Covid-19 to make permanent changes to Brazil’s deathcare market

Last year saw a veritable boom of companies going public on Brazil’s stock exchange. But one potential IPO for 2021 perhaps best underlines the changing landscape of the Brazilian economy amid a deadly pandemic that has claimed at least 215,000 deaths. Funeral home chain Cortel is planning a public offering this year, which could signal a major transformation in the deathcare sector.

For the time being, Cortel is an outlier among deathcare companies, which are predominantly small, local firms.

It owns ten cemeteries in four Brazilian states, and while it remains in the hands of its founding family — typical of most funeral businesses — Cortel counts real-estate trust fund Brazilian Graveyard, controlled by Zion Investimentos, as one of its largest shareholders. 

The company has focused on expanding its revenue streams by integrating new segments as part of its portfolio, such as private pension plans and pet cremation services. And judging by its IPO prospectus, the strategy worked: in the first nine months of 2020, net revenues rose by 37 percent...