Word: loewen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...disclosures to the SEC, Loewen reported that last year, through a combination of price increases and cost cutting, the company managed to generate a gross profit margin from its funeral operations of 41.5%--the kind of spread that executives of the FORTUNE 500 almost never see. (By comparison, SCI's gross profit margin for funerals...
From 1991 through 1995, Loewen more than tripled its revenue, to just shy of $600 million. But most of that growth was generated by a kind of fiscal illusion. The company boosted sales not by attracting more and more corpses to its existing mortuaries but rather by buying up funeral homes at an increasingly fast pace...
...company has had little choice but to keep raising its rate of acquisition lest it disappoint shareholders, whom Ray Loewen has promised annual earnings growth of 25% or more. Perversely, though, that promise prompted stock analyst Steve Saltzman to recommend last April that Loewen shareholders sell their stock. "My concern," he says, "is that at some point this company suddenly hits a wall because it simply can't manage the growth." Even under the best conditions, such rapid growth would be hard to sustain; Loewen's battle with Jerry O'Keefe has made it infinitely more difficult. THE COST...
Soon after the Loewen group made its offer to sell O'Keefe the Riemanns' insurance company, the deal began to erode. Or so it seemed to O'Keefe, who suspected the Riemann boys of using their insider status with Ray Loewen to undermine the sale. All at once the company seemed to drag its feet and impose new barriers. Even John Turner, then Ray Loewen's right-hand executive, later testified that he too became convinced that no matter how cooperative O'Keefe tried to be, the deal would not be completed...
...lawsuit had an unexpected aftershock. It depressed the value of Loewen's stock. It also forced the company to issue substantial amounts of new stock, thereby diluting Ray's holdings from 20% to 15%. Both developments made the company more vulnerable to attack. On Sept. 17, SCI announced it was offering to acquire Loewen. After Loewen's board rejected the bid, SCI recast it as a hostile takeover, this time for $45 in stock for each Loewen share, for a total value that Loewen and SCI estimate to be more than $4.2 billion...