(Alliance News) - Dignity PLC on Monday reported an increase in revenue for the first nine months of financial 2021 despite a drop in deaths.
The provider of funeral related services based in Sutton Coldfield reported a 1.1% rise in underlying revenue in the 39 weeks to September 24 to GBP237.0 million from GBP234.5 million in the 39 weeks to September 25.
Underlying operating profit decreased 9.8% to GBP43.4 million from GBP48.1 million. Central overheads in the period increased to GBP29.8 million from GBP26.7 million.
Within units, Funerals underlying profit fell 5.8% to GBP38.8 million in the nine-month period from GBP41.2 million. Crematoria underlying profit rose 2.3% to GBP34.4 million from GBP33.6 million.
Dignity said the number of deaths in the year to date slipped 3.0% to 483,000 from 498,000. In the third quarter, deaths rose 10% to 143,000 from 130,000 year on year.
"The elevated death rate was the main driver of an increase in underlying profitability within Funerals, which reported an increase of GBP2 million for the third quarter against the prior year. We continued to show a decline in market share in both Funerals and Crematoria," the company said.
Dignity added: "This reporting period includes a few weeks of trading with our new pricing, where we have launched competitively priced funeral services in the UK to truly lower the cost of dying for families, but it is still too early to judge and extrapolate the overall effect.
"Our average revenue per funeral has fallen, and volumes have risen as we expected, but coming as this does at a time of an elevated death rate it is still not possible to apportion the element of that growth that potentially could be attributed to market share, in part because the time between death and funeral has moved in reaction to that volume rise."
Looking forward, Dignity said the rise of deaths caused by Covid-19 in 2020 and 2021 could possibly mean it sees a lower number of deaths than originally anticipated by the UK Office of National Statistics in 2022 and 2023.
As a result, the company wants to refrain from giving guidance and speculating on the death rate for its fourth quarter.
Chief Executive Gary Channon said: "There is a huge amount of positive change going on at Dignity as we position ourselves to be a growing and thriving business that serves families for their end-of-life needs. I am really pleased with the progress so far and the general enthusiasm with which this is being tackled internally. We will have a lot more to say at the year end and look forward to sharing an update then."
Shares in Dignity were flat in London on Monday afternoon at 719.00 pence each.
By Abby Amoakuh; abbyamoakuh@alliancenews.com
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