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The following phase was excerpted from this fund letter.
Provider Corporation Intercontinental (NYSE:SCI)
Assistance Corporation Global, in which the Partnership held a shorter place in the early times of the pandemic, is the greatest supplier of funeral, cremation, and cemetery companies in North The us.
The original thesis was as follows: SCI generates a significant portion of their earnings from “pre-will need” revenue of funeral services and cemetery plots. These kinds of revenue are often pushed by experience-to-confront income phone calls and “demise dinners.”
I expected pandemic-associated limits on in-particular person conferences (and funeral solutions) would slice into this significant product sales channel. Exciting thesis, but wildly off foundation. “What will make the stock go up and down?” This is a death-care supplier, so more deaths equals much more business. And what could be much better for company than a lethal pandemic? (No shit, Sherlock.)
It took a pair quarters, but I scrapped the authentic thesis and let sleeping dogs lie for a although.
As with CVNA, I have re-founded a short placement in SCI, hopefully with the correct thesis in position this time. As the pandemic wanes, SCI shouldn’t be any additional immune to a “pull-forward” effect than the Pelotons and Zooms of the earth. I also anticipate rewarding “pre-need to have” gross sales to sooner or later arrive down as properly. Quite a few these product sales are produced at the time of a relative’s dying (“How would you like to safe this attractive plot correct following to your cherished one particular?”) and have almost certainly benefitted from a client flush with stimulus income.
They are also costly outlays of income for something that with any luck , won’t be consumed any time in the close to upcoming and I would hope an increasingly strained buyer to maintain off on generating these types of a acquire (it would be fairly morbid to call this delayed “gratification”).
Editor’s Notice: The summary bullets for this write-up ended up picked out by Looking for Alpha editors.
