Carriage Services Announces Third Quarter and Nine Months Ended September 30, 2022 Results

Carriage Services, Inc.

Conference call on Thursday, October 27, 2022, at 9:30 a.m. Central Time

Figure 1

Funeral Home Same Store Contracts by Quarter

HOUSTON, Oct. 26, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Carriage Services, Inc. (NYSE: CSV): today announced results for the third quarter and nine months ended September 30, 2022.

• Third Quarter Total Revenue of $87.5 million and Adjusted Diluted EPS of $0.45, a decrease of 7.9% and 45.1%, respectively;

• Acquisition of Heritage Funeral Homes and Cremation Services and Forest Lawn East Cemetery in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a letter of intent signed with a large business in a new strategic market;

• Robbie Pape joins Carriage as Senior Vice President of Operations and Regional Partner of Eastern Region.
  

Mel Payne, Chairman and CEO, stated, “Much like we experienced higher year over year volumes, revenues, earnings and margins comparisons starting in the second quarter of 2020 and continuing through the first quarter of 2022 (most revenue comparisons in the second quarter of 2022 were also higher), we are now experiencing lower volumes, revenues, earnings and margins comparisons across much of our funeral and cemetery portfolios, a downtrend that accelerated in September. Combined with the higher discretionary overhead that we elaborated on in our second quarter release, our Adjusted Diluted EPS, Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA, and Adjusted Free Cash Flow for the third quarter and nine months of 2022 are materially below those of our record performance metrics in 2021, yet our volumes, revenues and other performance metrics are mostly higher than 2019 and even 2020. The particulars of the various portfolio performance categories as well as our consolidated performance will be covered by Carlos Quezada, Steve Metzger and Ben Brink in subsequent sections of this release.

Despite the inevitable normalizing of death rates from the elevated pandemic levels, our Company continues to broadly get better as a Being The Best Operating and Consolidation Company. And sooner rather than later, we will resume our Good To Great Journey as a Shareholder Value Creation Company based on broadly higher comparative performance metrics over time, as we are currently positioned to accelerate our growth by acquisition of larger, high-quality businesses in new strategic markets, as covered by Steve Metzger later in this release.

Because there are various conflicting volume, revenue and margin crosscurrents in our near-term outlook, primarily related to normalizing death rates (offset to a meaningful degree by higher revenue averages) and expected acquisition activity, we are not updating our Rolling Four Quarter Outlook in this release. However, we expect to have a much more crystalized picture of our performance outlook when we report our full year 2022 performance in late February 2023, and therefore plan to resume our Rolling Four Quarter Outlook at that time,” concluded Mr. Payne.

THIRD QUARTER 2022 COMPARATIVE PERFORMANCE HIGHLIGHTS

• Total Revenue⁽¹⁾ of $87.5 million, a decrease of $7.5 million or 7.9%;

• Funeral GAAP Operating Income of $17.6 million, a decrease of $5.3 million or 23.3%;

• Funeral GAAP Operating Income Margin of 28.0%, a decrease of 530 basis points;

• Cemetery GAAP Operating Income of $8.0 million, a decrease of $1.4 million or 15.3%;

• Cemetery GAAP Operating Income Margin of 32.5%, a decrease of 370 basis points;

• GAAP Net Income of $5.9 million, a decrease of $7.2 million or 55.1%;

• GAAP Net Income Margin of 6.7%, a decrease of 700 basis points;

• GAAP Diluted EPS of $0.38, a decrease of $0.33 or 46.5%;

• GAAP Cash Provided by Operating Activities of $19.9 million, a decrease of 29.7%;

• GAAP Cash Provided by Operating Activities as a percentage of Total Revenue of 22.7%, a decrease of 702 basis points;
  
  

• Funeral Same Store Contracts of 9,499, a decrease of 1,390 or 12.8%;

• Funeral Same Store Revenue of $51.3 million, a decrease of $6.1 million or 10.6%;

• Funeral Same Store EBITDA of $18.7 million, a decrease of $6.9 million or 27.0%;

• Funeral Same Store EBITDA Margin of 36.5%, a decrease of 820 basis points;
  
  

• Funeral Acquisition Revenue of $7.8 million, an increase of $0.2 million or 2.1%;

• Funeral Acquisition EBITDA of $3.0 million, a decrease of $0.3 million or 9.9%;

• Funeral Acquisition EBITDA Margin of 38.9%, a decrease of 520 basis points;
  
  

• Cemetery Same Store Revenue of $15.4 million, a decrease of $0.9 million or 5.8%;

• Cemetery Acquisition Revenue of $5.9 million, a decrease of $0.4 million or 6.5%;

• Financial Revenue of $5.8 million, an increase of $0.2 million or 3.4%;
  
  

• Total Field EBITDA of $35.3 million, a decrease of $9.4 million or 21.0%;

• Total Field EBITDA Margin of 40.3%, a decrease of 670 basis points;
  
  

• Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA of $22.9 million, a decrease of $9.5 million or 29.4%;

• Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA Margin of 26.1%, a decrease of 800 basis points;

• Adjusted Diluted EPS of $0.45, a decrease of $0.37 or 45.1%;

• Adjusted Free Cash Flow of $16.5 million, a decrease of $9.4 million or 36.3%; and

• Adjusted Free Cash Flow Margin of 18.9%, a decrease of 840 basis points.
  

FIRST NINE MONTHS 2022 COMPARATIVE PERFORMANCE HIGHLIGHTS

• Total Revenue⁽¹⁾ of $276.3 million, a decrease of $3.7 million or 1.3%;

• Funeral GAAP Operating Income of $61.5 million, a decrease of $3.9 million or 5.9%;

• Funeral GAAP Operating Income Margin of 30.9%, a decrease of 170 basis points;

• Cemetery GAAP Operating Income of $26.7 million, a decrease of $3.8 million or 12.5%;

• Cemetery GAAP Operating Income Margin of 34.5%, a decrease of 380 basis points;

• GAAP Net Income of $33.2 million, an increase of $13.3 million or 67.4%;

• GAAP Net Income Margin of 12.0%, an increase of 490 basis points;

• GAAP Diluted EPS of $2.09, an increase of $1.01 or 93.5%;

• GAAP Cash Provided by Operating Activities of $50.0 million, a decrease of 28.2%;

• GAAP Cash Provided by Operating Activities as a percentage of Total Revenue of 18.1%, a decrease of 678 basis points;
  
  

• Funeral Same Store Contracts of 30,686, a decrease of 817 or 2.6%;

• Funeral Same Store Revenue of $163.8 million, a decrease of $1.7 million or 1.0%;

• Funeral Same Store EBITDA of $65.3 million, a decrease of $6.2 million or 8.7%;

• Funeral Same Store EBITDA Margin of 39.9%, a decrease of 330 basis points;
  
  

• Funeral Acquisition Revenue of $24.1 million, an increase of $1.5 million or 6.6%;

• Funeral Acquisition EBITDA of $9.8 million remained flat;

• Funeral Acquisition EBITDA Margin of 40.9%, a decrease of 240 basis points;
  
  

• Cemetery Same Store Revenue of $46.6 million, a decrease of $1.3 million or 2.6%;

• Cemetery Acquisition Revenue of $20.4 million, a decrease of $1.1 million or 5.0%;

• Financial Revenue of $17.4 million, an increase of $0.6 million or 3.4%;
  
  

• Total Field EBITDA of $119.3 million, a decrease of $11.1 million or 8.5%;

• Total Field EBITDA Margin of 43.2%, a decrease of 340 basis points;
  
  

• Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA of $80.7 million, a decrease of $15.1 million or 15.8%;

• Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA Margin of 29.2%, a decrease of 500 basis points;

• Adjusted Diluted EPS of $1.96, a decrease of $0.31 or 13.7%;

• Adjusted Free Cash Flow of $40.9 million, a decrease of $24.5 million or 37.5%; and

• Adjusted Free Cash Flow Margin of 14.8%, a decrease of 860 basis points.
  

_{⁽¹⁾ Total Revenue is comprised of Same Store Funeral Revenue, Acquisition Funeral Revenue, Same Store Cemetery Revenue, Acquisition Cemetery Revenue, Divested Revenue, Ancillary Revenue and Financial Revenue. The most comparable GAAP measures to the Non-GAAP measures presented in this table can be found in the Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures section of this press release.}

FIVE QUARTER TREND REPORT ENDING SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

FIVE QUARTER OPERATING AND FINANCIAL TREND REPORT
(000’s except for volume, averages & margins)		3RD QTR 2021		4TH QTR 2021		1ST QTR 2022		2ND QTR 2022		3RD QTR 2022
Funeral Same Store Contracts		10,889		10,772		11,719		9,468		9,499
Funeral Same Store Average Revenue Per Contract (1)		$5,264		$5,333		$5,270		$5,361		$5,396
Funeral Same Store Burial Contracts		3,712		3,815		4,094		3,240		3,202
Funeral Same Store Burial Rate		34.1%		35.4%		34.9%		34.2%		33.7%
Funeral Same Store Average Revenue Per Burial Contract		$9,489		$9,428		$9,388		$9,599		$9,810
Funeral Same Store Cremation Contracts		6,230		6,103		6,679		5,441		5,530
Funeral Same Store Cremation Rate		57.2%		56.7%		57.0%		57.5%		58.2%
Funeral Same Store Average Revenue Per Cremation Contract		$3,475		$3,488		$3,442		$3,517		$3,589
Funeral Same Store Revenue		$57,321		$57,441		$61,761		$50,757		$51,258
Funeral Same Store EBITDA		$25,644		$24,390		$27,560		$19,036		$18,717
Funeral Same Store EBITDA Margin		44.7%		42.5%		44.6%		37.5%		36.5%
Funeral Acquisition Revenue		$7,651		$8,007		$8,610		$7,641		$7,813
Funeral Acquisition EBITDA		$3,371		$3,578		$3,750		$3,059		$3,036
Funeral Acquisition EBITDA Margin		44.1%		44.7%		43.6%		40.0%		38.9%
Cemetery Same Store Preneed Property Contracts Sold		1,280		1,120		1,068		1,228		1,091
Cemetery Same Store Preneed Sales Revenue		$11,366		$10,926		$9,011		$12,364		$10,222
Cemetery Same Store Revenue		$16,342		$16,288		$14,251		$16,969		$15,396
Cemetery Same Store EBITDA		$6,465		$6,939		$5,300		$6,479		$5,020
Cemetery Same Store EBITDA Margin		39.6%		42.6%		37.2%		38.2%		32.6%
Cemetery Acquisition Preneed Property Contracts Sold		294		361		299		392		277
Cemetery Acquisition Preneed Sales Revenue		$5,148		$5,045		$4,298		$6,486		$4,149
Cemetery Acquisition Revenue		$6,362		$6,312		$6,297		$8,193		$5,947
Cemetery Acquisition EBITDA		$3,547		$3,140		$3,299		$4,640		$2,827
Cemetery Acquisition EBITDA Margin		55.8%		49.7%		52.4%		56.6%		47.5%
Total Financial Revenue		$5,653		$6,173		$5,726		$5,785		$5,848
Total Financial EBITDA		$5,239		$5,783		$5,297		$5,345		$5,449
Total Financial EBITDA Margin		92.7%		93.7%		92.5%		92.4%		93.2%
Total Revenue		$95,041		$95,931		$98,161		$90,600		$87,497
Total Field EBITDA		$44,651		$44,189		$45,454		$38,635		$35,253
Total Field EBITDA Margin		47.0%		46.1%		46.3%		42.6%		40.3%
Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA		$32,389		$30,395		$32,476		$25,322		$22,855
Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA Margin		34.1%		31.7%		33.1%		27.9%		26.1%
Adjusted Diluted EPS		$0.82		$0.78		$0.92		$0.58		$0.45
Adjusted Free Cash Flow		$25,922		$10,308		$12,357		$12,006		$16,525
Adjusted Free Cash Flow Margin		27.3%		10.7%		12.6%		13.3%		18.9%
GAAP Net Income		$13,046		$13,347		$16,402		$10,899		$5,860
GAAP Net Income Margin		13.7%		13.9%		16.7%		12.0%		6.7%
GAAP Diluted Earnings Per Share		$0.71		$0.77		$1.00		$0.69		$0.38

_{⁽¹⁾ Excludes Preneed Funeral interest earnings reflected in Total Financial Revenue. The most comparable GAAP measures to the Non-GAAP measures presented in this table can be found in the Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures section of this press release.}

Carlos Quezada, President, and Chief Operating Officer stated, “We report our performance results publicly using the same highly transparent Non-GAAP “Trend Reports” that we use internally and which have been explained in previous shareholder letters, including Five Quarter Trend Reports that reflect short-term trends in our core operating, financial and overhead sectors over time. Our Five Quarter Operating and Financial Trend Report is shown on the previous page.

From April 2020 through June 2022, we experienced elevated volumes and excess deaths due to a once-in-a-lifetime COVID-19 pandemic. As Mel shared at the beginning of this release, volume normalization continued in the third quarter, with additional declines in July and August and accelerating to its highest drop in September. While the decline in volume is significant in the third quarter of 2022 compared to the third quarter of 2021, our funeral same store contracts of 9,499 in the third quarter of 2022 reflect a 14.3% volume growth from the third quarter of 2019 and was relatively flat when compared to the third quarter of 2020, which included a significant volume increase due to the initial pandemic spike. The variance in the third quarter of 2022 compared to the same period last year is more evident due to a historically abnormal seasonal peak experienced only in the third quarter of 2021.

The chart below demonstrates the typical seasonality of volumes on our Funeral Home Same Store Portfolio, where historically, the first quarter is the highest volume quarter, followed closely by the fourth quarter, then the second quarter, with the lowest volume in the third quarter. This seasonality prior to the pandemic has been highly correlated with past flu seasons during the winter months. The chart points out the “abnormal” seasonal peak of volumes in the third quarter of 2021, which made for an impossibly difficult comparison against a more normalized volume and seasonalized third quarter in 2022.

Funeral Home Same Store Contracts by Quarter

A chart accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/36291871-8987-41bf-9fcb-6f49db3653b5

For the third quarter of 2022, Total Revenue was $87.5 million, a decrease of 7.9% or $7.5 million compared to the same period last year. Our Funeral Home Acquisition portfolio continued to gain market share after integrating and optimizing into the Carriage Services model and had revenue of $7.8 million or 2.1% over the third quarter of 2021. Same Store Funeral Contracts were down by 1,390 or 12.8% due to the high comparable COVID-19 excess deaths experienced in the third quarter of 2021. However, Same Store Average Revenue Per Contract was up by $132 or 2.5%, equivalent to 232 contracts or $1.3 million of revenue. Same Store Funeral EBITDA Margin of 36.5% compared to 44.7% during the same period last year, a decrease of 820 basis points.

Same Store Cemetery Revenue was $15.4 million, a decrease of $0.95 million or 5.8%, and Same Store Cemetery EBITDA Margin was 32.6% compared to 39.6% in the same period last year. This decrease results from lower true at-need interments from a high COVID-19 comparable. True at-need interments typically bring a higher average per contract than pre-need contracts and higher margins in the range of 20% - 23% over the last three years. Moreover, the lower at-need interments count led to lower preneed cemetery sales as fewer families visited the cemetery to make arrangements than the year before. The good news is that our preneed cemetery sales strategy has adapted to this post-pandemic environment, and we will deliver higher and more sustainable preneed sales growth over time. Cemetery Acquisition Revenue was $5.9 million, a decrease of $0.4 million or 6.5%, and Cemetery Acquisition EBITDA Margin was 47.5% against 55.8%, a decrease of 830 basis points compared to the same period last year. A 47.5% Cemetery Acquisition EBITDA Margin is at the top of our range of High Performance margins.

We experienced lower Field EBITDA Margins in the third quarter of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021, a consequence of lower volumes on higher fixed costs due to inflation, which was concentrated on full-time hourly base rate, utility, funeral supplies, and insurance. We continue to monitor these recent inflationary costs while making the necessary adjustments to keep them within reasonable historical cost ranges.

We ended the third quarter of 2022 with an Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA of $22.9 million, a decrease of $9.5 million or 29.4%, and an Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA Margin of 26.1%, a decrease of 800 basis points when compared to the same period last year. Moreover, Adjusted Diluted EPS of $0.45 cents, a decrease of $0.37 cents or 45.1% compared to the previous year’s period.

Our Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA Margins are lower than at any point since the beginning of the pandemic, which is a natural compression of margins due to inflationary costs and the negative operating leverage impact of lower revenues over higher fixed costs in many of our businesses. However, the third quarter results are NOT the new normal. We are confident the efforts to reduce the inflationary impact in each of our businesses over the next few months will improve our cost percentages against normalizing revenue. Furthermore, the Company continues to get better everyday because we have the best talent in the history of Carriage. For all these reasons and many more, we are confident that we will reach our goal of long-term sustainable ranges of Total Field EBITDA Margins of 43% - 44% and Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA Margins of 30% - 31% by 2024.

OVERHEAD INVESTMENTS UPDATE AND PROGRESS

More “A” players join Carriage Services:
We are excited to share that Robbie Pape joined Carriage Good To Great Journey on September 26, 2022, as our new Senior Vice President of Operations and Regional Partner for the Eastern Region. Robbie has over 30 years of industry experience, including positions in funeral/cemetery operations, finance, sales, systems, process improvement, and audit. She is a Certified Public Accountant with a Marketing and Information Systems degree from Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She serves as President-Elect for the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association (“ICCFA”) and is a Finance Committee member. Robbie is also active in the Cremation Association of North America and served as a board member until the fall of 2021. Robbie’s experience and vast knowledge, in addition to her leadership coach/mentor style, will be transformational for the East Region. Welcome to the Carriage family, Robbie.

We also welcome Jeremy Weaver, who joined Carriage as a Director of Operations Support for the East Region on May 23, 2022. Jeremy has over 25 years of death care experience, including other consolidators. He is a graduate of the Dallas Institute of Funeral Service. Chad Frye joined our Carriage Good to Great Journey as Director of Operations Support for the East Region on August 1, 2022. Chad has over 25 years of funeral service industry experience and has held various operational positions with oversight over multiple funeral homes, cemeteries, and crematory operations. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business management from Western Governors University and an associate degree in funeral service from Piedmont Technical College. We welcome Jeremy and Chad to Carriage.

This powerful team supporting our Eastern Region will become pivotal to the success of each business as they partner and collaborate with each Managing Partner and pursue our Being The Best Mission and Vision.

Marketing:
Our marketing team, led by Alfred White, continues to execute and deliver High Performance. The adoption of marketing services offered by our marketing team has grown organically based on the value everyone on the marketing team is creating. While many may consider marketing an expense, we see it as an investment due to the unique opportunity that our decentralized operating model offers, which in terms of dollar value in the third quarter of 2022 has generated total savings of approximately $213,000 generated through our strategy on Digital Advertising, Social Media Platforms, and External Agency Savings.

The marketing team will continue to create value organically and focus on incorporating all businesses under the marketing umbrella over time, expecting that leverage maximization will optimize marketing and advertising investments. Some examples of these include: optimized paid digital spending, leveraging a new call tracking system, increasing social media portfolio, and creating new website designs for funeral homes and cemeteries.

Information Technology:
During the first six months of Rob Franch’s tenure as the Company’s CIO, he has focused on strengthening the foundational technology across critical infrastructure and security services. Our IT transformation must begin with creating a solid and sustainable technology bedrock we expect to build further. Our IT team’s initial investments and efforts have focused on cybersecurity, connectivity, and compliance. As we further improve in these areas, we believe Carriage is well-positioned to capitalize on future digital capabilities by advancing data security, proactive threat detection, and secure connectivity to our IT systems and services.

While these investments provide excellent value to our colleagues and the families we serve, Rob intends to also look for opportunities to reduce overhead in parallel. In that respect, the IT team’s mission would include identifying and driving duplicative costs that do not align with the Company’s long-term vision and roadmap. To that end, we have set a goal to reduce overhead within IT by approximately $240,000 year over year by the first quarter of 2023. Rob’s commitment to our shareholders will always be to deliver the most outstanding value through technology while maintaining a stable and predictable cost.

The Best is Yet to Come:
Great things are happening at Carriage, from the fast start High Performance marketing team, which is now hitting on all cylinders, as well as our technology-savvy future, which we expect will enable a second-to-none customer-centric experience, to our exciting growth through acquisitions. And while there is much economical and geopolitical uncertainty both globally and locally, in addition to unknown post-pandemic volume levels, we believe those levels will be above pre-pandemic levels. However, most important is that we have a Being The Best company which means that each day we become a little better than we were the day before, an effect that has a materially compounding impact over time.

We believe our Company has a bright future within the adversity-resilient death care industry, as proven by its long history. We have also learned from history that humankind will continue to honor loved ones lost and say goodbye with dignity, respect, and reverence for those no longer with us, which is why we define the noble nature of our business as high-value personal service and sales.

Our focus will continue on the things we control. At the same time, our agility and execution ability provide the foundation to ensure that regardless of the future death rate, our Managing Partners and their Being The Best Teams stand ready to serve a more significant share in each of their businesses. For these reasons and many more, we continue to say that it is a great time to be at Carriage, and the best is yet to come,” concluded Mr. Quezada.

STRATEGIC ACQUISITION UPDATE
Steve Metzger, Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel stated, “As Mel mentioned earlier, we are currently well positioned to take advantage of some very attractive opportunities to accelerate our growth by acquisition. We are excited to announce our most recent addition to the Carriage Family, Heritage Funeral and Cremation Services and Forest Lawn East Cemetery in Charlotte, North Carolina. Heritage, with three funeral homes, a cemetery, and a dedicated cremation business, is a leader in the growing Charlotte market with an approximately 25% market share. The Heritage reputation and footprint allows us to enter Charlotte with a premier business with an outstanding reputation which provides an excellent foundation from which to expand our presence in one of the more attractive markets in the country.

We are also excited to share that we are under a letter of intent with another fantastic business in an attractive market with three funeral homes, two cemeteries, and a growing dedicated cremation business. This business, which is the leader in a large and growing strategic market in which we had no prior presence, is on pace to finish 2022 with more than $15 million in revenue and has already made significant investments to allow for future growth in the years ahead. We look forward to providing additional detail once we close this transaction.

When we look at the two businesses we recently acquired in the Orlando and Charlotte markets and combine their performance with the large business we currently have under letter of intent, Carriage would add approximately 4,500 funeral calls and 1,500 interments to our existing portfolio. These additional funeral calls represent an approximately 10% increase to Company wide totals for 2021, while the additional interments would represent a roughly 15% increase to our totals for last year. It is also important to note that these acquisitions include several large cemeteries with decades of heritage, which results in significant trust funds that can contribute to meaningful financial revenue, as Ben will highlight in more detail later. Moreover, two of these three acquisitions allow us to enter new markets where we did not previously have a presence with premier names that possess strong legacies and reputations.

We will continue to focus on identifying similar businesses to support our long-term growth strategy. We never know when a premier business will be ready for a succession plan, so we always want to be sure we are well positioned to act quickly when the right opportunity is identified. To that end we have great relationships with our bank partners, led by Bank of America, and while we balance our goal of reducing leverage with being opportunistic when unique acquisition opportunities arise, we will continue to work with our banks to ensure we maintain the financial flexibility necessary to manage those priorities,” concluded Mr. Metzger.

ADJUSTED FREE CASH FLOW/LEVERAGE RATIO
Ben Brink, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer stated, “In the near term, we will work with our banking partners on capital capacity strategies for financial flexibility to accelerate our growth by acquisition. We will then use internally generated Free Cash Flow to rapidly pay down debt in a similar manner to 2020 and early 2021 post the large transformative acquisitions we made at the end of 2019 and early 2020, when leverage fell from 6.0 times on a proforma basis at the beginning of 2020 to 3.8 times in the span of 15 months.

Our bank covenant compliance leverage ratio was 5.14 times at the end of the third quarter compared to 4.87 times at the end of the second quarter and 4.51 times at year end 2021. Total Debt was $581.0 million in the third quarter compared to $587.3 million at end of the second quarter and $567.7 million at year end 2021. Going forward we intend to focus our capital allocation on high return internal growth projects like cemetery inventory, transformative acquisitions and paying down our debt over the next two years.

		Three Months Ended September 30,								Nine Months Ended September 30,
			2021				2022				2021				2022
Cash Provided by Operating Activities		$	28,258			$	19,869			$	69,699			$	50,046
Cash used for Maintenance Capital Expenditures			(4,358	)			(3,728	)			(8,960	)			(9,710	)
Free Cash Flow		$	23,900			$	16,141			$	60,739			$	40,336
Plus: Incremental Special Items:
Severance and Separation Costs			—				384				1,575				384
Disaster Recovery and Pandemic Costs			1,002				—				2,041				168
Other Special Items			1,020				—				1,020				—
Adjusted Free Cash Flow		$	25,922			$	16,525			$	65,375			$	40,888
Total Revenue		$	95,041			$	87,497			$	279,955			$	276,258
Adjusted Free Cash Flow Margin			27.3%				18.9%				23.4%				14.8%

Third quarter Adjusted Free Cash Flow declined $9.4 million or 36.2% to $16.5 million compared to third quarter 2021 due to the normalization of seasonal death rates and the significant decline in COVID-19 related deaths. Adjusted Free Cash Flow Margin declined 840 basis points in the third quarter to 18.9% compared to last year. The $16.5 million of Adjusted Free Cash Flow and the 18.9% Adjusted Free Cash Flow Margin represent the highest amount of each over the past four quarters, which allowed us to reduce our Total Debt outstanding while closing on one acquisition in the quarter.

Adjusted Free Cash Flow for the nine months ending September 30, 2022 decreased 37.5% to $40.9 million and the Adjusted Free Cash Flow Margin decreased 860 basis points to 14.8%. Adjusted Free Cash Flow declined primarily due to lower Adjusted Consolidated EBITDA and substantially higher 2021 incentive cash compensation payments that were made in the first quarter of 2022 as the result of a record pandemic performance year, including $4 million for our five-year Good To Great Incentive Award that will not be repeated in 2023. Additionally, we had various incentive trips and the first Managing Partner Forum in four years with a combined cost of approximately $3.5 million, which will be significantly less in 2023 as performance normalizes above pre-pandemic levels, resulting in fewer incentive trip winners.

The Adjusted Free Cash Flow Margin represents the amount of cash generated for every dollar of Revenue that is available for shareholder value creation capital allocation through debt paydown or by acquisition of high-quality funeral homes and cemeteries. We believe it is an important metric for investors to gauge the recurring nature of the Free Cash Flow earnings power of Carriage.

TRUST FUND INVESTMENT PERFORMANCE

		YTD 2022		Annualized 2009 - Q3 2022
CSV Discretionary Portfolio		(8.5)%		12.8%
S&P 500		(23.9)%		12.8%
DJIA		(19.7)%		11.7%
NASDAQ		(32.0)%		16.1%
HY Bond Index		(14.7)%		8.7%
70/30 HY/S&P Bond		(17.5)%		10.1%

Through the third quarter, our year-to-date return for our discretionary trust portfolio was negative 8.5% versus negative 23.9% for the S&P 500 and negative 17.5% for our 70/30 HY Bond/S&P 500 benchmark. For the last twelve months our total return for our discretionary trust portfolio was negative 4.1% compared to negative 15.5% for the S&P 500 and negative 14.5% for our 70/30 HY Bond/S&P 500 benchmark.

The third quarter marked a continued relative outperformance for our discretionary preneed trust funds compared to the broader market in an environment of geopolitical instability, persistent inflation, a historically rapid rise in interest rates and significant shifts in currency valuations across the world that have led to year-to-date historical declines in both the equity and fixed income markets. The relative outperformance has allowed us to position the discretionary trust fund portfolio to have the flexibility to deploy additional capital in potentially weaker or more volatile markets while being able to continue to generate a high amount of recurring investment income in the portfolio, which has grown to approximately $19.2 million compared to $17.5 million at the end of 2021. Our dividend equity portfolio is comprised of securities that continue to be attractive to other investors which has provided resiliency to our overall portfolio in the current turbulent market environment.

As of last Friday, October 21, our market value ($233.9 million) trust fund allocations (only trusts that we manage, which represent 86% of total) were 46.1% core equity, 44.3% core fixed income, 2.4% non-core equity and fixed income, and 7.2% cash. The recurring income yield on the market value of our core equity portfolio as of Friday was 7.2%, whereas the recurring income yield on our core fixed income portfolio was 9.9%. The total recurring income of $19.2 million is a historical record and represents an 8.2% yield on total market value of $233.9 million.

One of the many attractive characteristics of the acquisitions being announced is that they have significant trust funds that once integrated into our pooled partnership framework should produce another step up in our reported Financial Revenue and EBITDA in future years. This high amount of recurring income generated in the portfolio combined with the approximately $43 million in realized capital gains we have booked to underlying preneed funeral and cemetery contracts over the past two years has led to a year-to-date increase of 3.4% in Financial Revenue and 3.0% in Financial EBITDA, and we expect will lead to continued incremental growth in our reported Financial Revenue and EBITDA for the foreseeable future,” concluded Mr. Brink.

CONFERENCE CALL AND INVESTOR RELATIONS CONTACT
Carriage Services has scheduled a conference call for tomorrow, October 27, 2022 at 9:30 a.m. central time. To participate live over the phone via audio conferencing click link or live over the Internet via webcast click link. An audio archive of the call will be available on demand via the Company's website at www.carriageservices.com. For any investor relations questions, please contact Ben Brink at 713-332-8441 or email InvestorRelations@carriageservices.com.

CARRIAGE SERVICES, INC.
OPERATING AND FINANCIAL TREND REPORT
(IN THOUSANDS - EXCEPT PER SHARE AMOUNTS)
	Three Months Ended September 30,											Nine Months Ended September 30,
		2021				2022			% Change				2021			2022		% Change
Same Store Contracts
Atneed Contracts		9,341				8,029			(14.0	%)			26,829			26,073		(2.8	%)
Preneed Contracts		1,548				1,470			(5.0	%)			4,674			4,613		(1.3	%)
Total Same Store Funeral Contracts		10,889				9,499			(12.8	%)			31,503			30,686		(2.6	%)
Acquisition Contracts
Atneed Contracts		1,445				1,403			(2.9	%)			4,408			4,254		(3.5	%)
Preneed Contracts		110				167			51.8	%			341			511		49.9	%
Total Acquisition Funeral Contracts		1,555				1,570			1.0	%			4,749			4,765		0.3	%
Total Funeral Contracts		12,444				11,069			(11.0	%)			36,252			35,451		(2.2	%)
Funeral Operating Revenue
Same Store Revenue	$	57,321			$	51,258			(10.6	%)		$	165,481		$	163,776		(1.0	%)
Acquisition Revenue		7,651				7,813			2.1	%			22,575			24,064		6.6	%
Total Funeral Operating Revenue	$	64,972			$	59,071			(9.1	%)		$	188,056		$	187,840		(0.1	%)
Cemetery Operating Revenue
Same Store Revenue	$	16,342			$	15,396			(5.8	%)		$	47,883		$	46,616		(2.6	%)
Acquisition Revenue		6,362				5,947			(6.5	%)			21,517			20,437		(5.0	%)
Total Cemetery Operating Revenue	$	22,704			$	21,343			(6.0	%)		$	69,400		$	67,053		(3.4	%)
Total Financial Revenue	$	5,653			$	5,848			3.4	%		$	16,786		$	17,359		3.4	%
Ancillary Revenue	$	1,096			$	1,049			(4.3	%)		$	3,391		$	3,099		(8.6	%)
Total Divested/Planned Divested Revenue	$	616			$	186			(69.8	%)		$	2,322		$	907		(60.9	%)
Total Revenue	$	95,041			$	87,497			(7.9	%)		$	279,955		$	276,258		(1.3	%)
Field EBITDA
Same Store Funeral Field EBITDA	$	25,644			$	18,717			(27.0	%)		$	71,520		$	65,313		(8.7	%)
Same Store Funeral Field EBITDA Margin		44.7	%			36.5	%		(820 bp)				43.2	%		39.9	%	(330 bp)
Acquisition Funeral Field EBITDA		3,371				3,036			(9.9	%)			9,784			9,845		0.6	%
Acquisition Funeral Field EBITDA Margin		44.1	%			38.9	%		(520 bp)				43.3	%		40.9	%	(240 bp)
Total Funeral Field EBITDA	$