Service Corporation International - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Executive Summary

• Q3 2025 delivered adjusted EPS of $0.87 (+10% YoY) and revenue of $1.06B (+4.4% YoY), driven by strong cemetery preneed production (+9.6%) and lower corporate G&A; funeral revenue was modestly lower as volumes declined, partially offset by higher averages.
• The company narrowed 2025 EPS guidance to $3.80–$3.90 (midpoint confirmed at $3.85) and raised operating cash flow guidance to $910–$950M; cash taxes expected reduced to ~$135M (from $145M).
• Q3 beat S&P Global consensus on both revenue ($1,058.1M vs $1,042.1M*) and normalized EPS ($0.87 vs $0.83*); the beat was primarily due to cemetery strength and lower G&A, partially offset by a higher tax rate.
• Subsequent to quarter-end, SCI increased its quarterly dividend to $0.34/share (+6.3%), a potential stock reaction catalyst alongside tightened EPS guidance and raised cash flow outlook.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • “Strong performance in our cemetery segment was led by an increase in preneed cemetery sales production of 10%, which drove growth in comparable cemetery revenue of 7% and cemetery gross profit of 12%.” – Tom Ryan.
  • Corporate G&A decreased $5.4M YoY due to timing of incentive accruals, supporting EPS outperformance.
  • Comparable funeral sales average rose 3.1% YoY; non-funeral home sales average up 13.4% YoY, offsetting lower services performed and underpinning durable pricing power.

• What Went Wrong

  • Comparable funeral gross profit declined $9.5M and margin fell 170 bps to 17.5%, pressured by higher selling compensation costs tied to increased preneed insurance sales production and slightly lower total comparable revenue.
  • Non-funeral home preneed sales revenue fell $4.6M due to operational decisions to defer urn delivery to time-of-need and the ongoing transition from trust- to insurance-funded contracts (temporary headwind expected to complete in 2026).
  • GAAP effective tax rate increased to 26.9% (adjusted 24.1%), reducing EPS by ~$0.04 versus a constant rate; change in estimate tied to finalization of the 2024 tax return and less excess tax benefit on share-based awards.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day and welcome to the SCI third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a 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 touch-tone phone. 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 the SCI management team. Please go ahead.

Trey Bocage (Assistant VP of Investor Relations and Treasury)

Good morning, this is Trey Bocage, Assistant Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasury. Welcome to our third quarter earnings call. We will have some prepared remarks about the quarter from Tom Ryan and Eric Tanzberger in just a minute, but before that let me quickly go over the 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. 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)

Thanks Trey, hello everyone and thank you for joining us on the call today. This morning I'm going to begin my remarks with some high-level color on our business performance for the quarter, then provide some greater detail around our funeral and cemetery results. I will then close with some thoughts about our earnings expectations for the rest of 2025. For the third quarter, we generated adjusted earnings per share of $0.87, which is more than a 10% increase compared to the $0.79 in the prior year period. We saw impressive increases in cemetery revenue and gross profit, as well as lower corporate, general, and administrative expense, which was partially offset by slightly lower funeral revenues and gross profits. When combined, this resulted in $0.10 of earnings per share growth from operating income below the line.

The favorable impact of a lower share count was more than offset by a higher tax rate and a slightly higher net interest expense, resulting in a negative $0.02 decline in earnings per share. The higher tax rate was the result of the non-deductibility of certain excess tax benefits from the settlement of stock option rewards. If the tax rate had remained constant, we would have had an additional $0.04 in earnings per share, resulting in 15% earnings per share growth over the prior year quarter. Now let's take a deeper look into the funeral results for the quarter. Total comparable funeral revenue declined by almost $2 million, or less than 1%, compared to the prior year quarter.

Comparable core funeral revenue declined by $3 million, or just under 1%, primarily due to a 3.5% decrease in core funeral services performed, partially offset by a 3% increase in the core average revenue per service. The core cremation rate increased modestly by 50 basis points to 57.3%. Non-funeral home revenue increased by $3 million, primarily due to a 13.4% increase in the average revenue per service. We expect this impressive growth in the average revenue per service to continue as older preneed contracts that are maturing out of our backlog have higher cumulative trust earnings, and more recent preneed contracts written will mature with higher value in the backlog due to our 2024 operational decision to no longer deliver preneed merchandise at the time of sale.

Non-funeral home preneed sales revenue decreased by $4.6 million, primarily due to our decision to stop delivering preneed merchandise at the time of sale. As I previously mentioned, this quarterly decline should cease later in 2026 as we anniversary the date of not delivering merchandise prior to need, and the non-funeral home average revenue per service will have a meaningful compounded growth in the coming years as each year a higher percentage of contracts with higher value mature out of the backlog. The decline in merchandise revenue this quarter was partially offset by higher general agency revenue due to our conversion from selling a trust-funded preneed product to an insurance-funded preneed product. Core general agency and other revenue grew by $3 million or 6%, primarily driven by higher preneed insurance sales production.

This positive impact from higher sales production was slightly offset by a modestly lower average general agency rate as we decided to offer a non-insured flex product in several West Coast markets, which generates a lower general agency commission rate. In the current period, funeral gross profit decreased by $9.5 million while the gross profit percentage declined by 170 basis points to about 18%. This gross profit decrease was attributable to the slight decline in revenues for the quarter coupled with higher selling costs and a moderate fixed cost increase. Declines in higher margin merchandise revenue were somewhat offset by increases in general agency revenue. This general agency revenue is substantially offset by a higher portion of our selling costs being recognized.

Currently, for GAAP purposes, we continue to manage our fixed costs below inflationary trends to about a 1.4% increase for the quarter as we continue to focus on leveraging our scale both in the field operations, through staffing metrics, and in our overhead support functions. Preneed funeral sales production increased by $6 million or about 2% over the third quarter of 2024. Core preneed funeral sales production increased by $20 million or 9% as we have now lapsed the anniversary date of the transition to Global Atlantic and we experienced growth in both insurance and trust-funded sales production. Non-funeral home preneed sales production decreased $14 million or almost 20% as SCI Direct transitions from the sale of trust to insurance-funded preneed contracts.

This transition has required many of our sales counselors in certain states to go through extensive training and obtain insurance licenses, both of which contributes to the temporary reduction in the number of contracts written. We expect in early 2026 we will experience year-over-year sales production growth again for SCI Direct as a whole. Now shifting to cemetery, comparable cemetery revenue increased by $31 million or almost 7%. Higher core revenue was the primary driver, complemented by higher other revenue. Our core revenue increase of $27.5 million or 7% over the prior year quarter was primarily due to a $27 million increase in total recognized preneed revenue, of which $21 million resulted from higher property revenue and $6 million from higher merchandise and services revenue, which includes recognized merchandise and service trust fund income. Other revenue, primarily terminal care fund trust income, increased as well by $3.5 million or 10%.

Total recognized preneed revenue benefited from growth in comparable cemetery preneed sales production of $30 million or almost 10%. Large sales grew by an impressive $8 million or 19% over the prior year quarter. Maybe more impressively, core sales accounted for $22 million of the sales production increase as solid velocity growth was complemented by higher sales averages. Cemetery gross profit in the quarter grew by $18 million and the gross profit percentage increased by 160 basis points, generating an operating margin percentage of 34%, primarily due to the strong growth in cemetery revenues. Now let's shift to a discussion about our outlook for the remainder of 2025.

As you saw in our earnings release, we are confirming the midpoint of our normalized EPS guidance and narrowing the range to $3.80-$3.90 for 2025, and we are slightly raising our cash flow outlook due to stronger working capital trends in the business as well as anticipated lower cash taxes. Therefore, the fourth quarter range would be $1.09-$1.19 in normalized EPS. In the funeral segment, we expect volumes to range in the slightly down 1% range to the slightly up 1% range, bringing the 12-month volume for 2025 in at slightly below flat. This is 200 basis points better than 2024, and we believe now the pull forward effect going forward will be negligible and can begin to see the effects of demographics, our premier locations and outstanding people, and the impact of our tremendous preneed funeral backlog affect volume growth in the years to come.

We would expect the sales average in the quarter to continue to see solid growth. We expect our core general agency revenues to slightly decline even though we anticipate preneed funeral sales production growth as the average commission rate should decline due to certain markets having the ability to sell non-insured flex products this year that carry a lower commission rate. Overall, we expect modest funeral revenue and gross profit growth as compared to the fourth quarter of 2024. In the cemetery segment, we would expect to see low to mid single-digit cemetery preneed sales production growth but a lower construction revenue recognition rate as we should have a slightly muted effect on the recognized cemetery revenue growth. Overall, we expect flat to low single-digit revenue growth resulting in flat to slightly down gross profits as compared to the fourth quarter of 2024.

Below the line, we expect the impact from our share repurchase program to have a favorable effect on EPS as compared to the prior year, which will be somewhat negated by a slightly higher tax rate in the fourth quarter. We feel very good about our momentum that we will carry into 2026. We expect favorable trends in funeral volume, funeral average, SCI Direct preneeds, cemetery sales, and lower interest rates and believe that we can achieve EPS growth within our long-term growth framework of 8%-12%. In conclusion, I want to acknowledge and thank the entire SCI team for their daily commitment to our customers, our communities, and to one another. Your skill, dedication, compassion, and attention to detail are the foundation of our success. Thank you all for making a difference every day. With that, operator, I will now turn it over to Eric.

Eric Tanzberger (CFO)

Good morning everyone. Thanks Tom. Thank everybody for joining the call today. As I usually do, I'm going to kick it off the way Tom just ended. Before I start my prepared remarks, I'd like to extend my sincere appreciation to all our dedicated and talented associates. Your commitment, your compassion enable us to serve client families with care and professionalism during some of life's most challenging moments, which ultimately makes a meaningful difference in the communities that we serve. I am truly proud of the work you do every day and continue to be grateful for your continued dedication to our client families and to the communities that we serve. With that, I'm going to begin today by providing highlights on our cash flow and our capital investments during the quarter.

I'm going to make a few comments on corporate G&A, touch on our remaining 2025 cash flow expectations, and conclude with an update on our overall very positive financial position here at SCI. We generated adjusted operating cash flow of $268 million in the quarter, neutralizing for an expected $11 million of higher cash taxes. Adjusted operating cash flow increased $10 million from the prior year. Let's break that down a little bit more. Our underlying business supported adjusted operating cash flow by generating higher operating income of about $14 million during the quarter that Tom just walked you through in his comments. Cash interest was also lower by about $13 million, but that was due largely to cash interest payment timing associated with the note refinancing that we completed in September of 2024 and the coinciding reduction of our drawn bank credit facility.

Additionally, lower rates on our floating rate debt were offset by higher floating rate balances. Offsetting these favorable impacts were working capital uses of about $17 million, which really related to just normal timing of payables and receivables during the three-month period. Now let's move on to capital investment. We invested $140 million in the quarter into our existing locations, new builds, funeral home and cemetery acquisitions, and real estate purchases. Let's break that down a little bit. We invested $86 million of maintenance capital primarily into our current funeral homes and cemeteries in the quarter, which was in line with our internal expectations. $45 million of this was allocated to highly profitable cemetery development projects, $35 million into our current funeral and cemetery locations, and then $6 million into digital investments and some corporate spend as well.

We also invested $17 million of growth capital in the quarter, primarily for the construction of new funeral homes and crematories. Finally, we invested $37 million into business acquisitions during the quarter, bringing our full year business acquisition investment to $65 million. Also, subsequent to quarter end, we invested an additional $3 million for a few locations in Canada, bringing us currently just shy of the low end of our full year acquisition target range. The pipeline of acquisition opportunities today as we speak continues to be robust, and we fully expect to achieve our $75 million-$125 million acquisition investment range target for 2025. Moving on to capital distributions, we returned $123 million of capital to shareholders in the quarter through $45 million of dividends and $78 million of share repurchases. We repurchased just under 1 million shares at an average price of about $79 during the quarter.

This brings the number of shares outstanding to just over 140 million shares at the end of the quarter. Year-to-date, we've returned $538 million in capital to shareholders, repurchasing 5.1 million shares at an average price of $78, which totals right around $400 million, and an additional $135 million of dividends. By the way, we currently still have about $410 million of remaining share repurchase authorization as we speak today. Shifting gears now for the quarter, I'm going to now make some comments about our corporate G&A expense, which decreased $5.4 million quarter-over-quarter, which was primarily due to timing of incentive compensation accruals versus the prior year quarter.

We remain very comfortable with our fourth quarter 2025 range of $39 million-$41 million for corporate G&A expense, although as you've seen in the past, we fully expect some variability in this due to our long-term incentive compensation plans that could push us above or below this range slightly during any particular quarter. Shifting now to the rest of 2025, and as you saw in the release, we updated our 2025 adjusted operating cash flow guidance range to $910 million-$950 million with a midpoint of $930 million. That is a $20 million increase over our midpoint of $910 million, which we talked about last quarter. $10 million of this increase is related to lower cash taxes and $10 million is related to better working capital expectations.

After deducting $315 million of expected maintenance capital at the midpoint of our ranges, we expect to achieve very impressive adjusted free cash flow of $615 million, which, by the way, approximates about $4.4 of free cash flow per share. As I've discussed in prior quarters, cash taxes have continued to return to more normal levels in 2025 after the tax accounting method change that benefited cash flow since 3Q 2023. While this normalization created an expected headwind, the impact of this is now partially offset by the newly enacted federal tax legislation. During this year, we now expect a full year amount of cash taxes to be approximately $135 million, which compares to the $145 million that I anticipated last quarter. Again, this is $115 million greater than the $20 million of cash taxes paid in 2024.

Lastly, as we've addressed in prior quarters, we expect our effective tax rate to be 25%-26% as excess tax benefits are no longer recognized on the settlement of certain executive share-based compensation awards. I'm now going to conclude my comments with an update on our financial position. We continue to have a favorable and manageable debt maturity profile with ample liquidity. We ended the quarter with liquidity of just under $1.5 billion, consisting of about $240 million of cash on hand and approximately $1.2 billion available on our long-term bank credit facility. Additionally, leverage at the end of the third quarter was 3.6x net debt to EBITDA, which is down from almost 3.8x at the end of the third quarter of 2024 and remains toward the lower end of our long-term leverage target range of 3.5x-4x.

Our strong balance sheet position and this liquidity, combined with the robust cash flows, continue to support our ongoing capital investment program, which provides us tremendous flexibility to invest opportunistically for the long-term benefit of SCI's customers, our associates, and our shareholders. In closing, I want to again emphasize how proud we are of our entire SCI team. Your unwavering commitment to supporting our customers as they plan and as they manage through their most difficult times is truly inspiring. Thank you again for all that you do. With that, operator, this concludes Tom's and my prepared remarks and we'd like to go ahead and open the call up now to questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press Star then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press Star then two. The first question comes from Scott Schneeberger from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, it's Donnie on for Scott, thank you for taking our questions. I'd like to start with the cemetery preneed sales production. I mean, velocity was clearly good in the quarter. Could you discuss how velocity trended in this quarter on a year-on-year basis versus last quarter? It sounds like it's accelerating. Some perspective on that please. What do you think that means for the consumer, and as we look into next year, your comfort level with this trend to be sustained? Thank you.

Tom Ryan (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, I think if you look at it.

Our results and then some of the other retailers that are out there, it doesn't jive very well because we really saw across the board a lot of great velocity in the quarter.

You know, quarter is a.

Quarter, it's not a year. I think, one, having the flexible.

Financing plans for our consumers.

extent we can, has made a big difference. I think just focusing on the basic metrics that we utilize in order to generate leads, good leads, and bring them to close.

A lot of it's just good.

Fundamental sales management and sales techniques that are bringing in more customers and accommodating them with financing terms that work.

I think you're right.

What's really great about this quarter is we saw great growth on the high end with large sales up almost 18%. Within the core itself was the primary growth.

We saw more of an effect.

From velocity than from sales average, which is, you know, very inspiring when you think about that component of what we do.

Right now, based on what we.

We see continued ability to focus on growing velocity, getting these inflationary cost increases, and we're still seeing a lot of activity at the large sales level. We feel good about those trends going into the fourth quarter and as we head into 2026.

Got it, thank you. Following up on that, I mean, it sounds like you're targeting your typical 8%-12% EPS growth range for next year. Could you please discuss your confidence level in achieving that? Is there anything on the cash flow side that's unique or different for next year that we should be thinking about?

Yes.

I'll speak to the 8%-12%, and I'll let Eric speak to.

The cash flow on the 8%-12%.

You know, like we've always said, our degree of assurance in a typical year is probably 85%-90%. I mean, we have achieved that level or greater for the most part in those types of situations. I don't know what 2026 holds, so there's no guarantee. If you look historically over almost any period of time, if you want to take 20 years, 10 years, six years, I use six because COVID is five and that's unusual. If you look at these, we've generally grown at about 14% compounded. We do have a tendency to be able to achieve above the target. We never know when that's going to happen because it takes a little bit of things falling into place for that to occur. Again, I think it's really, for the most part, it's about revenue growth.

If we get volume, if we get average in the same time, you're going to see margins pop. On the funeral side, cemetery is going to be predominantly driven by preneed.

Cemetery sales, particularly preneed property sales.

More and more of it is the merchandise and services that are rolling out of the backlog. That's become a nice growth driver, complementing. At the end of the day, to really drive cemetery margins, you got to have those sales. I'd tell you we still believe 85%-90%. I don't know what 2026 holds. I'll turn the cash flow question over to Eric.

Eric Tanzberger (CFO)

Hi, Donnie. Yeah, I mean, I think the part that you need to understand and really model as it relates to cash flows is related to cash taxes. Before I get in there, absent cash taxes, I don't know of anything unusual in terms of working capital or whatever, but as the EBITDA grows, as the company grows, which Tom just says we expect, you know, you'll see cash flow from operations grow, which is, you know, depending on the year, has been growing over a long period of time in the kind of 4%-6% type CAGR for cash flow from operations. That should generally continue as we move forward independent of cash taxes. We started the year, as we all know, with about $150 million headwind. As it relates to cash taxes, we paid $25 million last year. We expected originally to pay $175 million.

That has come down by about $40 million. A lot of that has to do with the federal tax legislation that was new this year. Some of it would be a little bit more recurring, which is more of the accelerated depreciation depending on the assets we put into play and invest in. Some of it, such as some of the internal use of software and some of those things, may be more like one time. I guess what I'm trying to say is I think we'll give some of that $40 million back. I don't know how much now. Maybe it'll be more like $20 million-$30 million of that $40 million we'll get back. That is something we'll talk, you know, in more detail in February when we give you more specific guidance.

That's the one place that I think you got to think of in terms of the cash flow. Still, with all that being said, we don't see huge amounts of changes in investment in our maintenance capital expenditures, which is about $315 million this year. When you think of the free cash flow being well over, you know, it's almost into the mid fours, it still should be over $4 a share, $4.25 a share, which is really significant for a company that we're very proud of.

Got it. Appreciate all the color, guys. Thanks so much and congrats on the quarter.

Tom Ryan (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Joanna Gajuk from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Joanna Gajuk (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, good morning. Thanks so much for taking that question. I guess maybe just to follow up on the cemetery preneed sales, it actually sounds like, you know, very robust numbers. I guess you gave us some details on this, so thanks for that. How should you think about next year? I mean it sounds like you believe you're on track for the 8%-12% EPS growth. Should we assume it's single-digit growth next year for cemetery sales reduction? Does that make sense or is there any reason to think about a different number?

Tom Ryan (Chairman and CEO)

I think.

Joanna, thanks for the question.

Overall, we do expect cemetery sales will trend like they kind of have.

Historically, we feel very good about low to mid single digit growth. A component of that is large sales.

That's the one that tends to have.

A little more volatility to it quarter to quarter.

Overall, we would expect to be.

Able to grow that again in the kind of low to mid single digits. With each of these categories, we just feel very good. I think the inventories out there, the sales force is doing a tremendous job of taking people through there and educating them. The one component we talked a little bit about is the cremation consumer continues to be a high growth opportunity. In our cemeteries, we're seeing more cremation consumers pick either cremation gardens or cremation niches. We have a lot of products that I'd tell you consumers really don't have familiarity with. I think a lot of cremation consumers come in and don't really understand what we have available. We're really focused this year with some consumer research that we've done about trying to tie that consumer in a better way to educate them about what we have.

We found in the focus groups that almost 0 out of 10 knew what we had and about 8 out of 10, once they saw it, said I'm interested in looking.

It doesn't mean they're going to buy.

I think there's the consumer there that we probably have not done as good a job with as we've done with the burial consumer. You know, tie that into cemetery over the next couple of years. I think it's a real growth opportunity, albeit not a huge one, but one that has an ability to grow at a higher growth rate.

Joanna Gajuk (Equity Research Analyst)

The last comment on the cremation customer buying into the cemetery, there is any way to say that it sounds like it's a huge one, but I guess with that, could this other point of growth or so per year.

Tom Ryan (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, yeah, I think the other parts are going to grow in traditional ways. I think we feel very good. We've really focused on the types of.

Leads and our ability to close the leads. This kind of gets back to sales productivity and sales growth. Our sales force has done, I think, a tremendous job. Our revenue team has helped construct some really nice inventory across our cemeteries. We spend about $160 million a year injecting new inventory into the system, and we do a real good job of converting that pretty quickly into sales. We feel very good about next year right now based on everything we know at the high end, at the core level. I just want to identify some of these productivity gains or velocity gains. If we can get more cremation consumers in there, it's going to drive more sales. Not as high an average, obviously, but drive more velocity, more familiarity.

The nice thing about cemeteries is it really has a family tree component to this, right, because people are going to visit the cemeteries, people are going to want to buy adjacent properties for the family. This is really good in educating and providing future leads and opportunities to our sales force.

Joanna Gajuk (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, great. Thank you. If I may, can you talk about sales trends, I guess, at your largest location, the Rose Hills, stuff like that's really, you know, driving a lot of what's happening with the company. Can you flash out, you know, how the quota has been going and anything to flag there? Thank you.

Tom Ryan (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, I would say Rose Hills is doing very well. Really, congrats to Rachel and her sales team. They've done a tremendous job of setting the inventory up, bringing in the consumer, driving the leads. They had a very successful quarter, well into the double-digit growth. We expect great things to come because again, there's great inventory, there's great people, a great team. We expect Rose Hills to be a big part of our growth story into 2026 and beyond.

Joanna Gajuk (Equity Research Analyst)

Great, thank you. I'll go back to the queue.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Tobey Sommer from Truist. Please go ahead.

Tobey Sommer (Analyst)

Thanks. Good job on expense control in the quarter. Do you have pretty good confidence in being able to extend the trend in low expense growth into 2026, and are there any areas where you are seeing pressure?

Tom Ryan (Chairman and CEO)

I think historically, Toby, we've seen a little pressure on the cemetery maintenance front as you look over the last few years. Again, that's kind of easy to understand as you think about cost of water, cost of labor, those types of trends. We definitely have been instituting some new strategies that we believe can continue to kind of manage those costs down. Probably the biggest lever we have in the margins is our staffing metrics. Our operating teams do a tremendous job and it's really being able to flex when you have volume or you don't have volume. The way I look at it is this: I would expect that if we were to get more volume in 2026, it's going to be hard to hold 1%-2% cost growth, but that's okay because it's supported by the revenues.

Utilizing those staff metrics, and that's both using part-time people, it's about how we're managing the staff themselves, about trying to leverage technology to take some of the burdens off our caregivers and funeral directors. That's really how we're managing today. It's a more challenging volume environment and we're able to kind of flex and manage those costs. I think that's the way I would think about the field. Obviously at the home office level, we're always trying to look for ways, particularly today with AI and technology, can we begin to think about how we do our jobs differently and begin to leverage those tools to where maybe we don't have to hire an extra person or two persons. I think that's the way by department we're trying to manage the costs going forward.

Tobey Sommer (Analyst)

Thanks.

I wanted to maybe ask a follow up on the cemetery, excuse me, the cremation comment that you made in response to a prior question with respect to the company's journey and educating prospective customers about the options. How would you compare and contrast the various cemetery options in customer awareness versus cremation, and how quickly can you affect change there, do you think?

Tom Ryan (Chairman and CEO)

I hope very quickly. As usual, I think on the cemetery side, if you think about a burial customer, they're thinking about that cemetery option if they haven't already arranged it. By the way, most of them, you know, 80% of our customers come in with a burial place already. That's, you know, I think we're pretty good at that because we've got a customer that expects it, a customer that wants to go to the cemetery. What's unusual about the cremation opportunity at our combo facilities? It's easier, right? Because now you've got, you know, there's a cemetery behind there. You might ask the question.

One of the things we're trying.

To do is just create visibility both, you know, on the web, as people are searching out there, putting it on our websites a little more prominently. We're going to have things in our lobby as people are waiting to meet with somebody that's going to flash across the screen that's going to tell you you're going to see aerial views of some of these beautiful crematory gardens and niches. Again, kind of soliciting a little bit of education there for our consumer and then also just training even our standalone funeral homes to realize we've got that offering and be able to talk about it and be able to again set up appointments to go out and see. We've got a variety of tools to create more awareness, more discussion around it. It's happened naturally, by the way.

We have great people and so there's locations today that do a great job of that and there's some that don't. It's really about standardizing that educational process across the network.

Tobey Sommer (Analyst)

Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Parker Snure from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Parker Snure (Associate Analyst)

Hey, good morning.

You guys mentioned a non-insured Flex product out on the West Coast. Maybe just dive deeper there. Explain the rationale of why you think that product was appropriate for that market.

Tom Ryan (Chairman and CEO)

Yes.

Think of the non-insured Flex as a product that's more similar to.

Trust, if you remember.

An insured product gives a consumer protection. If you were to enter into, let's say, a three-year as an example, you're paying over 36 months. If I die in month eight, my family's covered. They're protected by that insurance product. It's a little more expensive than a trust product because the trust product doesn't have that protection.

Tom dies in month eight, they're.

going to go to my family and say I need to collect the balance in order to bury you. A lot of this is about providing a product that is suitable for the consumer from an affordability perspective.

We have that product called trust in most markets.

Some of these markets, particularly in California, is where this occurs, where we've offered a Flex product which acts a little more like trust, and it doesn't generate as much of a commission for us. It also doesn't provide the protection for that consumer. As we switched over to Global Atlantic, we didn't offer the Flex product in certain markets, and we saw that consumers' needs weren't getting met. This was an attempt to say we have a consumer that needs this product, let's utilize it because it's become an issue that is keeping them from being able to go under contract. That's all it is. I don't think we expect it to expand much more than the markets we're in because we have trust products as an alternative in other markets.

I think we're the changes in, and you'll see a little bit of a comparison as you go into early 2026 when you think about the general agency rates going forward.

Parker Snure (Associate Analyst)

Okay. You mentioned that the funeral volume pull forward you think is going to be more negligible going forward. Should we read that as funeral volumes kind of trend slightly up next year, more back to a more normal cadence, and then maybe just talk about the knock-on effect that provides to the preneed cemetery business as it acts as a lead source for that business?

Tom Ryan (Chairman and CEO)

Yes. If you think about it, we do some ratios that kind of say around 55% I think is the percentage of, you know, of our ability to sell preneed off of the funeral volume that walks in. As we get a little bit more, the incremental cemetery piece should be about 55 basis points of that growth. As you think about it, there are things we can do to tune that up and we hope we can go higher. To your point, it should be positive for cemetery sales leads as well. I think the way we're thinking about it is this, and we modeled it a long time ago and nothing's perfect, but it's been pretty well done in the sense of the diminishing effect of the pull forward is real and we've seen it year to year to year. It's still there.

I don't want you to say there's none.

We just don't expect it now.

To be a material factor going forward. Now you think about the things that are positive. We've got the best locations, the best people, we've got demographics beginning to work for us. We've got this massive backlog that nobody else in our competitors really has. I think we've captured some share and some high value share. Remember, the contract coming out of the backlog are bigger than the ones that are walking in the door. All those things point towards, and again, I don't know for sure when it hits, but when it does, it's very incremental. We know when you get a little bit of revenue growth, you can pop the margins. Look at this quarter alone, we've got a little over 4% revenue growth and if you normalize the taxes, we're up 15%. That's what happens when you get 4% revenue growth.

When you get 2%, that can't happen. What we like is with demographics, with the backlog, we feel very good about the ability to generate earnings per share growth in the coming years.

Parker Snure (Associate Analyst)

Okay, if I can squeeze in one more. The insurance transition on the SCI Direct side has led to some declines in production. I understand that was 100% trust before. It's a different sale, it's a different product, and it's been a phased rollout. Is there an expectation that that will return to sort of pre-transition levels at some point? Are we going to be kind of working off of a lower base going forward? Also, has there been any changes or, you know, inflections in turnover with the sales force on that segment?

Tom Ryan (Chairman and CEO)

You're talking specifically about SCI Direct.

Parker Snure (Associate Analyst)

Yeah, SCI Direct.

Tom Ryan (Chairman and CEO)

It is a pretty drastic change. I mean the product is very different. It does require licensure. I think the way to think about it is this. We expect in 2026 that we're going to see growth again off that new base. I don't think we get back to pre-change levels. It is probably going to take a couple of years to get back to those types of levels, but we're going to get there. I think part of that is hiring the sales force where we've had the turnover, getting people licensed and comfortable with the product. The thing I feel better about is this really is about familiarity of sale. People have been doing it a certain way for a long time and we really disrupted their world. We really appreciate the sales counselors and sales leadership at SCI Direct and all the hard work they've done.

The fruits of their labor are coming. I think it's going to take a couple of years, but I think you're going to see some pretty impressive growth rates. Combine that with the fact that you're going to see higher general agency revenues. Now think about that backlog. That backlog is going to unwind and it is very valuable and very incrementally profitable. As you model this thing out 10 years, it's incredibly impressive the rates of growth as you think about earnings going forward for SCI Direct.

Parker Snure (Associate Analyst)

All right, great.

Thank you so much.

Tom Ryan (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

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

Tom Ryan (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you everybody for being on the call today. We appreciate your attendance. Happy Halloween to everybody tomorrow. Have a good, safe one and we'll speak to you in our fourth quarter call next February.

Thanks so much. Bye.

Eric Tanzberger (CFO)

Bye.

Operator (participant)

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation.