Service Corporation International (SCI): History, Ownership, Mission, How It Works & Makes Money

When you look at a company like Service Corporation International (SCI), North America's largest deathcare provider, do you see a stable, defensive investment or a business navigating deep, complex demographic shifts?

Honestly, it's both, and the numbers from the 2025 fiscal year confirm this dual reality: the company is maintaining its scale-operating 1,487 funeral service locations and 499 cemeteries as of Q3 2025-while still delivering growth, with its adjusted earnings per share (EPS) for the year projected to land at a strong midpoint of $3.85.

That kind of performance, backed by a trailing twelve-month (TTM) revenue of $4.29 Billion USD as of November 2025, shows a business model that works, but it also raises a crucial question: how does an industry leader in a non-cyclical sector keep generating that kind of cash flow-projected between $910 million and $950 million for 2025-and what are the next big levers for them to pull?

To be defintely clear, understanding SCI's history, ownership structure, and its unique approach to pre-need sales (selling services before they are needed) is the only way to map out its future trajectory.

Service Corporation International (SCI) History

The story of Service Corporation International (SCI) is a classic American tale of consolidating a fragmented industry, moving from a single family-run funeral home to a multi-billion dollar, publicly traded giant. The direct takeaway? Founder Robert L. Waltrip applied a simple, industrial-style efficiency model-the cluster concept-to the historically local deathcare business, and that strategy has driven every major financial milestone, including the 2025 guidance of adjusted earnings per share (EPS) at a $3.85 midpoint.

Given Company's Founding Timeline

Year established

1962

Original location

Houston, Texas

Founding team members

The company was founded by Robert L. Waltrip, a third-generation licensed funeral director who took over his family's Heights Funeral Home in Houston. He started with a small group of associates to apply his vision of streamlined operations to other markets.

Initial capital/funding

SCI began as one family-owned and operated funeral home, which Robert L. Waltrip had taken over at age 20. While a specific initial capital figure isn't public, the funding model quickly shifted to using stock and debt to fuel an aggressive acquisition strategy, starting with a public offering in 1970.

Given Company's Evolution Milestones

Given Company's Transformative Moments

You're looking at a company that fundamentally changed how the deathcare industry works, so the real transformative moments weren't just the acquisitions, but the strategic pivots that made them possible. Honestly, the biggest shift was moving from a local, family-run service to a corporate, scalable model.

• The Cluster Concept: Waltrip's initial idea was to acquire multiple funeral homes and cemeteries in a single market-a cluster-and share centralized resources like embalming facilities, vehicle fleets, and administrative staff. This cut overhead and increased profitability without sacrificing local brand names, which was defintely a smart move.
• The Late 1990s De-leveraging: After a period of aggressive global expansion that saw SCI own over 3,800 locations in 20 countries by the end of 1999, the company faced financial strain. The leadership made a critical decision around 2000 to shed non-core assets, streamline operations, and focus on debt reduction, cutting net debt by more than $1.0 billion between 2002 and 2006. This pivot restored financial health and set the stage for the next wave of major, domestic acquisitions.
• Pre-Need Sales Focus: A core transformation was the emphasis on selling pre-need funeral and cemetery contracts-arrangements purchased in advance. This provides a stable, long-term revenue stream and a substantial backlog, which is a key driver of the company's current financial strength. For example, the trailing 12-month revenue as of September 30, 2025, hit $4.29 billion.

If you want to dig deeper into who's investing in this model now, you should be Exploring Service Corporation International (SCI) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Service Corporation International (SCI) Ownership Structure

Service Corporation International is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: SCI), meaning its ownership is widely distributed, but it's heavily controlled by large institutional investors.

This structure ensures high liquidity and regulatory transparency, but it also means major decisions are heavily influenced by a handful of asset managers like Vanguard Group Inc and BlackRock, Inc., who hold significant voting power. You can see how this financial health plays out in our full analysis: Breaking Down Service Corporation International (SCI) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

Service Corporation International's Current Status

Service Corporation International is a publicly held corporation, trading on the NYSE under the ticker SCI. It's the largest provider of deathcare products and services in North America, and its public status requires it to file detailed financial disclosures, offering you clear insight into its operations and governance.

For the 2025 fiscal year, the company confirmed its guidance for adjusted diluted earnings per share (EPS) to be between $3.70 and $4.00, which is a solid, defintely achievable target. Plus, the outlook for cash flow from operations was raised to a range of $880 million to $940 million, showing strong operational cash generation. That's a huge cash cushion.

Service Corporation International's Ownership Breakdown

As of November 2025, the vast majority of Service Corporation International's stock is held by institutional investors, which is typical for a large-cap company. This means the stock is primarily controlled by mutual funds, pension funds, and ETFs, not individual retail investors or company founders. Here's the quick math on who holds the shares:

Service Corporation International's Leadership

The leadership team steering Service Corporation International is seasoned, with key executives having long tenures, which provides stability in a business focused on long-term pre-need sales (purchasing services before they are needed).

The company is led by Chairman and CEO Tom Ryan, who has been in the top executive role for over two decades. His long tenure is a double-edged sword: deep industry knowledge but also less fresh perspective. The executive team was recently streamlined in October 2024 with key promotions to manage the company's scale and strategic growth.

• Tom Ryan: Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). He has served as CEO since 2005.
• Sumner J. Waring, III: President. Promoted from Chief Operating Officer (COO) in October 2024, he now also oversees sales and marketing.
• Eric Tanzberger: Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO). He was promoted to Executive VP in October 2024 and also oversees business development.
• John Faulk: Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer (COO). Promoted in October 2024 to lead operations.
• Elisabeth Nash: Senior Vice President of Operations Services.
• Tammy Moore: Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer.

This team is responsible for managing the company's network of 1,489 funeral service locations and 496 cemeteries across North America as of March 31, 2025.

Service Corporation International (SCI) Mission and Values

Service Corporation International's (SCI) core purpose moves beyond quarterly earnings; it's about providing compassionate care during the most difficult times, celebrating life, and preserving memories across generations. This human-centric mission is the cultural bedrock that supports the company's projected $3.70 to $4.00 adjusted earnings per share for the 2025 fiscal year.

You're looking at a business with a deeply personal service model, so their cultural DNA-their values-are defintely the real moat (competitive advantage). SCI's commitment to service excellence is what keeps nearly 670,000 families turning to them each year.

Service Corporation International's Core Purpose

The company's core purpose is the non-financial metric that drives its operations across its more than 1,900 locations in North America.

Official mission statement

SCI's mission is a clear declaration of their role as caregivers, focusing on dignity and honor in a very sensitive industry.

• Be dedicated to compassionately supporting families at difficult times.
• Celebrate the significance of lives that have been lived.
• Preserve memories that transcend generations, with dignity and honor.

This is a business built on trust, and you can see that in their core values: Respect, Integrity, Service Excellence, and Enduring Relationships.

Vision statement

The vision statement maps the mission to a forward-looking commitment, emphasizing continuous improvement in their service delivery.

• Celebrating life with dedication, excellence, and innovation.

SCI's vision is operationalized through programs like offering more sustainable end-of-life options, which saw families elect to have their casket purchases contribute to over 5,100 tree plantings in 2024. This shows a clear link between their values and their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) efforts. For a deeper dive into the numbers, check out Breaking Down Service Corporation International (SCI) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

Service Corporation International slogan/tagline

While the company uses various phrases, the most direct and human-focused tagline speaks to their primary goal: helping families articulate their loved one's life.

• We help families tell their stories.

To be fair, a slogan in this industry is less about selling and more about comforting; it's a promise of support from their over 24,000 dedicated associates. The entire corporate structure, from the board's oversight of ESG to the day-to-day service, is meant to fulfill this purpose.

Service Corporation International (SCI) How It Works

Service Corporation International (SCI) operates as North America's largest provider of deathcare products and services, generating value by offering a full spectrum of funeral, cremation, and cemetery arrangements across a vast network of over 1,900 locations. The company makes money primarily by managing the entire process, from pre-planning (preneed) to immediate service (at-need), capitalizing on its scale and the long-term investment returns from its cemetery property and preneed trusts.

You're defintely looking at a business model built on two pillars: immediate service needs and long-term asset management. The core of their operation is selling services and merchandise now, either for immediate use or for a future date, which locks in revenue and allows for investment of the funds.

Service Corporation International's Product/Service Portfolio

The business is split into two major segments-Funeral and Cemetery-which together serve over 700,000 families annually.

Service Corporation International's Operational Framework

SCI's operational framework is designed to capture revenue from both immediate needs and long-term planning, driving value through its integrated network and financial discipline.

• Preneed Sales Funnel: The company's SCI Direct sales force focuses on selling preneed funeral and cemetery contracts. This is crucial because it locks in future revenue and volume, creating a substantial backlog of contracted services. This backlog is a key asset.
• Asset Development and Recognition: For cemetery sales, particularly undeveloped property, SCI invests capital in construction projects. Revenue is only recognized when the property is developed and available for use, which means today's preneed sales fuel tomorrow's revenue recognition. Maintenance capital investment totaled $86 million in Q3 2025, with $45 million allocated to cemetery development.
• Cremation Adaptation: With cremation now representing approximately 60% of the company's revenue, the operational focus has shifted to offering higher-value cremation-related services, like memorialization, urns, and niche placements in cemeteries, to offset the lower margin of a simple cremation.
• Cost Management and Scale: The company uses its national scale to manage costs effectively, which is why corporate general and administrative expenses decreased by $5.4 million quarter-over-quarter in Q3 2025. This discipline helps maintain margins even as the mix shifts toward lower-average-revenue cremation services.

Here's the quick math: higher preneed sales now, even if deferred, translate to a stronger, more predictable revenue stream years down the road.

Service Corporation International's Strategic Advantages

The company maintains its market success through a combination of scale, brand power, and financial structure that competitors struggle to match. Breaking Down Service Corporation International (SCI) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors

• Unmatched Scale and Network Density: As the largest deathcare provider in North America, SCI operates an extensive network that creates operating efficiencies (economies of scale) and allows for brand recognition across multiple regions. This density makes it harder for small, independent operators to compete on cost or service breadth.
• Preneed Backlog and Cash Flow: The massive, funded backlog of preneed sales provides a predictable, non-cyclical revenue base, which is a significant competitive moat. This stability contributed to the company raising its 2025 adjusted operating cash flow guidance to a midpoint of $930 million.
• Integrated Business Model: Owning both funeral homes and cemeteries allows for cross-selling opportunities, often referred to as 'combination locations.' Selling a funeral service and an interment property together maximizes the revenue per family served.
• Financial Strength and Capital Allocation: The company has the financial capacity to pursue strategic acquisitions and return capital to shareholders. In Q3 2025 alone, SCI returned $123 million of capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. This consistent capital return is a strong signal to the market.

Service Corporation International (SCI) How It Makes Money

Service Corporation International (SCI) makes its money by providing essential funeral, cremation, and cemetery services in two primary ways: immediate sales at the time of need (at-need) and long-term, prepaid contracts (preneed) that generate stable, deferred revenue and investment income.

Service Corporation International's Revenue Breakdown

When you look at the total revenue for Service Corporation International, it essentially breaks down into two core segments-Funeral and Cemetery. For the trailing twelve months (TTM) ending September 30, 2025, the company generated total revenue of approximately $4.29 billion.

The Funeral segment remains the largest contributor, but the Cemetery segment, driven by preneed sales, is a significant and growing part of the business model. Here's the quick math on the TTM revenue split:

Business Economics

The deathcare industry is fundamentally non-cyclical, but Service Corporation International's financial engine is driven by its ability to manage two distinct sales cycles: at-need and preneed. This dual approach gives the company a unique, defintely resilient business model in a highly fragmented market where SCI holds approximately 15% of the total revenue share.

• Pricing Power and At-Need Sales: The company consistently demonstrates pricing power in its at-need business, where families are generally less price-sensitive. This allows them to raise service prices by around 3% to 5% per year, which helps offset inflationary pressures on operating costs. The comparable total funeral sales average saw a 3.1% growth in the third quarter of 2025.
• The Preneed Cash Flow Engine: Preneed sales-where customers prepay for services or property-are the cornerstone of long-term stability. The cash from these sales is typically placed into trusts or used to fund insurance contracts, which SCI invests. This creates a large backlog of future revenue and provides immediate working capital. Cemetery preneed sales production increased by 9.6% in Q3 2025, building that future revenue pipeline.
• Cremation Adaptation: The rising U.S. cremation rate, now exceeding 65%, is a structural headwind, as cremation services are typically lower-margin than traditional burials. SCI counters this by integrating cremation-centric offerings, like the Neptune Society brand, and focusing on upselling memorialization products and cemetery property, which maintain higher margins even for cremation customers.

If you want to understand the long-term strategic thinking behind this model, you should look at the Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Service Corporation International (SCI).

Service Corporation International's Financial Performance

Service Corporation International's financial performance in 2025 reflects its market dominance and effective cost management, even as it navigates the transition in preneed sales models and inflationary costs. The company's focus on operational efficiency is clearly visible in its margins and cash flow guidance.

• Earnings Per Share (EPS) Guidance: Management narrowed its full-year 2025 adjusted earnings per share (EPS) guidance to a range of $3.80 to $3.90, with a confirmed midpoint of $3.85. This is a strong indicator of predictable profitability, with adjusted EPS growing 10% year-over-year in Q3 2025 to $0.87.
• Cash Flow Strength: The company raised its 2025 adjusted operating cash flow guidance midpoint to $930 million, reflecting stronger working capital trends and anticipated lower cash taxes. This robust cash generation is critical for funding cemetery development, acquisitions, and capital returns to shareholders.
• Profitability Metrics: Service Corporation International maintains a solid net margin, reporting 12.60% in the third quarter of 2025, demonstrating effective fixed-cost leverage across its vast network of over 1,500 funeral homes and 400 cemeteries.
• Debt Management: The company's net debt-to-EBITDA ratio is generally managed within a target range of 3.5x to 4.0x. While high interest rates pose a cost pressure-as seen by increased interest expense in recent periods-the predictable nature of the deathcare business makes this leverage manageable.

Service Corporation International (SCI) Market Position & Future Outlook

Service Corporation International (SCI) is the clear market leader in the highly fragmented deathcare industry, and its future outlook is anchored by its massive preneed backlog and a disciplined acquisition strategy. The company's normalized Earnings Per Share (EPS) for the 2025 fiscal year is confirmed to be in the range of $3.80-$3.90, with adjusted operating cash flow expected to be between $910 million and $950 million.

This stability comes from its unparalleled scale, but still, the company must actively manage the shift toward cremation and regulatory changes impacting its preneed (pre-arranged) business. Its trailing twelve-month (TTM) revenue as of September 30, 2025, was $4.29 billion.

Competitive Landscape

You need to see SCI's market share in context. The deathcare industry is overwhelmingly independent, meaning SCI competes more with local, family-owned firms than with other large, publicly traded companies. SCI's sheer size gives it a significant cost and capital advantage, but smaller players like Carriage Services and Park Lawn Corporation are growing quickly through targeted acquisitions.

Opportunities & Challenges

The biggest opportunity for SCI is in consolidation, but the biggest challenge is adapting its core business model to changing consumer preferences. Honestly, the cremation trend is defintely here to stay, so the focus has to be on selling high-margin cemetery products alongside it.

Industry Position

SCI is the undisputed leader, holding approximately 16.5% of the total deathcare market revenue in the U.S. and Canada. [cite: 10 from previous search] The rest of the market is highly fragmented, with other consolidators holding only about 9%, and independent operators controlling the remaining ~74%. [cite: 12 from previous search] This means SCI's competition isn't primarily from other public companies; it's a constant battle to acquire and integrate the best independent operators.

• The core funeral business cremation mix is expected to stabilize at 75-80%, requiring continued adaptation of service offerings. [cite: 1 from previous search]
• Cemetery operations are a bright spot, with comparable revenue up ~7% in Q3 2025, driven by strong preneed sales production. [cite: 8 from previous search]
• The shift in SCI Direct to insurance-backed preneed contracts is fully rolled out, and the company expects the associated revenue headwinds to recover in early 2026. [cite: 1 from previous search]

For a deeper dive into the numbers, check out Breaking Down Service Corporation International (SCI) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.