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Carriage Services

CSV
51
Personal Products & Services · Consumer Cyclical
Price
$37.67
-1.22 (-3.14%)
Market Cap
$597.9M
Winston Score
51
Winston is curious
Mixed quality — meaningful strengths and weaknesses.

Share count falling — buybacks

14.4% over 4y

The company has reduced its share count over this period, returning value to shareholders through buybacks.

Diluted shares outstanding: 18.3M (2021) → 15.6M (2025)

Carriage Services is a funeral and cemetery company based in Houston, Texas. It owns and operates funeral homes and cemeteries across the United States, helping families plan burials, cremations, and memorial services. The company is one of the larger publicly traded death-care providers in the country, competing mainly with Service Corporation International and Park Lawn.

Carriage Services makes money by charging families for funeral arrangements, caskets, urns, burial plots, and related services. It operates roughly 200 funeral homes and around 30 cemeteries, primarily in smaller and mid-sized markets where it often faces less direct competition. The company carries a meaningful amount of debt from acquiring funeral homes over the years, which is its main financial risk. Growth depends largely on continuing to buy independent funeral homes at reasonable prices, but rising interest rates and a heavy debt load could make that strategy harder to execute going forward.

Winston Score History

Growth Profile

When traditional metrics don't capture the full picture, these are the signals growth stock investors use instead.

Revenue Growth

+8.1% YoY

YoY Growth Rate

Slow revenue growth

EPS Growth

+21.5% YoY

YoY Growth Rate

Steady EPS growth

R&D Spend

$0/ year

0.0% of revenue

Below sector average (4%)

Research and development spending

Insider Activity

10.9%ownership

Flat

Insiders holding steady — not selling despite ability to

Cash Runway

~0 months

$2M cash & investments

Quarterly Free Cash Flow

↓ Burn rate worsening

Short runway — potential dilution ahead through share issuance

Cash watch

Carriage Services has less than a year of cash at its current burn rate. Growth investors should watch for potential share dilution from future fundraising — that directly reduces your ownership.

The Winston Score above measures business quality today. Growth stocks often score lower because they invest in the future rather than maximising current profits. These metrics show what matters most for evaluating that future.

Score breakdown

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Quality

Gross Margin
34.5%
Modest — 34.5% gross margin
Operating Margin
18.4%
Healthy — 18.4% operating margin
ROCE
2.4%
Weak — 2.4% return on capital

ROIC between 0% and 5%. They earn a few cents back per dollar invested in the business.

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Growth

Sales YoY
+3.3%
Slow sales growth (3.3% YoY)
EPS YoY
+52.1%
Earnings growing fast (52.1% YoY)

Earnings growing 25%+ a year. The compounder zone.

EPS Consistency
6/8 quarters
Earnings grew in most of the last 8 quarters

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Cash Flow

Cash Conversion
118%
Turns 118% of profit into real cash
FCF Margin
-13.7%
Burning cash (-13.7%)

Free cash flow is negative. They are burning cash, not generating it.

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Stability

Debt / Equity
2.13
Heavy debt load (2.13)
Interest Cover
3.49x
Tight — interest eats into profit (3.5x)

Interest coverage between 3 and 8. Profits cover interest several times over.

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Valuation

P/E Ratio (TTM)
11.4x
Attractive valuation — P/E 11.4

P/E in the normal range. Price is roughly $15 for every $1 of yearly profit.

P/E vs Forward
+0.1
GROWING
Earnings roughly flat

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Dividends

Dividend Yield
1.15%
Small dividend — 1.15% yield

Modest yield. The bulk of any return needs to come from price appreciation.

Dividend Growth
+0.0%
Dividend flat

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