Service Corporation International Chairman and CEO Thomas Ryan made some interesting comments in his opening statements in last week’s SCI Earnings Call.  And, I wonder when looking at the long-range perspective if these comments portend an increasingly successful future for cemeteries and less of that future for traditional funeral homes.

Here’s some of Ryan’s comments based on the 3rd Quarter 2025 results of SCI:

• “Funeral gross profit decreased by $9.5 million, while the gross profit percentage declined by 170 basis points to about 18%.”

• “This (Funeral) gross profit decrease was attributable to the slight decline in revenues for the quarter, coupled with higher selling costs and a moderate fixed cost increase.”

• “Comparable cemetery revenue increased by $31 million or almost 7%”

• “Large (Cemetery) sales grew by an impressive $8 million or 19% over the prior year quarter. Maybe more impressively, core sales accounted for $22 million of the sales production increase as solid velocity growth was complemented by higher sales averages.”

The emphasis on those quotes came from Funeral Director Daily simply to point out the somewhat negative aspects of SCI’s funeral financials and the positive aspects of SCI’s cemetery financials.

Here’s a couple of more quotes from SCI CEO Ryan that indicate how they see the value of their cemeteries going forward:

” . . .the cremation consumer continues to be a high-growth opportunity in our cemeteries. We’re seeing more cremation consumers pick either cremation gardens, cremation niches.

We have a lot of products that I’d tell you, consumers really don’t have familiarity with. I think a lot of cremation consumers come in and don’t really understand what we have available. So we’re really focused this year with some consumer research that we’ve done about trying to tie that consumer in a better way to educate them about what we have because we found in the focus groups that almost 0 out of 10 knew what we had and about 8 out of 10 once they saw it said, I’m interested in looking.” . . . . . . 

 

“Our revenue team has helped construct some really nice inventory across our cemeteries. We spend about $160 million a year injecting new inventory into the system, and we do a real good job of converting that pretty quickly into sales. So we feel very good about next year right now based on everything we know at the high end, at the core level, and like I said, I just want to identify some of these productivity gains or velocity gains. If we can get more cremation consumers in there, it’s going to drive more sales, not as high an average, obviously, but drive more velocity, more familiarity. And the nice thing about cemeteries is it’s really a family tree component to this, right?

Because people are going to visit the cemeteries, people are going to want to buy adjacent properties for the family. So this is really good in educating and providing future leads and opportunities to our sales force.”

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  People visit cemeteries and cemeteries are ever-evolving into places that do more than house the dead.  My deceased mother would have celebrated her 99th birthday last week so I took some time on her birthday and visited the cemetery.  Even on a cool Minnesota autumn morning the cemetery proved a good place of solemn reflection “on life” for me. . . . . and I think that is becoming a more common occurence among many of my friends.

During my time as a funeral director so many families struggled with the choice between traditional burial and cremation with memorial services.  In my opinion, that was the decision that spurred the Death Care choices for these families.  That decision, on shifting from generational burial families to first-time cremation consumers, was so “heavy” on people that not much was thought about eventual “Memorialization”.

Today, cremation is on its way to an 85% useage rate in the next two decades according to research by the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA).  Instead of that difficult decision between burial and cremation, I think cremation is a foregone conclusion for most of these people at this time.  At the same time I think these consumers have lived through the world of bringing the cremated remains of their parents home and wondering what to do with them. . . .and, they don’t want that situation to happen to their children.

In an anecdotal setting of Baby Boomers like me, most of my friends today no longer ask me about the pros and cons of burial vs. cremation, the questions come about concerning “What to do with my ashes?”

Quite frankly, just yesterday morning I was listening to a national syndicated sports radio show on the radio while driving.  I don’t know how the discussion turned this way but I heard one of the commentators say, “I’m fine with cremation, but I’m really concerned with what my family might do with my ashes.”  I believe that thought is more common today than most of us believe it to be.

Partly because of that, “Memorialization” is at the top of mind for Death Care consumers today.  SCI understands that and has all kinds of options available for those consumers at their cemeteries.  Funeral Director Daily recently published an article, that you can access here, that shows that Los Angeles’ Hollywood Forever Cemetery is creating inventory on that premise also.

What I believe that this consumer change leads to is an opening for cemeteries, especially those that are combination cemetery/funeral home/crematories to increase their market share by introducing the options for memorialization to consumers.  If you read the linked Hollywood Forever Cemetery article they actually offer “Free cremations” to consumers who purchase a certain level of cemetery memorialization.

From reading SCI CEO Ryan’s comments it appears that SCI sees this shift as well as they are investing $160 million per year in cemetery inventory that he says is “convert(ed) pretty quickly into sales”.

It’s my opinion that cemeteries that don’t have these premium cremation memorialization opportunities for today’s (and tomorrow’s) Death Care consumers should look into the idea of creating some.

Related — You can access the full transcript of the Service Corporation International’s 3rd Quarter 2025 Earnings Call here.

More news from the world of Death Care:

Enter your e-mail below to join the 3,201 others who receive Funeral Director Daily articles daily

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

If you read Funeral Director Daily and listen to me when I have a chance to be a guest on an industry podcast you know that I believe that there is a great, and growing, potential market in what I call the “Cremation Aftermarket”.  My take on the the “Cremation Aftermarket” is that many people who become the guardians of cremated remains don’t know what to do with those remains.

Because of that those remains end up in closets or on shelves in homes and as time passes the guardians of such remains question what they are going to do with them, but never get around to doing anything.

It’s because of that that I think a great opportunity that is available to funeral homes is to let these guardians know — during preneed, at need, and even well into post-need — that there are options to memorialize those remains and take the responsibility of being the guardian off of their shoulders.  It’s especially important when you realize that a funeral home can not only help a guardian make a decision but the funeral home may also profit off the sale of many of these cremation aftermarket products and memorials.

As a matter of fact, on this episode of Podcasket, I bring up the “Cremation Aftermarket” and the host, Tukios CEO Curtis Funk makes the comment about a built-in market for such when he comments, “. . you can market to (these guardians) and they want you to market to them. . . . .Reach-out again. . . (think of it as) Life-cycle marketing”.

Podcasket Episode #6:  Cremation Aftermarket discussion begins at the 39:06 mark and lasts for about six minutes.

With that comment CEO Funk is acknowledging the great amount of people who have cremated remains within their guardianship and probably are wondering how to relieve themselves of that responsibility of guardianship in a tasteful fashion.

Late last week I learned of a great promotion to do just that.  My friend Kelly Roberts, founder of funeral service alternative Sendoff, sent me an email about his upcoming “Ashes among the Oaks” event.

You can learn about the event here, but what it is is an opportunity to learn, in a gentle way, how to “let go” of those remains.  Roberts and the Minneapolis metropolitan-area based Sendoff have teamed with Better Place Forests of the St. Croix Valley for an afternoon in the local Better Place Forest.

My guess is that Roberts, Sendoff, and Better Place Forests hope to make some sales for Better Place Forests with this event, but reaching-out and giving these guardians an opportunity to realize that some type of memorialization can be probably should be done for the cremations remains that they brought home yesterday or decades ago is great public relations on its own.

Sendoff, which sub-titles itself “Funerals Reimagined” is, in my opinion on the right track to capture tomorrow’s Death Care consumer.  In a world where that consumer will make choices about Disposition, Celebration, and Memorialization, a company offering what Sendoff does, especially in the Celebration and Memorialization modes, may capture much of the business from consumers that traditional funeral homes no longer appeal to.

Take a look at this page from the Sendoff employee profiles and read the bios to get an idea of some of the celebrations that many might prefer for themselves.

Here is the website for Sendoff.

Related — “Lost in a sea of ash – When wildfire destroys a home – and a loved one’s urn – the search begins.  Los Angeles Times (CA)

Here is a short video from KARE TV – Channel 11 NBC Minneapolis about “Sendoff – Funerals Reimagined”

More news from the world of Death Care:

Enter your e-mail below to join the 3,133 others who receive Funeral Director Daily articles daily:

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

In October Choice Mutual, an end-of-life burial insurance company released the results of a nationwide survey of over 3,000 individuals that, among other things, asked where in their home state would they want their cremated ashes to be dispersed or scattered.

According to one article I read, the impetus for this survey was the discussion, explained here in a July Funeral Director Daily article, about a public discussion among the University of Nebraska Board of Regents.  As it turns out, the University of Nebraska is planning on improving the playing surface at their football stadium and one Regent suggested building a columbarium under the playing surface.

Turns out, that according to the Choice Mutual survey, that sporting venues carry with them a strong popularity with the public in many states for being a site of cremated remains disposition.   As it turns out historic venues such as Fenway Park in Massachusetts, Memorial Stadium at the University of Michigan, and Indianapolis Speedway in Indiana all were the top picks for their respective states.

The top state picks for each state and the survey overview can be viewed here.  Here are four items named in the overview as key takeaways from the survey as to generalizations where respondents would like their cremated remains to be dispersed:

• Areas of Natural Beauty
• Sports Arenas
• Urban and Historical Landmarks
• State-Specific Preferences

Some of the Landmarks or State Specific Preferences included the following:

• Missouri — The Gateway Arch
• Texas — The Alamo
• South Dakota — Mount Rushmore Monument

Related Article — Here is a recent article (November 14) from ESPN writer Andrea Adelson titled “Even in death college football fans want to be at their favorite stadiums”.  The provided link also has a short video interview of Ms. Adelson and ESPN show host Paul Finebaum discussing this phenomena.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  Legalities aside, the idea of placing cremated remains in a cherished place rather than in a cemetery that one has never visited seems to resonate with many people.  Whether it be the Alamo, The Gateway Arch, a state park, or an athletic venue seems to bring “connection” in death for many.

And, when you couple that with some of the amounts being spent by the consumer for what I would call “Premium Cemetery Memorialization”, you start to wonder if some of these public areas, including college campuses, should create some type of park-like area for state-of-the-art cremation memorialization.

The following is an exerpt from Service Corporation International’s (SCI) CEO Tom Ryan in response to a question about consumer behavior in the area of cemetery space sales from the SCI Earnings Call of February 13, 2024:

(Ryan:)  “So I think on consumer behavior, if you take the high end, we continue to see the high end going strong. And some of that average price and remember, these are over $80,000 sales. But to give you some perspective, we probably had about 400 of those that averaged around, call it, $200,000 sale, back in 2019, around that era. We’ve almost doubled the number of contracts. So going from 400 contracts at that level to 800, slightly up on the average too. And so that seems some pretty significant growth and continues to look strong. And again, we’ve always said that probably correlates best with housing and stock market. And I’d say if there’s anywhere we’re not seeing as robust in activities we like, it is at that lower end”. 

Outside of the idea of premium spaces at existing cemeteries, I don’t think this phenomena of the amounts of money people will spend for memorialization at their “preferred venue” is thought about much.  Maybe a company like Better Place Forests is really on to something and ahead of the game with their development of “conservation forests” for this purpose.  As noted above from the survey, “Areas of Natural Beauty” are seen as a desired dispersal area and Better Place Forests has already made the investments to be able to serve those that choose that option.

More news from the world of Death Care:

Enter your e-mail below to join the 3,117 others who receive Funeral Director Daily articles daily:

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

If you have read Funeral Director Daily for any length of time you would know that I believe that there is an opportunity for increased revenues at funeral homes and cemeteries from what I term as the “Cremation Aftermarket”.  My point is that there is a large percentage of American consumers who believe in cremation as a means of disposition of the human body, but then don’t know what to do in the next step of memorialization.

Many of these consumers take the cremated remains home where they sit in a closet or some other place because, at least in my opinion, the thought process of memorializing their loved one ended with “cremation”, not “memorialization”.  And, I’m of the opinion, that the more consumers know about the “memorialization” options, the more they will select one of them.

Moving further on that thought process, I believe it is the funeral director’s duty to inform them of options and, quite frankly, it is probably a smart business decision to do that also as it may lead to increased revenue on the cremation case.  In many post-cremation memorialization sales a commission can be paid to the funeral home or the funeral home may be able to offer the service with some value added charges involved.

There are all kinds of options for cremated remains memorialization including the well known ones such as columbarium niche placement, cemetery burial, and newer options such as placement in Better Place Forests, or Parting Stone, or Eterneva and other cremation jewelry and more.

One that I’ve know about for some time but was not well versed in was that of the Neptune Memorial Reef™ placement.  I recently saw this article titled, “Explore the World’s First Underwater Cemetery” about the process that included a video description from the British Broadcast Corporation.  If you are not aware of the Neptune Memorial Reef™, I suggest you take a look at the article and video.

In essence, about 3 1/2 miles off the coast of Miami in the Atlantic Ocean a 16 acre reef is being established in the ocean.  Cremated remains are prepared to be placed in this area to restore reef so that the ocean is once again a habitat for marine biology.  As of today, there are about 1,000 cremated remains memorials placed in position and the entire 16 acres will have room for a total of about 250,000 memorials when completed.

The article makes this comment about the underwater cemetery,  “In addition to being a gorgeous cemetery, the Neptune Memorial Reef™ is also a green burial location, meaning it’s a resting site that benefits the environment. The human-made structure allows fish to hide from predators in nooks and provides a hard surface for coral growth. Once complete, it’s set to be the world’s largest artificial reef.”

• Click here for the Neptune Memorial Reef™ website which includes pricing packages.

• Click here for information from Dignity Memorial about the reef.

More information from the world of Death Care:

Enter your e-mail below to join the 3,143 others who receive Funeral Director Daily articles daily:

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