From former NYT-er now Substack-er Alex Berenson's Unreported Truths, August 5:
And not because of Covid.
Don’t take it from me. Take it from the good folks at Service Corporation International, “North America’s leading provider of funeral, cremation, and cemetery services” - handling 450,000 corpses* a year.
(*not their word).
Service Corporation’s earnings boomed in 2020 and 2021, thanks to Covid. Funerals are a solid but slow-growth business, and the trend toward cremations hasn’t helped. But between 2019 and 2021, SCI’s earnings per share more than doubled, from $1.90 to $4.57.
At first, SCI worried that growth was what it called “pull-forward.” In other words, because Covid mostly killed people who were close to death anyway, more deaths in 2020 and 2021 would just mean fewer later.
Lucky for Service Corporation and its investors, pull-forward isn’t turning out to be a problem. Americans are still dying at rates well above normal, even as Covid becomes a minimal part of business this year.
(Death! It’s looking up! From SCI’s May 5 presentation to investors:)
On Wednesday, Service Corporation reported its spring earnings - another banner quarter, with almost $1 billion in sales and $135 million in profits. As Tom Ryan, the company’s chief executive, told investors and Wall Street analysts:
....MUCH MORE
Unfortunately since we posted our follow-up: "UPDATE: Funeral Homes Outperforming Pfizer (PFE; SCI)" on May 4, Service Corp. not only continued but extended the outperformance:
right up to the report date:
SCI is still ahead of Pfizer year-to-date but not nearly as much.
I blame a smart-ass analyst harping on a lack of repeat customers.
Or something.
