How to Make a Killing in the Death Business

The company, which has a market cap of $717 million and was founded in 1910, owns and operates 223 funeral homes and 141 cemeteries in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. This company also has been a fave of Mohnish Pabrai in the past. Last is Service Corp. International(SCI Quote), which reported second-quarter results last month. This $3.5 billion market-cap company was not busy acquiring but rather was focused on divesting.

The company reported a disappointing profit of $15.1 million, a 40% drop from $25.5 million the year before and well below the $32.7 million Wall Street was expecting. Service Corp. has been dealing with divestiture tax costs, recently selling its interest in a French joint venture. The profit from the sale may be used to fund a share-repurchase program.

Houston-based Service Corp. was founded in 1962 and provides funeral and cemetery services primarily in North America and Germany. It operates more than 1,500 funeral homes and 400 cemeteries in 45 states, Canada and Puerto Rico.

Now, I must give an opinion on these stocks. Since I first developed this idea on Sept. 16, STEI has gone up 11.73%, with a declared dividend of 2.5 cents and a repurchase announcement. SCI has had a 4.37% jump based on the selloff of four of its properties, STON is up 0.57% and CSV is actually down 3.91%, but neither of those two have had news come out. Even with the run-up of STEI, I believe they are all still buys, especially STON, who may be purchasing more properties.

For more analyses, check out conference calls for September 2007, Nymph-style at Stockpickr.com. Please note that due to factors including low market capitalization and/or insufficient public float, we consider Carriage Services and Stonemor Partners to be small-cap stocks. You should be aware that such stocks are subject to more risk than stocks of larger companies, including greater volatility, lower liquidity and less publicly available information, and that postings such as this one can have an effect on their stock prices.