On Aug. 6, Matthews International announced financial results for its fiscal third quarter of 2026.
For the quarter, the company reported a loss of 75 cents per diluted share compared with earnings of 49 cents per share in the year-ago period. Revenue was $246 million compared with $349.4 million a year ago.
Sales from the Memorialization unit accounted for $208.1 million of quarterly sales.
In discussing the results for the company’s fiscal 2026 third quarter, Joseph C. Bartolacci, president and chief executive officer (who days earlier announced he’ll be retiring), stated:
“The fiscal 2026 third quarter was a challenging quarter for us across all business segments. We continue to experience delays in the energy storage solutions business which are expected to extend through the balance of the fiscal year. Despite winning a significant new coating & converting order this quarter, the project has not contributed significantly to our financial results as of yet. In response to these challenges, we have taken difficult but necessary action to reduce the cost base of this business by $10 million annually. Additionally, our flagship Memorialization businesses continue to experience headwinds in terms of lower volumes combined with input costs escalating beyond inflationary price increases. Lastly, while the anticipated synergy benefits at The Propelis Group are now beginning to scale, our expectations of the timing to realize those synergies has not been achieved, resulting in an estimated $5 million shortfall to our full year forecast. Due to these combination of factors, we are reducing our previous earnings guidance for adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $158 million to $162 million (which includes our estimated 40% share of Propelis adjusted EBITDA) for fiscal 2026.”
He continued,
“Despite the near-term challenges for the remainder of this fiscal year, we remain focused on driving shareholder value, including properly aligning our cost structure with the future state of our operations. Our GAAP earnings continue to be impacted by the costs associated with these efforts, however our corporate and other non-operating costs have yielded savings compared to last year, positively impacting our margins. We continue to execute on further cost reductions to scale our structure as post-divestiture support obligations are expected to expire over the balance of the calendar year.
Dodge Acquisition Paying Off
According to Bartolacci, “Sales for the Memorialization segment for the fiscal 2026 third quarter were higher than a year ago primarily reflecting the recent acquisition of The Dodge Company. This acquisition continues to be nicely accretive to earnings as we leverage the benefits of our Memorialization commercial platform and have already realized the majority of targeted cost synergies. Sales volumes of caskets and cemetery memorials continued to be a headwind in the quarter due to lower estimated U.S. casketed deaths, which was compounded by escalating input costs. Inflationary price realization only partially offset the impact of these factors on our profitability for the quarter.”
