I mentioned that the options have become many and varied  — and I pointed out products such as Better Place Forests and Parting Stone.  Interestingly enough, those mentions caught their attention and made them think of possible alternatives to simply scattering ashes.  From that short discussion I realized that the Death Care profession does not seem to be keeping up with giving alternatives to families that choose cremation.  And, if the potential clients don’t know about the alternatives they will not be purchasing them.

I think whether we realize it or not, Death Care is in a new world today. With so much coming at once and so much happening in the streaming world of funerals, in the digital media of advertising, in the online revenue options, in the venue options, in disposition options, in online preneed options, and on and on for funeral homes and cremation providers, that sometimes we have not taken the appropriate measures to let our future clientele know what we can offer.

I further think it is imperative that funeral and cremation providers be able to get in front of the future consumers much like the Medicare supplement providers are doing.  It’s my opinion that a lack of effort in hosting groups at your funeral home and letting them know of all the options, including preneed, will result in a lower revenue per case than could be received with a well-informed consumer. . . . if the uninformed consumer chooses your firm at all or simply goes with a Direct Cremation with No Services provider because they don’t know of the options available at your firm.

If you are interested in creating seminars that will give your area consumers the knowledge that they need to make informed funeral, cremation, and preneed purchases give Patrick Zalusky and Laker Planning Services a call.

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

Service Corporation International (SCI) reported their 1st Quarter 2025 financial results last week and in doing so showed an overall revenue increase of 2.8% in year over year results.  Total Revenue for the quarter was $ 1.074.2 billion as compared to the 1st Quarter of 2024 which came in at $ 1.045.4 billion.

Those revenue numbers led to an overall improvement in Operating Income of about $ 19 million for the quarter.  The operating income margin also improved to 23.4% from the 1Q2024 mark of 22.2%.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

In my opinion, what was really strong for the company was the performance of the funeral side of the business.  In what SCI terms “Comparable Funeral Results” — a term for a comparison of the funeral side of businesses that were operating in both comparable quarters — revenues increased a total of 3.9%.  The actual numbers were revenue of $ 625.9 million in 1Q25 as compared to revenues of $ 602.6 million in 1Q24.  (Comparable results don’t include revenue from new acquisitions or disposed of properties)

And, it was a “double-barrel” increase as both the number of services performed increased as did the revenue per service.  SCI reported that the number of services performed in 1Q25 was 95,624 as compared to the number in 1Q24 of 93,967 — a 1.8% increase.

They also reported that the revenue per service grew 2.3% from $ 5,613 per service in 1Q24 to $ 5,743 per service in 1Q25 — that’s an increase of 2.3%

Tom Ryan
SCI CEO

Here’s what SCI CEO Thomas Ryan said in a prepared statement from the 1Q2024 Earnings press release which you can access here, “This was driven by strong performance in our funeral segment with year over year increases in the number of services performed and average revenue per funeral . . . .  . Additionally, effective cost management drove solid gross profit performance and margin expansion.” 

On the flip side of that report, the “Comparable Cemetery” results were not as impressive.  Revenue, gross profit, and gross profit margin all declined from what was reported one year ago in 1Q2024.  The numbers for those categories in 1Q2025 were reported as such:

• Comparable Cemetery Revenue :  $ 432.9 million (Compared to $440.7 million in 1Q2024)
• Comparable Cemetery Gross Profit:  $ 136.8 million (Compared to $142.6 million in 1Q2024)
• Comparable Cemetery Gross Profit Margin:  31.6% (Compared to 32.4% in 1Q2024)

Here’s what CEO Ryan said in a prepared statement that was aimed at the cemetery segment, “In the cemetery segment, we are continuing to focus on production, which will benefit us in future periods, as undeveloped property sold is constructed.”

It should also be noted that Preneed production mostly slipped in 1Q2025 also.  However, it should be pointed out that the preneed sales staff is in the process of moving from a trust based system where some revenue is counted upon early delivery to an insurance based product, with their new alliance with Global Atlantic Insurance, where most of the revenue will not be counted until delivery at need.

I think it will be very difficult to comprehend how the actual preneed numbers are for SCI until they have at least one full year of comparables in the insurance-based operating model under their belts.  At this point they are, in my opinion, in a transitionary process.

On preneed however, SCI did report average preneed contracts moving up 1.1% in dollar volume.  One might wonder, however, if that actually portends a trend of less services being purchased in the future because 1.1% is certainly not keeping up with inflation.

Finally, in CEO Ryan’s opening statement he did mention acquisitions.  Here’s what he said on that subject, “. . . our robust cash flow has allowed us to continue investment toward our extensive pipeline of acquisitions while also providing us the flexibility to be opportunistic with stock repurchases.”

Disclaimer — The author of this article for Funeral Director Daily is a shareholder of Service Corporation International.

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

The growth of Propel Funeral Partners of Australia and New Zealand is apparent when you look at the company’s financial report covering the 1st-Half of 2024, ending on December 31, 2023.  In looking at the report you will see that, what is now believed to be the South Pacific’s largest “publicly-held” death care operating company, shows an increase in gross revenue of almost AUS $ 103 million as compared to AUS $ 83.8 million for the Prior Corresponding Period (PCP).  That’s an increase of over 23% in revenue.

Operating EBITDA is also up over 18% compared to the Prior Corresponding Period. . . and funeral case volume is also up over 17%.  You can find that information from this visual power point presentation about the 1st-Half results.

However, as good as those aspects of the report look. . . in looking a little deeper you will see that much of that increase comes from recently acquired businesses as the company comments that while “total funeral volumes were 10,637, up 17.4% on the PCP, comparable funeral volumes contracted by 9.8% on the PCP.”

Propel does illuminate a little about the contraction and say going forward they look to the contraction being temporary because:

• Prior period declines have rebounded quickly;
• The unusually benign winter flu season; and
• The growing and ageing populations in Australia and New Zealand.

On a more positive note, I noticed that Propel’s Average Revenue per Funeral (ARF) had moved up 4.5% overall and 6.0% on a comparative basis. . which seems to indicate that the companies existing funeral homes have been able to increase their prices.  In countries where the cremation rate is 70% (Australia) and 75% (New Zealand) the ability to increase the ARF in cremation cases, where many now are in the Direct Cremation category, is impressive.  It gives hope to cremation providers that the right approach to consumers may be more financially rewarding than many think.

From the power-point presentation data, it appears that Average Revenue per Funeral has been increased by over 10% since 2021.

Other items we learned from the power-point presentation:

• The population of Australia and New Zealand is aging much like the United States demographics.  Death volumes in Australia are expected to increase 2.9% from 2030 to 2040.  In New Zealand they are expected to increase in the same time period by 2.1

• Australian/New Zealand death care providers are consolidating.  Independents are believed to have a 70% market share, down from a 74% market share in 2015.  In the same time period, Propel Funeral Partners believes that they have went from 1% to 9% and they believe the recently taken private largest provider of death care in Australia/New Zealand, InvoCare has dropped from 25% to 21% market share.

• Propel Funeral Partners operates 187 locations in Australia and New Zealand.

• If Propel Funeral Partners would have the same amount of revenue in the 2nd half of 2024 as they did in the first half they would total approximately AUS $ 206 million in annual revenue.  With exchange rates taken into consideration, that would put Propel at about 1/3 the size, based on revenue, of the Carriage Services and Park Lawn Corporation organizations.

Here is the Propel Funeral Partners website from where you can glean more information.

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