Death care company Carriage Services Inc. (CSV) has reduced its S&P Global Ratings-adjusted leverage to 4.7x as of year-end 2020 due to a combination of debt paydown and EBITDA growth. While we expect the company to deploy substantial capital to acquisitions, we think that the company's S&P Global Ratings-adjusted leverage will remain in the 4x-5x range going forward, versus our prior expectation of above 5x. We raised our ratings on the company, including the issuer credit rating to 'B+' from 'B'. The stable outlook reflects our expectation that CSV will maintain a balanced approach in its capital deployment, such that S&P Ratings-adjusted leverage will remain in the 4x-5x area. The death care industry is highly fragmented and acquisitions are an
