Service Corporation International (NYSE:SCI) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call May 2, 2024 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Debbie Young - Director, Investor Relations
Tom Ryan - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Eric Tanzberger - Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

A.J. Rice - UBS
Parker Snure - Raymond James
Joanna Gajuk - Bank of America
Scott Schneeberger - Oppenheimer
Tobey Sommer - Truist

Operator

Good day and welcome to the SCI First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to SCI management. Please go ahead.

Debbie Young

Thank you, and good morning. This is Debbie Young. We appreciate you joining us today as we talk about our first quarter results. We're going to have some prepared remarks about the quarter from Tom and Eric in just a moment. 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 also 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 also on our website.

With that, out of the way, I will now turn it over to Tom Ryan, Chairman and CEO.

Tom Ryan

Thank you, Debbie. 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 and provide some greater detail around our solid funeral and cemetery results. I will then close with some thoughts on our outlook for the rest of 2024.

For the first quarter, we generated adjusted earnings per share of $0.89, which compared to $0.93 in the prior year or a decline of $0.04 per share. We had anticipated a decline in earnings per share from operations for the quarter due to lower funeral volumes, lower non-funeral home revenues and lower cemetery revenues recognized from completed construction concert projects.