Houston-based death care company Carriage Services Inc. (CSV) demonstrated solid operating results in 2024 led by strength in its preneed cemetery segment and pricing efforts to offset some headwinds in funeral volumes. CSV also paid down roughly $42 million in outstanding amounts under its revolving credit facility (RCF), leading to S&P Global Ratings-adjusted leverage of 4.8x in 2024. As a result, we now expect leverage of mid- to high-4x in 2025 and 2026. We expect CSV to increase its growth investments in 2025, and we see some risk to the company maintaining leverage in the mid-4x range, given prior willingness to increase debt for certain opportunities. As such, we revised our outlook to positive. We also affirmed our ?B? long-term
