Since they sold Batesville in February 2023, Hillenbrand Industries has been out of the Death Care business.  But, if you are a long-time member of the Death Care community the name Hillenbrand has been synonymous with the funeral profession since 1906 when John A. Hillenbrand purchased the Batesville Casket Company and founded “Hillenbrand” where the casket business became the foundation.

However, Batesville was off-loaded from Hillenbrand in February 2023 and just this week it was announced in this press release that the balance of Hillenbrand Industries was being sold to an affiliate of Lone Star Funds or $32 per share which will equal an enterprise value of about $3.8 billion.

In the press release Helen Cornell, Chairperson of the Hillenbrand Board of Directors makes this comment, “We are pleased to reach this agreement with Lone Star, which delivers immediate and certain cash value to our shareholders at a substantial premium to recent trading, and positions Hillenbrand to continue meeting and exceeding customers’ needs for highly-engineered, mission-critical processing equipment and solutions.”

And, Hillenbrand President and CEO Kim Ryan makes this comment, “Over the past several years, Hillenbrand has made tremendous progress transforming into a pure-play industrial company, reshaping our portfolio, and making strategic investments in the business.”

Here is the website of Lone Star Funds.

Here is Funeral Director Daily’s article on the 2023 sale of Batesville

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  I grew up being the “funeral director’s kid” in our small community.  And, that designation had responsibilities that went with it that we learned a a very young age —  be nice to everybody, follow the rules, be polite, respect adults, and on and on. . . .

We were never the “cool kids” and the funeral business didn’t seem very exciting to our friends who liked the automobile dealerships and other exciting consumer products more.  But my dad always told us that owning the funeral home was “an honorable” profession and one could build a good life and business value “a nickel at a time”.

I can’t help have those thoughts when I look at Hillenbrand first selling Batesville and now selling the rest of the company to private equity buyers.  I’m no expert on the management of the company but when I look at the last couple of years for Hillenbrand it appears to me that they sold Batesville, which in my book was the “nickel at a time” honorable and boring cash-machine, and then as President and CEO Ryan stated, transformed the company into a “pure play industrial company”.

When I look back at the stock price of Hillenbrand, it appears that it was hovering at about $47-48 per share (according to Yahoo Finance) at the time of the Batesville sale and Hillenbrand just accepted an offer of $32 per share as a “pure-play industrial company”.  To shareholders that’s about a 33% loss in shareholder stock value in just the past 2-3 years.

I wonder if they ever think that they sold the wrong company when they sold Batesville back in 2023?

Another company that may be in the same boat?:  I look at Matthews International as another public company with somewhat the same dilemma.  They do about 40-60% of their revenue in their Memorial division which includes Aurora Caskets, Dodge Company, and Matthews cremation among other products.  In the company’s 3Q 2025 Report,the company actually reports $203 million in Memorialization sales with total company sales for the quarter at $349 million, making Memorialization about 58% of incoming revenues.

They also have a promising and potential fast-growing division that deals with electrode batteries and other indsutrial products.

One can envision a future where Matthews liquidates the perceived “dull” Memorial division to concentrate on the exciting and potential growth of what they call their Industrial Technologies segment.

Maybe I’m not your typical investor, but in many situations I have no problem saying “Boring is good”.

Here is information on Matthews Memorialization segment.

Here is information on Matthews Industrial Technology segment.

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

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”