Declining Funeral Corporation Numbers are nudging a Funeral Industry Decline.
The third quarter numbers for Stewart Enterprises are nudging the Funeral Industry towards it’s disaster. Stewart Enterprises did not meet the street expectations in the third quarter 2009. They did show a small 3Q revenue profit do to debt reduction and cost cutting. The problem is you cannot cut costs and retire debt forever.
Stewart Enterprises, Inc (STEI)is the second largest Funeral Corporation in the United States of America. The competitor Service Corporation(SCI) International finds itself in a worse position.
Total revenue at the company fell 9.7 percent to $117.8 million.
Revenue from the company’s cemetery segment dropped 16 percent, primarily due to a decrease in cemetery property sales (translation Cemetery Preneed).
Snippet from tradingmarkets.com
“Funeral revenue decreased $2.5 million, or 3.6 percent, to
$66.0 million.The cremation rate for the Company’s same-store operations
was 41.8 percent for the third quarter of 2009 compared to
39.9 percent for the third quarter of 2008.Cemetery revenue decreased $10.2 million to $51.7 million
for the third quarter of 2009. This decrease is due primarily
to a $3.7 million, or 13.5 percent, decrease in cemetery
property sales.
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