National funeral home and cemetery operator Carriage Services announced their 3rd Quarter results last week.  In total they announced total revenues of $102.7 million in revenues for the 3rd Quarter in comparison to the 2024 3rd Quarter of $100.7 million — that’s a 2% total increase.  The same report also stated that the company’s revenue for the 9 month period ending September 30, 2025, totaled $312.0 million as compared to the total revenue for the same 9-month period of 2024 of $306.5 million — that’s an increase of about 1.8% on the year so far.

That doesn’t tell the whole story, however, as the press release from Carriage Services, which you can access here, alludes to how strong the cemetery and preneed operations of the company have been.  Here’s a couple of bullet points from the press release that points to that fact:

• Total revenue grew 2.0% over the prior year quarter, driven by increased operating revenue of 5.2% primarily as a result of 21.4% growth in cemetery preneed sales;
• Cemetery operating revenue increased 12.6% over the prior year quarter, driven by a 4.6% increase in the number of preneed interment rights sold and a 15.1% increase in the average price of preneed interment rights sold
• Financial revenue increased 27.2% over the prior year quarter, primarily driven by a 27.9% increase in preneed insurance contracts sold resulting in an increase in general agency commission revenue

On the other side of the equation, funerals, I noticed that the number of funeral contracts slipped about 2% over the same 3-month (3Q) period of last year and the increase in Funeral Revenue per case was less than 1% coming in at increased revenue rate of 0.7%.  The low rate of funeral contract revenue growth makes sense when you also notice the company’s rate of cremation to burial also slightly increased for the 3Q period. . . . . Carriage Services reported a 3Q25 cremation rate of 61% as compared to a 3Q24 cremation rate of 60.4%.

Carriage Services Vice-Chairman and CEO Carlos Quezada summed up the quarter with some prepared remarks in the press release.  In part, Quezada made these comments:

“We are excited to be back in growth mode, expanding our footprint this quarter through strategic acquisitions of businesses that served over 2,600 families and generated more than $15 million in annual revenue last year. At the same time, we divested certain non-core assets to reallocate capital towards better long-term value creation opportunities.

Total operating revenue grew 5.2% year-over-year, driven by 21.4% growth in cemetery preneed sales combined with financial revenue growth of 27.2%, reflecting the continued success of our national prearranged funeral and cemetery strategy. These results highlight the strength of our team, the effectiveness of our business strategy, and the growing demand for the premier experiences we deliver. Purposeful Growth in Action – Building Momentum Toward Our 2030 Vision.”

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  Carriage Services management has been upfront in the past couple of years letting shareholders know that they re-allocating the assets of the business to set up greater success in the future.  They have sold some business units and acquired others — which in some areas makes comparable financial data hard to interpret without knowing what has been sold and acquired.

However, from the success of their cemetery segment and this knowledge that their new preneed agreements seem to be bringing more revenue to the bottom line, I conclude that they seem to be on the right track.

From my point of view, the consumer rarely stands still and it appears to me that part of the Carriage Services’ management goal is to be ahead of the curve for that consumer and have the right products ready for tomorrow’s consumers.  It’s an ongoing task that could pay big dividends in the future.

Disclaimer —  The author of this article for Funeral Director Daily is a shareholder of Carriage Services.

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

Security National Financial Corporation (SNFC), the Utah-based company that has interests in the pre-planning, insurance assignment, mortuary, and cemetery business reported their 2nd Quarter results of 2025 last week.

To sum up the company’s results, both of the 2nd Quarter 2025 and 6-month 2025 financials show an “overall” increase in revenue but a decrease in Earnings before taxes.  Scott M. Quist, President of the company made this comment in prepared remarks from the company press release which you can access here, “Annualizing our first half results we achieved an 8% Return On Equity (ROE) and while that is below our 13.3% 10 year average ROE, I believe that to be a credible performance given that roughly 1/3 of our revenue and equity is in the still very troubled mortgage industry. It demonstrates the financial balance and resiliency of our combined businesses.”

SNFC operates in three divisions — the above mentioned Mortgage Segment is one of those divisions.  They also operate a Life Insurance Segment which includes Security National Preneed and C&J Financial, and Cemeteries/Mortuaries Segment which consists of retail Death Care services.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  I want to concentrate my take today on SNFC’s Cemetery/Mortuary Segment.  That portion of the company is pretty concentrated in the state of Utah but also has entities in New Mexico and California.  As far as for a public company segment it is fairly small and will probably do under $40 million in annual revenue.

While I mention that that number is small for a public company Death Care operation it is probably more relatable to family funeral homes and cemeteries across the United States than public companies like Service Corporation International (SCI) and Carriage Services.  While we can learn from SCI and Carriage Services and compare our funeral home financial operations to those companies they are much larger than the average funeral home in total scope.  That probably gives them discounts from suppliers and other advantages to create larger margins than most family-run Death Care operations.

Because of that reality I think a closer look at what has happened to SNFC’s Cemetery and Mortuary Segment in 2025 is relevant.  The 2Q25 report shows that SFNC’s Cemetery/Funeral Segment is lagging 2024 numbers in both Revenue and Earnings before Taxes — both for the quarter and half-year.

For the half-year ended June 30, Cemetery and Mortuary Revenue is down from $17.0 Million in 2024 to $16.2 million in 2025 and for the same time period Earnings before Taxes are down from $5.14 million in 2024 to $4.03 million in 2025.

For Revenue that is a 4.7% decline and for Earnings before Taxes it is a 21.6% decline.

I think those numbers show a staple of Death Care business where there are high “Fixed-Costs” to business and once you reach a certain amount of Revenue you can multiply profits.  It appears that is what SNFC did in 2024 but not yet in 2025.

Here is a prepared statement from SNFC President Quist on those numbers, “Analyzing the activity beneath the numbers we know that while our total service count is modestly up, our traditional service count is down and cremations are up (although we should note the percentage of cremations with services is up). Nationwide the cremation rate is now above 50%, so some of our results are market influenced since cremation services simply don’t have the same revenue as traditional services.”

I think that there are two factors at play for SNFC’s decline in Cemetery/Mortuary Revenue and Earnings numbers.  The first is that as a predominantly Utah-based Death Care operator, cremations and direct cremations are starting to catch up to the national averages as for percentage of disposition choice.  While we have seen the national providers such as SCI and Carriage Services report cremation dispositions at or near 60% of cases, the Cremation Association of North America showed Utah’s percentage of cremation in 2023 as 43%.  As that number moves toward the U.S. average it is bound to lower revenues per service for Utah providers.

The other number in the equation that would help explain a lowering of Earnings would be the great inflationary increases in the cost of doing business.  I think that may be something that is probably under-estimated in the operations of businesses today.  It is imperative that prices reflect your cost of doing business or you will lose profitability margin.

And, I think that situation is very representative of the situation of traditional funeral homes in the United States today.  Costs have gone up and prices have not kept up.  That equation would lead to less margin and less profits and I think that may be a common situation among funeral homes in North America today.

President Quist gives another explanation of the reduction in Revenues and Earnings directly related to SNFC’s Cemetery/Mortuary operations.  That is the “lag” of cemetery land sales for 2025.  He makes a comment in his prepared statements to that situation, “Our preneed land sales lag 2024, and land sales are arguably the greatest driver of profitability”.

I would opine that that situation may be a reflection of more cremation as most cemeteries have found that when cremation has grown in popularity there is less need by consumers to purchase burial lots.  While I have not seen SNFC’s cemeteries, the “lag” in cemetery land sales may be an indication that the company needs to be more aggressive in options for the cremation consumer — such as columbariums and scattering gardens.

Related — Here is the website for Security National Financial Corporations Cemetery/Mortuary Segment

Disclosure — The author of this article for Funeral Director Daily is a shareholder of Security National Financial Corporation.

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

Suffice it to say that if you are in a C-Suite office at Matthews International you probably have a lot on your plate right now.  Amidst other items that we will report on later including a large shareholder’s discontent leading to Board member nominations, the sale process of the SGK Brand segment, and an on-going dispute with Tesla in the company’s Industrial Technologoy segment the company reported their Fiscal Year 2025 1st Quarter report last Thursday.

In general, total sales for Matthews International dropped 10.7% in comparison to the 1st Quarter of Fiscal Year 2024.  According to the press release of the company’s 1st Quarter, which you can access here, total sales for 1Q2025 came in at $401.8 million as compared $450.0 million in 1Q2024 — that’s a dollar volume drop of $48.2 million.

The company’s Memorialization segment registered sales of $190.5 million for the 1st Quarter of 2025 as compared to recorded sales of $208.1 million for the same period of FY2024 — a drop of about 8.5% for the segment.  It should also be noted that Matthews International operates on a Fiscal Year calendar in which their first quarter reports results of October thru December 2024.

The company was able to hold up their Memorialization segment EBITDA for 1Q25 as they registered an EBITDA of $36.6 million on those sales of $190.5 million which is a better percentage (19.2%) than that of 1Q2024 where they recorded an EBITDA of $36.7 million (17.6%) on Memorialization segment sales of $208.1 million.

In prepared statements in the press release about the Memorialization segment Matthews International CEO Joseph Bartolacci made these comments, “Adjusted EBITDA for the Memorialization segment was relatively unchanged compared to the first quarter last year. The segment reported lower sales compared to last year primarily reflecting the impact of lower U.S. deaths and the prior year included sales in connection with a reduction in backlog of granite memorials. However, the impact of these declines on adjusted EBITDA for the current quarter was mitigated by the benefits from ongoing productivity and cost reduction initiatives and improved price realization.”

Other company news from Matthews International:

February 6 — “Matthews International announces positive ruling in arbitration with Tesla”.  Press Release

February 3 — “Matthews highlights significant shareholder support and underscores Board’s commitment to Long-term value creation.”  Press Release

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

It took awhile, but Security National Financial Corporation (SNFC) finally got around to posting the results of the company’s 2023 year just last week.  And, there is no doubt that SNFC’s Memorial Segment was one of the highlights of that report as that segment reported 10% revenue growth and 38% Earnings before Taxes growth as compared to the previous year.

Here’s what Scott Quist, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO of SNFC said about the Memorial Segment in this press release, “As death rates stabilized throughout 2023, and as we implemented renewed emphasis on operational efficiencies, our Cemetery and Mortuary segment had its best year ever, earning nearly $8,500,000. Needless to say, we are very pleased with those results”.

Quist went on to say, “In our Memorial segment we have added key personnel, who we believe will drive growth and improve operations. To be sure, growth in this environment is expensive, but is nevertheless our goal.”  

The company’s Cemetery and Mortuary segment reached revenues of over $31.9 million for the year and as CEO Quist mentioned, Earnings before Taxes of $8.5 million.

Security National’s Life Insurance Segment, which I believe holds the company’s preneed insurance division and the company’s insurance assignment business,  also posted excellent results with a 9.5% growth in revenues over 2022 and 78% Earnings before Taxes growth.  The division’s earnings moved north of $25 million for 2023 after earning about $14.2 million in 2022.

Finally, it wasn’t all profits for SNFC as the third leg of their business enterprise, the Mortgage Segment, moved to a lower revenue and loss on that revenue for 2023 after being profitable in 2022.  CEO Quist said this of the Mortgage Segment’s struggles, “. . . the increased interest rates continued to have a devastating effect on our mortgage loan business with volumes falling roughly an additional 35% below 2022’s already decreased markets, with the net result being that our Mortgage segment lost $17,500,000″.

All in all, the company’s performance, dragged down by the Mortgage Segment, produced 18% less revenue in 2023 than in 2022 and produced Earnings before Taxes of about $16.3 million in 2023 as compared to 2022’s earnings of $34.3 million.

Funeral Director Daily take:  We’ll confine our comments to the Memorial Segment of SNFC.  Over the last couple of years we’ve seen it grow to a pretty good $31 million revenue division.  Back in 2022, as you can see from this article, Security National Financial Corporation purchased their first funeral home outside of their Utah/Northern California base.

If the 2023 financial results are in any way an indication of how that transaction has worked out you can understand why CEO Quist makes the comment about “growing” being the goal.

We think that SNFC is perfectly situated to make death care growth a reality.  Interest rates won’t be high forever which will bring back the mortgage business to profitability and the life insurance market will also provide available funds to the Memorial Segment in their growh aspirations.  Finally, being a public company they have plenty of ways to access cash to be able to keep costs of acquisitions from being debt heavy.

The company has chosen to be measured, thorough, and patient in their growth decisions. . . .I expect that same modus operandi will prevail as they grow out their death care segments.

Disclaimer — The author of this article for Funeral Director Daily is a stockholder in Security National Financial Corporation.

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