THE UK's largest provider of funeral-related services has reported higher profits after its strongest year for the number of families planning ahead.
Dignity, which has 600 funeral locations including 35 crematoria, said the number of pre-arranged funeral plans on its books and yet to take place increased to 265,000 in 2011, from 238,000 the previous year.
The group allows customers to plan in advance and make provisions towards the cost through its guaranteed funeral plan.
Dignity said underlying pre-tax profits rose 3% to £41.6 million in the year to December 30, as it increased its location portfolio by 33 in the year.
Sebastien Jantet, analyst at broker Investec, said Dignity had delivered "yet another set of strong results".
The Sutton Coldfield-based group said its funeral services division, which brings in the largest proportion of profits, had received investment of around £9.5m, with roughly half of this funding the replacement of its hearses and limousines.
The group's crematoria division saw operating profits rise 7% to £21.3m as it conducted 47,600 cremations, compared to 45,200 the previous year. Looking ahead, Mike McCollum, Dignity chief executive, said: "While 2012 has started more quietly than 2011, the board remains confident in the group's prospects and its expectations for 2012 remain positive and unchanged."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article