Service Corporation International (NYSE:SCI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

In doing that, it could have an effect on some of the revenue recognition. It could have some of the effect where we trust more monies as we move forward. But again, just to put that in perspective as we move forward, those are not very material. I think that’s probably worth maybe $0.05 to $0.07 a share in the total $3.60 guidance and that’s included in that, included in the model. So going forward, we may tweak our policies or how we interact with consumer, a little bit going forward in terms of the pre-delivery of merchandise and such. But again, a very happy customer is what you have to get from this. And we want to continue delivering to a very satisfied customer that finds value in the products and services that this particular segment delivers.

In terms of the cash flow in 2023, the outflows, this is still a moving target. We don’t have the settlement €“ one of the settlements and Florida has not been completely approved yet. We’re still in discussions with the State of California on a settlement and the other ones as well. So just in terms of timing, that’s why we chose not to include it. And again, the cancellations is our best guess at this point. It could be a little bit heavier, it could be a lot lighter than this as well. But for all of those reasons, we’ll keep you informed. But we don’t think this is ultimately going to have material effect. It’s a really good business and we look forward to providing great service to that customer that appreciates it moving forward.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question will be from John Ransom from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

John Ransom: Hey, good morning. Maybe an unfair question because it would involve math and I know that’s challenging for the team. If you were to look at 2019 to 2023, obviously, if we compounded 2019 at 10% versus where your $3.60 is, we’re a lot lower than $3.60. Did you give your best guess as to how much of that is just elevated volumes on the funeral side? How much of that is cost? And then how much of that is preneed cemetery and other? And just trying to get a sense of kind of detailing out the outperformance versus €“ controllable versus just higher-than-expected volumes?

Thomas Ryan: Yes, John. I think when you go to the $3.60, there’s not a lot of higher-than-expected volumes left. Obviously, the $3.80, there’s still some. So as we think about it, if you remember at Investor Day last year, we had that slide that shows $0.65 of improvement, the new base that we’re operating on. 75% of that was tied to cemetery sales related to marketing and sales improvements. And then we had another 10% to 15%, which related to cost efficiencies and related to share €“ accelerated share buyback. So as we sit here, I’d say that’s the preponderance of the improvement. Combined with that, to your point, there’s probably another $0.10 or $0.15 worth of, I’ll call it, excess deaths impact in, that’s where I go back to, I don’t know if that whole $0.10 and $0.15 goes away one day because they’re all related to ripple effects of COVID.