Word: funeralls
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Ray Loewen counters that the average Loewen funeral generates only about $300 profit--although this average includes everything from direct cremations to premium traditional services and excludes all cemetery costs. Revenue from existing homes increases only 3% to 5% a year, he says, and he notes that Loewen also spends...
But in disclosures to the SEC, Loewen reported that last year, through a combination of price increases and cost cutting, the company managed to generate a gross profit margin from its funeral operations of 41.5%--the kind of spread that executives of the FORTUNE 500 almost never see. (By comparison...
From 1991 through 1995, Loewen more than tripled its revenue, to just shy of $600 million. But most of that growth was generated by a kind of fiscal illusion. The company boosted sales not by attracting more and more corpses to its existing mortuaries but rather by buying up funeral...
The companies have been cutthroat competitors for years. Any merger is certain to prompt antitrust concerns. Together, for example, they control more than 23% of the funeral market in Florida, considered the El Dorado of the death business. In Seattle, Loewen owns a funeral home located on the grounds of...
But critics and independent operators agree there is more at stake than just money. With consolidation has come a level of depersonalization that family-owned funeral homes, for all their other alleged sins, have managed to resist. "It really shows that nothing is sacred," says Karen Leonard, executive director of...