Service Corporation International Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
July 30, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • SCI reported Q2 EPS of $0.90, up from $0.88 year over year, and reaffirmed its $4.10–$4.30 full-year 2026 adjusted EPS range. Management expects double-digit EPS growth in the second half as funeral volumes stabilize and margins improve.
  • Preneed sales momentum remained strong: comparable cemetery production rose 8% and funeral production increased 7% in the quarter. Management expects mid- to high-single-digit production growth in the second half, supported by expanded sales staffing, seminars, improved lead conversion, large sales, and targeted cremation offerings.
  • Adjusted operating cash flow increased 42% to $239 million, prompting SCI to raise its full-year midpoint to $1.085 billion. Adjusted free cash flow is now expected to reach approximately $750 million, up 18% from 2025, although the company benefited from unusually low cash taxes and renewable-energy tax credits.
  • Funeral gross profit declined by about $7 million and the margin fell 130 basis points to 18.5%, reflecting weak case volume, the high fixed-cost structure, and higher recognized selling compensation. Management expects these pressures to ease as insurance-product conversion costs anniversary and deferred cemetery revenue is recognized.
  • SCI returned $172 million to shareholders in Q2 through share repurchases and dividends, while ending the quarter with approximately $1.6 billion of liquidity and leverage of 3.77 times net debt to EBITDA. The company plans to remain opportunistic with buybacks as its share price changes and is targeting $75 million–$125 million of acquisitions in 2026.
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Earnings Conference Call
Service Corporation International Q2 2026
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Operator

Good morning. Welcome to the second quarter 2026 SCI earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to SCI Management. Please go ahead.

Trey Bocage
Assistant VP of Investor Relations at SCI

Good morning. This is Trey Bocage, AVP of Investor Relations and Treasury. Welcome to our second quarter earnings call of 2026. We are going to have some prepared remarks about the quarter from Tom and Eric in just a minute. Before that, I will quickly go over our safe harbor language. Any comments made by our management team that state our plans, beliefs, expectations, or projections for the future are forward-looking statements.

Trey Bocage
Assistant VP of Investor Relations at SCI

These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in such statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those factors identified in our earnings release and in our filings with the SEC that are available on our website. Today, we might also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these measures can be found in the tables at the end of our earnings release and on our website. With that out of the way, I will now turn it over to Tom Ryan, Chairman and CEO.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Thanks, Trey. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I'll start with an overview of our quarterly performance, followed by some expectation setting for the back half of 2026, then a deeper look at our funeral and cemetery results for the quarter. For the second quarter, we generated earnings per share of $0.90, which compared to $0.88 in the prior year. Cemetery revenue and gross profit increased, supported by high single-digit growth in preneed cemetery sales production and solid growth from cemetery trust fund income. This favorable impact was slightly enhanced by lower general and administrative expense. Funeral revenues grew marginally. Profitability declined somewhat, offsetting the favorable impacts, resulting in a $0.02 increase in earnings per share from operating income.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Below the line, the favorable impact of a lower share count and a slightly lower effective tax rate was offset by the net negative impact from interest expense and other income expense. While the first and second quarter earnings per share growth was muted by lower funeral case volumes and deferrals of cemetery revenue, we have some very positive momentum to carry into the back half of 2026. Comparable pre-need cemetery sales production grew by 8% and comparable pre-need funeral sales production grew by 7% for the quarter, while adjusted cash by operating activities increased by $71 million to $239 million, helping to fund our business capital needs and new growth capital investments while affording us the flexibility to be opportunistic, returning capital through share buybacks and consistently through dividend increases.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

As we enter the back half of 2026, we believe we are poised to deliver solid revenue growth as well as margin expansion in both the funeral and cemetery segments as compared to the back half of 2025, resulting in double-digit earnings per share growth in the second half of 2026. Now let's take a deeper look into the funeral results for the quarter. Total comparable funeral revenues increased by $5 million or just about 1% over the prior quarter.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Comparable core funeral revenue increased by $7 million or about 1.5%, primarily due to a healthy 3.3% growth in the core average revenue per service. This core average growth was achieved despite a modest increase of 60 basis points in the core cremation rate. Comparable core funeral volume declined by 1.7%, exceeding our expectations coming out of a challenging first quarter.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

We saw less meaningful declines in April and May as compared to the first quarter and slight volume growth for the month of June. Non-funeral home revenue increased by over $2 million, primarily due to a 9% increase in the average revenue per service. We expect this impressive growth in the average revenue per service to continue as older pre-need contracts that are maturing out of our backlog have higher cumulative trust earnings, and more recent pre-need contracts written will mature with a higher average revenue per service.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Non-funeral home pre-need sales revenue decreased by $5 million, primarily due to an operational shift to defer the delivery of urns on pre-need contracts to the time of need. This transition was completed late in 2025, so we are nearing the anniversary date where all urn deliveries will occur at the same time of need as non-funeral home revenue. This segment line item will primarily report non-funeral home general agency revenue. Funeral gross profit for the quarter declined by approximately $7 million, with the gross profit percentage down 130 basis points to 18.5%.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

In a high fixed cost business model, revenue growth of less than 2% is always going to present a challenge to gross margins. In addition, gross profit was impacted by higher selling compensation associated with strong insurance-funded pre-need sales production. Selling compensation costs incurred or paid out were relatively consistent as a percentage of sales production dollars versus the prior year. We have shifted to a model that sells more insurance-funded contracts, both for core and SCI Direct, and under GAAP, less selling compensation gets deferred versus a trust-funded product, resulting in a higher percentage of selling compensation being recognized against general agency revenues in the current period.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Early July was the anniversary of the preponderance of our sales production shift to insurance products. Going forward, recognized selling compensation should stabilize and improve funeral gross margin comparisons in future periods. Preneed funeral sales production increased by $20 million, or about 6.6% over the second quarter of 2025, driven by an 8.3% increase in core preneed sales production. Shifting to cemetery. Comparable cemetery revenue increased by $23 million or about 5%, primarily due to higher core revenue, complemented by an increase in other revenue. Core revenues increased by $14 million, primarily due to a $15 million increase in total recognized preneed revenue, of which $5 million resulted from higher property revenue and $10 million from higher merchandise and service revenue. Merchandise and service revenue also reflects the positive impact from increased trust fund income.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Other revenue was higher by $8 million compared to the prior year quarter, primarily from an increase in endowment care trust fund income based on market performance and higher total return distributions. Comparable preneed sales production grew an impressive $29.7 million or 8% in the quarter. Core sales contributed $24.4 million, supported by continued strong underlying sales velocity growth in the mid-single digits.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Large sales accounted for the remaining $5.3 million increase. This performance reflects the strength and effectiveness of our sales strategy and execution, generating high single-digit percentage sales growth in both preneed funeral and cemetery by focusing on our four pillars: sales counselor headcount, driving lead effectiveness, seminars, and large sales in the face of fewer leads generated from activities through our locations. Cemetery gross profit in the quarter grew by $7 million or 4%, with margins relatively flat at approximately 33%.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Gross profit was impacted by higher selling compensation, reflecting the strong preneed sales production growth of 8%. A large percentage of our preneed sales production growth, particularly for cemetery property, was deferred relative to the growth in preneed recognized revenue. On the selling compensation side, we recognized all of the fixed compensation in the period incurred. Because most of the growth came from core sales with a higher proportion of fixed compensation, the recognized revenues bore a larger burden of the selling compensation this quarter.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

You want the good news? The deferred revenues that went into the backlog to be recognized over the coming quarters will not only deliver revenue growth, but lower associated selling compensation expense, and therefore, at higher relative margins. Let's shift to a discussion about our outlook for 2026. The $4.20 midpoint of our annual guidance range for 2026 is confirmed as we narrow the range expected for adjusted earnings per share of $4.10-$4.30. While the first quarter funeral volumes presented a near-term headwind, we saw the year-over-year rate of decline moderate and expect that to continue in the back half of the year.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

When combined with strong momentum in preneed cemetery sales, average revenue per funeral, and continued disciplined expense management, we are confident in our ability to deliver within our stated earnings range. In closing, we remain firmly focused on building long-term value for shareholders, growing revenue, leveraging the strength of our scale, and allocating capital with discipline to the highest and best use. As we move into a period of meaningful demographic tailwinds, we are exceptionally well-positioned to expand our reach, serve more families, and deliver sustained growth over time. In closing, I'd like to recognize and thank our entire SCI team for their ongoing commitment to our customers, our communities, and each other. Your dedication continues to be the foundation of our success. With that, I'll turn the call over to Eric.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

Thank you, Tom. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for being on the call today. Before I begin my prepared remarks, I want to take a moment to do what we always do, which is most important, and that's to thank our more than 25,000 associates across the entire SCI network and across our company for how they handle the families, work with the families in a compassionate way, and continue to have that compassion and care across all the communities that they serve.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

We're truly proud of the very positive impact that those associates are having in the communities that we serve. With that being said, I'll start by reviewing our cash flow results this morning and capital investments for the quarter before concluding with an update on our cash guidance for the full year and our overall financial position. Let's start with the second quarter.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

We generated impressive adjusted operating cash flow of about $239 million. This exceeded our expectations and was an improvement of about $71 million or 42% over the prior year. Let's talk about breaking that down a little bit. Operating income produced cash flow that was about higher by about $7 million. Cash taxes were also lower by $64 million, predominantly due to a renewable energy investment credit realized in the quarter. I'm going to give you a little bit more detail later in these remarks. Outside of cash taxes, working capital was relatively flat in the quarter as our preneed working capital sources were offset really by increased other working capital uses.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

Stronger cemetery preneed cash collections provided about a $36 million source, which is driven by both the 8% higher preneed cemetery sales production during the quarter, where again, a proportion of this is deferred into the future, as well as some higher collection rates on these preneed contracts. These higher receipts that I just mentioned were offset by a corresponding pretty much $37 million use of working capital, which is primarily associated with the timing of an additional payroll funding in the current quarter, which by the way, will benefit us in the second half of this year. Finally, cash interest was modestly lower by just about $1 million as lower cash interest associated with our 2032 notes was partially offset by higher interest on our floating rate debt. Let's talk about capital investment during the quarter.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

We invested $120 million of capital into our existing funeral home and cemetery locations. Also, business acquisitions, real estate, and new construction of funeral homes and cemeteries. To break this down, we invested $80 million of maintenance capital back into our current locations, which is slightly higher than the prior year due to the timing of certain projects. Included in this maintenance spend, we invested $45 million into new high-returning cemetery development projects, $30 million into our current funeral home and cemetery locations, which again improves the overall customer experience, and $6 million into our digital strategy and other corporate investments. We also invested $25 million of growth capital during the quarter towards the construction of new funeral homes, as well as the purchase of real estate for future new build and expansion opportunities.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

From an acquisition standpoint, we deployed $15 million towards business acquisitions in the quarter, which added funeral and cemetery locations in California, Georgia, and Delaware. As always, we are thrilled about these high-quality funeral homes and cemeteries joining our company, and we are more than happy to welcome all the new associates to the SCI family. These acquisitions bring our full-year acquisition investment to almost $40 million, and we remain confident in the current acquisition pipeline and our ability to achieve $75 million-$125 million of acquisition investment target for the full year of 2026. Moving on to capital distributions to our shareholders. We returned $172 million of capital to shareholders during the quarter through $123 million of share repurchases and just under $50 million of dividends.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

We repurchased over 1.5 million shares during the quarter at an average price of about $76 per share. This brings the number of shares outstanding to just over 136 million at the end of the quarter. Year to date, we have returned over $360 million in capital to shareholders, repurchasing 3.3 million shares at an average price of $78, which totals to $266 million, an additional $96 million of dividends. Subsequent to the end of this quarter, we have continued that momentum by repurchasing another 330,000 shares for about $26 million, which equates to about $78 per share. Let's now shift to the rest of 2026 in terms of cash flows.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

As we reported in the press release, we are increasing the midpoint of our adjusted operating cash flow guidance for the full year by about $50 million from a previous midpoint of $1.035 billion to now $1.085 billion for the full year. This $50 million increase is driven by better than expected working capital sources, which is primarily the increase in cemetery down payments and installment cash receipts on higher production that we have mentioned today this morning. Finally, we are also raising maintenance CapEx slightly by about $10 million from $325 million in total to $335 million with cemetery development and maintenance targets really both only increasing by about $5 million each.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

When deducting this $335 million of maintenance CapEx for the full year from the adjusted operating cash flow guidance midpoint that I just mentioned, we calculate our adjusted free cash flow at $750 million for the full year of 2026. This is an impressive 18% increase over last year's $637 million of adjusted full year free cash flow for 2025. A little bit more detail here as well. There's no change in our cash tax guidance, which is approximately $120 million of cash taxes for the full year. I do want to remind everyone, we've talked about this before, that we are not a full cash taxpayer during 2026, with a cash tax rate of about 15%-16%, which really compares to a more normalized cash tax rate of about 24%-25% expected sometime in the future.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

Cash taxes this year are primarily benefited from the utilization of solar tax credits that have been generated through tax equity investments. While these credits reduce cash tax payments and therefore increase cash flow from operations, they are accompanied by about $40 million of cash outflows or investments reflecting in investing activities during this quarter. Assuming we paid cash taxes at the full normalized rate of 24%-25%, we'd actually pay closer to $190 million of cash taxes for a full normalized run rate, which would have also brought our calculated free cash flow to about $680 million. Which again, is still a very strong 7% increase over the prior year $637 million that I just mentioned to you.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

As a sidebar from an effective tax rate perspective for the income statement, we continue to expect our full year 2026 to trend in line with what you've seen in the prior year with about a 25%-26% effective tax rate. I also want to provide some brief updates on our liquidity and financial position this morning. We continue to benefit from a favorable and disciplined debt maturity profile. While $137 million of our 7.5% 2027 notes became current this quarter, our balance sheet provides ample flexibility as we evaluate our refinancing alternatives. We ended the quarter with liquidity of about $1.6 billion, which consists of $260 million of cash on hand and just under $1.4 billion available on our long-term bank credit facility.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

We also ended the quarter at the midpoint of our long-term leverage target range of 3.5x to 4x net debt to EBITDA, and that was exactly about 3.77 for the end of the quarter. As you can see with all of these statistics, our strong balance sheet, our robust liquidity that I just mentioned, our very consistent and predictable cash flow stream really continue to supplement our capital investment programs, which ultimately results in significant flexibility that we have to invest opportunistically for the long-term benefit of SCI, our associates, and our shareholders. Operator, this concludes my remarks and Tom's remarks, and with them, I turn it back to you, please, and we'll open the call up for questions.

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from A.J. Rice of UBS. Go ahead, please.

A.J. Rice
A.J. Rice
Analyst at UBS

Thanks. Hi, everybody. First question, maybe just to ask a little bit about the strategy behind what you're doing with the sales force, moving more to fixed compensation, a little away from commission. What's the thinking there, are you seeing that have results and is that part of what's going on with the production picking up?

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Yeah. A.J., this is Tom. I'm going to answer that specifically, then I want to let Jay Waring speak to this strategy a little more depth. The short answer is yes. By giving more fixed compensation, the idea is to attract the best people we can and therefore most appropriately retain the best people that we can. Giving them a better opportunity to stay in there and really learn the selling techniques. It's mostly a retention tool, and we do find it effective. With that, I referenced the four pillars as part of our strategy, and I think it's a good question to kind of launch Jay to give you a little more detail into some of the things we're focused on and what we think is driving some of the extraordinary performance. Jay, you want to?

Jay Waring
President at SCI

Yeah. As Tom mentioned, our sales strategy has four pillars for growth, and the first pillar is increasing the number of preneed sales counselors. A.J., that gets right at your question. We're trying to expand and enhance the size of our sales force. The second pillar is increasing our lead-to-sale rate, so the percentage of our leads that end up resulting in a sale. The third pillar is increasing our number of preneed seminars.

Jay Waring
President at SCI

Our customers tell us that attending a preneed seminar is a very low-key, low-pressure way for them to learn about the benefits of pre-planning. The fourth pillar is increasing our large sales. We've had a lot of success over time with large sales. We believe they're a nice core competency of ours, and we see opportunities to further build on them. Overall, I'd say that Jerry and Brian and our entire team are executing very well. We're seeing strong results, and we're very excited about our future growth.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

A.J.

A.J. Rice
A.J. Rice
Analyst at UBS

Okay, thanks, Tom.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

just to provide a little color to something Jay said, this lead-to-sale rate, you think, well, what does that mean? Well, that's really about being more effective through the sales process. The other day, Jay and Jerry were in my office showing me we're utilizing AI right now to train our people, and we have the ability to have AI customer interactions that give grades, give feedback, personalized advice. They're really leveraging this tool to be very effective, and it's really early days. We're pretty excited about what we're doing and where we're headed with that.

A.J. Rice
A.J. Rice
Analyst at UBS

Just another aspect on the preneed sales. I guess on the funeral side, you've made the pivot over to more insurance-related sales from the trust. I know some, I believe at least some states still require you to do the trust, and there may be reasons to do the trust in some instances. Where do you settle out in terms of how much of the sales going forward are going to be insurance-related versus trust, and are we at that point where you're sort of at a steady state going forward?

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

We are, A.J. As of July, I think this year, we're kind of at that steady state in the low 90s. I'm talking about SCI Direct, sorry. It's a little, I would say 70s in the core. The difference really being there's certain people that can't get insurance, right? We always have to have some form of a trust product.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Then again, jurisdictionally, we may prefer a trust product in certain states. Yeah, we think 70s probably the right core number and low 90s on the SCI Direct. We're really trying to push that, but again, not everybody's insurable, so we need to be flexible enough to make sure we take care of all our customers.

A.J. Rice
A.J. Rice
Analyst at UBS

Just a final question on, you made the comment that over the course of the second quarter, it sounds like the funeral volumes basically stabilized and even improved a little bit in the last month of the quarter. Any early read on what you're seeing in the third quarter? Is it continuing to be steady to improving?

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Yeah. What we're seeing in July, A.J., is pretty much flat, is kind of preliminary. Obviously, we're not done with July, but right around kind of flat volume versus last year. Obviously, we don't know what the rest of the year holds, but I think we feel pretty good that the percentage that we're at now will continue to shrink as we get to the back half of the year. Probably be in line or better than the trends we talked about in the first quarter.

A.J. Rice
A.J. Rice
Analyst at UBS

Okay. All right. Thanks so much.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Thank you, A.J.

Operator

The next question comes from Scott Schneeberger of Oppenheimer. Go ahead, please.

Scott Schneeberger
Scott Schneeberger
Analyst at Oppenheimer

Thanks. Good mornin`g. I'm just going to follow up on some things Jay said. In prepared remarks, you all mentioned, hey, we're doing the four pillars. These are structural and ongoing in the sales technique because with the softer funeral activity, there's less companion sales and lead opportunity. In time, do you anticipate, as that comes back, that'll just provide more strong tailwind to what you're able to do in preneed sales? Thanks.

Jay Waring
President at SCI

This is Jay. I'd say yes. What you're seeing today is really garnering more customers away from the cemetery, away from the funeral home, primarily through our seminars. One of our greatest lead sources is serving at-need customers and following up with those customers after their time of need. To the extent the interment count grows and the funeral volume grows, we'll be in great shape.

Scott Schneeberger
Scott Schneeberger
Analyst at Oppenheimer

Thanks. Following on A.J.'s last question about the funeral volumes. Surprisingly soft in the first quarter, but it looks like it's much more stable on a year-over-year basis here in the second and July, as mentioned. How are you thinking about that going forward? I'm talking, looking a year out. Do you think we're getting back to a normalized level and perhaps working towards a demographic shift of an increase with that first quarter being anomaly or still being conservative and not certain? Thanks.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Scott, as you know, we don't know, but I personally feel like we're on the cusp of beginning to see this impact. The only thing that negates that slightly when I think about, let's say, 2027, because obviously, I think we'll have a good comparison to 2026. I feel good about that. I think we'll begin to see the demographic impacts. The things that I read about are, we came out of COVID, we kind of had this spike of excess deaths related to a lot of things, right? If you look at drug overdoses, if you look at suicides, if you look at auto fatalities, there's so many good trends for society that those are getting better, right? At some point, those stabilize, but when I think of 2026 to 2027, I hope the suicide rate goes down again.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

I hope all these things are going to happen. That could be something that has a minor impact on 2027 as I think about it. Overall, I think the demographics should just see that kick into the numbers, and I think that's our expectation. It's really hard to precisely predict, but that's how we feel about as we look at models and project internally.

Scott Schneeberger
Scott Schneeberger
Analyst at Oppenheimer

Thanks for that. Just lastly, can we speak to margins for a second? A bunch of moving pieces that have impacted the quarter. You all called it out, but can we roll it together tightly about puts and takes on the margin second quarter, how we might see third quarter, not only the payroll, but how some of the activity in production versus sales and in sales compensation is going to impact that? Thank you.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Sure. Kind of level set here, Scott. First is, as we think about how we manage expenses, we have labor efficiency metrics and dashboards. Our frontline leaders and team members are out there every day utilizing those to manage as best we can. As an example, if salary expense inflation is three in a tough quarter, again, this is a global statement, they can manage salary costs down to two, right? They have the tools, they have the talent. I can't remember what that quote is from. Some movie. Cemetery side, they have the same type of tools. We have a team here in corporate that's staffed with a lot of leadership from the field that's called the Performance Improvement Committee.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

We take ideas from the field and can disseminate those quickly and manage costs as best we can. Again, it's a high fixed cost business, but on the margin, we can do some things. As I think about funeral margins going forward and some of the things, the winds that were in our face, obviously, volume is a big one. Two things are happening right now that are a couple of things are happening that are going to go away. We talk about our general agency revenues, both on SCI Direct and Core. As you think about the transition from one vendor to the next, we've had to create a cancellation reserve. They're bearing the burden right now of probably about 200 basis points of creating a reserve that, I'd say, will go away sometime shortly, and we think will be better.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Number two, the selling compensation changes, here this would be two things. one is when we transition to more fixed cost, we're getting close to the end of that, and the other piece is the transition to an insurance product. Those 2 things, for lack of a better term, didn't really impact our cash outlay, but impacted the way we recognize expenses. Again, those kind of go away in the third quarter. We've been bearing the brunt of this, funeral margins should get a little better. The last one, again, they're all happening at the same time, we used to deliver urns prior to need. We stopped doing that a while back. The last quarter, I believe, is the fourth quarter, Trey, is that right?

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

We'll no longer have anything in both periods of delivery of urns, and that hurt us by $5 million. As I think about margins in 2026, the rest of 2026, they should get better. 2027, they should get better again on the funeral side. On the cemetery side, the things I think about are backlog delivery, right? We told you we're selling a lot more than we're delivering, and we're deferring a lot less expense. Those higher-margin cemeteries delivery should happen in the back half of the year. Then again, we've got great performance in our trust funds. I hope those continue. I think they will. The key metrics of that trust fund, just to keep in mind, are what's the original corpus going in? We always talk about income, but I kind of want to point out something.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

The business that's in the backlog has a higher base value, it's always going to improve. We see it every quarter. It's better-written business. How long has it been in the trust fund, what's the period of time that it's been at work? Then what are those returns? It's not only income, it's really just the value of the contract that's coming back. Those are the things when I think about cemetery, that ought to enhance the margins going forward and enhance the margins on funeral. We're confident, we have the tools, and the trends are starting to shift in our favor.

Scott Schneeberger
Scott Schneeberger
Analyst at Oppenheimer

Thanks, guys.

Operator

The next question comes from Tyler Barishaw of Truist. Go ahead, please.

Tyler Barishaw
Tyler Barishaw
Analyst at Truist

Good morning. This is Tyler Barishaw for Tobey. Impressive pre-need sales production, up high single digits. How should we think about that for the balance of the year? What kind of range do you expect?

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

You're talking about cemetery, Tyler, I suspect? Or both?

Tyler Barishaw
Tyler Barishaw
Analyst at Truist

Yep.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Yeah.

Tyler Barishaw
Tyler Barishaw
Analyst at Truist

Primarily cemetery.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Yeah. On the cemetery side, for the six months, I think we're up about 8.8%, call it rounded 9%. When we think about the back half of the year, I think right now our position would be, we're going to be probably the mid to maybe low high single-digit percentages, is a place that we're kind of modeling and believe.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

We think most of that is going to come from core. That's the piece, because as you think about the back half of the year from a large sale perspective, last year was pretty good. I think we were in the mid-40s type of by quarter of large sales. That's a comparison that's a good target, and I feel good we can match it or slightly beat it. I think we anticipate most of the growth to come from the core sales.

Tyler Barishaw
Tyler Barishaw
Analyst at Truist

You also touch on funeral as well?

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Yeah, funeral, probably the same, mid-single digit type of percentages as we think about those things. Again, trending better, I hope, as we think about general agency commission rates and things like that, particularly as we get out into 2027.

Tyler Barishaw
Tyler Barishaw
Analyst at Truist

Thank you.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Joanna Gajuk of Bank of America. Go ahead, please.

Joanna Gajuk
Joanna Gajuk
Analyst at Bank of America

Hey, good morning. A couple questions. First, I guess on this last one, in terms of the numbers, can you quantify the large sales in this quarter, in Q2? Because Q1, I guess, was also like in the low $40 million.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Yeah, we actually, in the second quarter, approached almost about $50 million. It was a really good quarter.

Joanna Gajuk
Joanna Gajuk
Analyst at Bank of America

Okay.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Obviously, it wasn't dramatically more than last year, because last year was a great quarter, too. Yeah, Joanna, we're starting to hit numbers closer to 50, and I'd say the breadth of the sales getting better. Jay, you want to touch on that a little bit?

Jay Waring
President at SCI

In terms of private mausoleum sales?

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Yeah. I think we talked about the other day, the over a million segment is kind of a different one. What we're really seeing success in now is, call it the $100,000 sale to the $900,000 sale. You want to touch a little bit about our focus on that?

Jay Waring
President at SCI

Yeah, give an accolade to Jerry and Brian and the team who are doing intensive training with our sales force on understanding what all the options are and showing the options to the customers to really let them pick.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

It's really more contracts, and I think that's a very positive thing of hitting that inventory level that's more affordable for more people, and I think that focus is really paying off.

Joanna Gajuk
Joanna Gajuk
Analyst at Bank of America

Okay, that's great. On the comment you were making that you expect more growth, excuse me, I'm losing my voice, from the core. What gives you confidence that there's growth demand, I guess, for this type of product?

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Well, I think it's the trend. We've seen five quarters in a row of trending strong velocity. I think a component of that is the training we're talking about and the focus. Jay keeps talking about the four pillars. We've really got the team all singing from the same song sheet. We're focused on the things that are going to drive that, whether it be predominantly from seminars and getting those types of leads, focusing on the closing rate using those AI tools, and then specifically, we called out before, we've got a real focus on that cremation consumer. Again, remember, we view that opportunity as almost like greenfield opportunity. We had cremation consumers that we weren't talking to about these products. Now we have the props, if you will, within our facilities, where it's natural in conversation.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

We're seeing an uplift in the number of cremation consumers that are buying, and that's going to show up in velocity. Now, that's going to push down the average price a little bit, but that's okay. We'll take it every time, because it's a new consumer we weren't going to get or we haven't got historically. That's why I think we feel confident that that trend should continue. Now how much, you're right. You end up with a recession, that could impact the number of people that want to prearrange. We're confident that absent that, we should continue to keep the focus on driving velocity.

Joanna Gajuk
Joanna Gajuk
Analyst at Bank of America

On this cremation customer, any update there? I think on the Q1 call, when I asked about this, you said you just piloted it in 10 markets. Are you doing it in additional markets, and kind of how things are going there on the cremation customer buying cemetery product?

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

We have. We rolled it, I think, in early July to a number of other markets. We're continuing to monitor the waves, and it continues to be incremental. I think the first 10 markets, the take-up rate was dramatically better. I think in the second wave, it's better, maybe not the same rate. It's clear that with the focus and with the materials and the visibility, and some of that again, is around marketing, sometimes within the facility or digitally, we're seeing a real pickup in the conversation and therefore a pickup in our ability to sell where we've tested. We ultimately, I think by early 2027, it'll be everywhere. We're rolling it out in waves and really trying to make sure we're doing it right and getting the internal buy-in.

Joanna Gajuk
Joanna Gajuk
Analyst at Bank of America

All right. That's great. My question on different topic, this is a follow-up, it was around trust fund income. It seems like, it gets highlighted throughout the call that clearly that's flowing through the numbers, helping our sales in both segments. Can you help us quantify? I think you disclosed this number in 10-Q, but can you give us a ballpark number of maybe in terms of recognized trust fund income in both segments? Also, there was this other line in cemetery that benefited from that as well. It seems like maybe the returns are tracking higher. Is that correct? Also, what does it mean for the second half of this year? Are you assuming higher returns coming through because of this? Sort of help us understand how this helps to get to your guidance. Thank you.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

You bet. Remember, we have about $8 billion or so plus of trust funds, about $2.5 billion is in the internal care fund, which is a little bit of a different animal, Joanna, as we've talked about in the past. About 70% of that internal care fund is really a kind of a fixed return that we could take out, according to the state laws. The 30% is the old way, where it's mostly fixed income investments, and that's ordinary income, get that distributed to us.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

Once in a while, as portfolio managers make those decisions whether to create realized gains, those can sometimes, or some portion of those, get distributed to it, which makes ECF a little bit more lumpy. Although this quarter, we saw it a little bit more lumpy to the positive by $7 million or $8 million. As a very general statement, the trust fund income for all three can range anywhere from, let's call it, $330 million-$360 million-ish. Again, I don't know what the markets are going to do the back half.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

That's the best guidance I could give to you. I'd tell you about $125 million of that number that I gave you is related to the ECF. The rest is related to the MST. Not only do you have to have a crystal ball to understand what the returns are going to be, as Tom mentioned earlier, you got to have a crystal ball in terms of how old the contracts are and what the original amount corpus was coming out, too. There's a lot of moving factors, kind of in that guide, but that's generally where it is for a full year of 2026.

Joanna Gajuk
Joanna Gajuk
Analyst at Bank of America

All right. Would you say the returns are coming in better.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

They are. We've disclosed the returns every quarter, as you know, and what's really benefited this is we've had low double-digit to mid-teen returns on these trust funds for the past three years alone. You're really starting to see the value of the diversity of not just having the general agency revenue with the insurance contracts and all of that cash flow, but you're also seeing the benefit of diversifying over to the trust fund investments as well and having those good markets create nice trust fund income for the company's cash flows as well. It really is a good, nice mix that we've designed here.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Great. Perfect. Thank you so much for questions.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

Sure.

Operator

The next question comes from Parker Snure of Raymond James. Go ahead, please.

Parker Snure
Parker Snure
Analyst at Raymond James

Hey, good morning. The preneed cemetery, you had another great quarter there, fifth straight quarter of positive same-store production growth. The recognition rate was low at 88.8%. I guess, what's your expectation for the recognition rate in the back half of the year, and when should we largely expect a lot of this production to flow through the P&L?

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

You really have to split it up, Parker, as you and I have talked about before. The recognition rate includes an at-need component, and that's generally 100%. It includes a property component, which over the full 12 months should also be about 12%. This production growth also includes merchandise and services, just to state the obvious. When that occurs, that recognition rate occurs a little later.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

Maybe about half of the services occur, the revenue recognition, the same year, maybe about two-thirds of the merchandise occurs in the same year. When you put all that together for a full year, that's where you get to about the 95% recognition rate that we report to you, and those are the components of it, so everybody understands it. We're not too far off at 88 than we were in the prior year, at this exact time.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

I don't think we're coming off of our guidance at all. We expect to have higher 90%, if you will, in the back half of this year. That would be very consistent with the back half of last year. We should end up somewhere around that 95%. It could be higher if the mix of production, which we can't perfectly predict, ends up heavier towards property than merchandise and services. Maybe you see as high as 97. If it ends up a little bit higher on merchandise and services, maybe you see somewhere around 93. Generally, there's no real movement here from a full-year basis to comment that we're not on plan in which you normally see during the year.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Parker, just to clarify, because I want to make sure it's understood. When we're talking about the merchandise and services, very few of them turn within a year. The real answer is we're selling, for lack of a better term, we're going to sell 100 this year, and 65 are going to come out of the backlog, and they generally have nothing to do with one another. It's two different streams, and that's what history tells us. How many coming out of the backlog? We don't know. If we sell a lot, to Eric's point, if instead of selling 100, we sell 110, but only 60 come in, that's going to drive down that recognition rate, right?

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

That's why it's hard to project or predict, because there's two components that really have nothing to do with one another. If we have a good selling year, the recognition rate on merchandise and services is going to look low. That's okay. That's a good thing, right? Just to clarify, these are typically going to have a life of six to eight to 10 to 12 years when you think about merchandise and services.

Parker Snure
Parker Snure
Analyst at Raymond James

Right. Yeah, no, that's helpful. That's really helpful. Then just on share repurchase, you increased your authorization in June. I know that's a fluid thing with the stock price, and it's certainly, it's run over the last couple of months, what's your general expectation baked into your guidance for share repurchase for the remainder of the year?

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

I think it's more of the same of what you normally see. We have well over $500 million of capacity. I want to remind everybody that we go heavier and go lighter depending on what we believe the intrinsic value is versus the share price, and we've been very disciplined with that. I think we're on a run rate first half of the year to be a little bit stronger than we were prior year because we were able to buy shares in that $76-$78 range as we've disclosed to you.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

We're not trading at that right now, we'll take that into account, we still feel very good about the return we're getting from those shares. A lot of times what you'll see us do is slow down and speed up based on that return and based on that opinion that we just gave to you.

Parker Snure
Parker Snure
Analyst at Raymond James

Right. Okay. If I can just squeeze in one last one, just on fixed cost control. I know in the first quarter, you guys talked about managing fixed costs below inflation. Just wanted to check in there and see how that progressed through the second quarter as well.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Yeah, I think, like I said before, if you look at labor costs in the second quarter, we managed them to about 2%. That was, again, a function of our volumes are down a little bit, and our field utilizes those dashboards and metrics to manage labor costs, whether it be part-time, and the like. They do a fabulous job. Parker, what will happen is, what I hope happens is we do more funerals in the third quarter, then I expect that cost again rise back up to inflationary levels closer to three. 2.5. That's where we are and how we manage it.

Parker Snure
Parker Snure
Analyst at Raymond James

Okay. Super helpful. Thank you so much.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Thanks, Parker.

Operator

The next question comes from Tomo Sano of JPMorgan. Go ahead, please.

Tomo Sano
Tomo Sano
Analyst at JPMorgan

Hi. Good morning, everyone.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Good morning, Tomo.

Tomo Sano
Tomo Sano
Analyst at JPMorgan

Thank you for taking my questions. On a productions side, when production outpaces recognized revenue, what KPIs or guardrails do you use to manage the trade-off between near-term margin pressures and future margin expansions? When should we expect that backlog to translate into margins, please?

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

On the funeral side, Tomo, I think there's a seasonality to this business. What you typically see is in the first two quarters, and it's true again now, is we're selling a bit more than we are delivering, because we're selling into projects that get built later in the year. A lot of completions of projects can happen in the third and fourth quarter. The other thing that's happening is we're selling in those projects, it's building that backlog. We'd expect the back half of the year that our pre-need property recognition rates would go 100% or higher. Because what we're experiencing right now, as Eric pointed out, is lower rates on those property. We're in the nineties, sometimes the high eighties, and that gets corrects itself in the third and fourth quarters. Now, comparably, that happened last year.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

It doesn't really help you when you think about the comparisons, but sequentially, you expect higher margins to occur in the back half of the year, and we expect that again.

Tomo Sano
Tomo Sano
Analyst at JPMorgan

Thank you. On follow-up, digital investments, how are digital investments impacting, such as lead generation, conversion, case mix, collections, and could you talk about some of the evidence that impacts so far, please?

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

There's a lot in that digital investment. Some has to do with the leads that you just described, coming from the websites, and making sure that we get it into the sales funnel as quickly as possible. Some has to do with the applications that we've developed in-house that the sales force uses, such as the Beacon tool, the tablet-based Beacon tool, that's in certain areas of our company, but not in all areas of our company, that we continue to work on. We've separated that application development, we're trying to, like anybody else, look for efficiencies through AI now and into the future in terms of that development.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

The way I describe it, Tomo, is, as we talked about our four pillars that are driving sales, this is one of those pillars in terms of the technology investments to give us the tools to help drive those four pillars, and that's how I'd describe it. It's generally around $20 million-$25 million a year is what that technology investment has been run rate. That's in our CapEx guidance, that's how I'd describe it.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Tomo, I know you probably heard we talk about how we're utilizing AI today to do customized training and feedback for our sales counselors, it's still early days, but it's just such an incredibly powerful tool to get immediate feedback and be able to role-play. It gives people the confidence, therefore, we believe, going to improve efficiencies. Again, the beauty of AI is you're taking your best sales techniques and everybody's getting the same training. They haven't tried it out on me yet, that would be the real answer. If I can sell something, look out.

Tomo Sano
Tomo Sano
Analyst at JPMorgan

Thank you, Tom, Eric. Appreciate it.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

Thanks, Tomo.

Eric Tanzberger
Eric Tanzberger
EVP and CFO at SCI

Thanks, Tomo.

Operator

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to SCI Management for any closing remarks.

Tom Ryan
Chairman and CEO at SCI

I want to thank everybody for joining us today. We really appreciate your participation. Have a great rest of the summer. We look forward to seeing you in late October for our third quarter earnings call. Thanks.

Executives
Analysts
    • Trey Bocage
      Assistant VP of Investor Relations at SCI
    • Tom Ryan
      Chairman and CEO at SCI
    • A.J. Rice
      Analyst at UBS
    • Jay Waring
      President at SCI
    • Scott Schneeberger
      Analyst at Oppenheimer
    • Tyler Barishaw
      Analyst at Truist
    • Joanna Gajuk
      Analyst at Bank of America
    • Parker Snure
      Analyst at Raymond James
    • Tomo Sano
      Analyst at JPMorgan
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