Service Corporation International (NYSE:SCI) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript October 31, 2024 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Allie O'Connor - AVP of IR and Financial Reporting
Tom Ryan - Chairman and CEO
Eric Tanzberger - CFO

Conference Call Participants

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

Operator

Good day and welcome to SCI's Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in 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.

Allie O'Connor

Good morning, this is Allie O'Connor, AVP of Investor Relations and Financial Reporting. Welcome to our third quarter earnings call. We will have 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 risk 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 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 on our website.

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

Tom Ryan

Thanks, Allie. 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, then provide some greater detail around our funeral and cemetery results. I will then close with some thoughts regarding our earnings expectations for the rest of 2024 and preliminary thoughts about 2025.

For the third quarter, we generated adjusted earnings per share of $0.79, which compared to $0.78 in the prior year. Gross profit from both the funeral and cemetery segments was relatively stable. Below the line, the favorable impact of a lower share count and a lower tax rate was nearly offset by increased corporate, general, and administrative expense caused by changes in our total shareholder return and its corresponding effect on our long-term incentive compensation plan, as well as increased interest expense resulting in a net $0.01 increase in earnings per share.