Landmark Funeral Group announced a partnership with Funeral Excellence Group on October 22, 2026. The release frames the deal as Landmark's expansion into Kentucky and Indiana. Nine locally owned and operated locations join its network, five in Kentucky and four in Indiana. The release says local leadership and teams will all remain in place.
Who is Landmark?
Landmark is new and small. Brenton Point Capital Partners, a private equity firm, launched the Ohio-based company in 2025 to acquire and consolidate funeral homes, crematories and cemeteries. Landmark's own website listed 30 locations as of October 23, all of them in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Dignity Memorial, the consumer brand of Service Corporation International, the largest funeral operator in the country, says its network includes more than 1,900 locations in North America.
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Landmark is also moving fast. This is its second announced deal in 17 days, after Dawson Funeral Home in East Liverpool, Ohio, on October 5. And it is a roll-up absorbing a roll-up. Funeral Excellence Group was founded in 2023 and had already assembled its nine locations through its own dealmaking. One announcement now moves all nine under Landmark and puts the company in two new states.
In buyout terms, Landmark is a platform. A platform is the company a private equity firm forms or buys first in a sector, then uses as a base for further deals. Those follow-on purchases are called add-on acquisitions. Brenton Point's portfolio page lists Landmark's acquisition year as 2025, its status as Active and eight add-on acquisitions. The page does not say whether the nine Funeral Excellence Group locations are counted in that figure.
Landmark's President and CEO, Seb D'Appolonia, has run this playbook before. His company biography says he co-founded Milestone Funeral Partners in 2021 and served as its Chief Growth Officer until its ownership transition in 2024. Milestone, a regional operator with roughly 90 homes across New England and upstate New York, announced its acquisition of Atlas Family Funeral Homes across southern Maine and New Hampshire six days before the Funeral Excellence Group deal.
By the Numbers
The nine locations
Funeral Excellence Group was founded in 2023 by John Horan. It is led by Luke Densow, who has more than 20 years of funeral service experience. He will join Landmark as a key member of the Executive Leadership Team, focusing on Strategic Initiatives, Business Development and Partnerships, per the announcement.
The nine locations becoming part of the Landmark portfolio, as listed in the release:
- A.F. Crow & Son Funeral Home, Glasgow, Kentucky
- Butler Funeral Home, Edmonton, Kentucky
- Caneyville Funeral Home, Caneyville, Kentucky
- Hartford Funeral Home, Hartford, Kentucky
- Leitchfield Funeral Home, Leitchfield, Kentucky
- Goodwin-Sievers Funeral Homes, Vincennes and Washington, Indiana
- Huber Funeral Homes, Tell City and Cannelton, Indiana
The wording of the deal
The announcement describes a partnership. Its body says the locations "will become part of the Landmark portfolio." The word acquisition does not appear for this transaction in the primary announcement. FuneralVision's October 22 copy of the release does not use it either.
In the release, Seb D'Appolonia, President and CEO of Landmark, calls the deal partnering and refers to "our investment." "We respect what they have built and are excited to be partnering with them," he said. "Our investment will help them to pursue their growth and expansion plans and enable the established local owner-operators to continue to guide the funeral home operations and provide the exceptional and personalized care their families expect."
Private Equity International, under a PE Hub Staff byline, headlines the same transaction as "Brenton Point-backed Landmark Funeral Group agrees majority investment in Funeral Excellence Group." A majority investment is a stake of more than half of a company. The outlet's deck adds that the group "operates nine locally owned funeral home locations across Kentucky and Indiana."
Densow's statement in the release points to resources. "In Landmark, we found a partner that values our leaders and staff and shares our principles of integrity, respect, kindness and teamwork," he said. "This partnership gives us more resources to build on what our team has established and thoughtfully expanded."
Kentucky was never on the target list
Brenton Point's portfolio page names five target states for Landmark: Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Kentucky is not one of them. The page still read that way on October 23, one day after the announcement.
Landmark now has more funeral homes in Kentucky, a state it never listed as a target, than in Indiana or Michigan, the two target states where its website shows no locations at all.
Kentucky is not empty ground for the industry's largest companies, either. Dignity Memorial lists funeral homes in the state, including Brown Funeral Home in Elizabethtown.
What to watch
The sub-headline says the expansion "accelerates Funeral Excellence Group's expansion plans." D'Appolonia's quote says the investment will help the local owner-operators pursue their growth plans. Both statements leave room for more deals in the two states. Brenton Point's page already lists eight add-ons for Landmark. Whether more Kentucky homes follow these five, and whether Landmark ever opens the Michigan file, are the open questions.
What This Means for You
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*Obitley sent written questions to Landmark Funeral Group on October 23 and will update this article with any response.*
*Sources: Landmark Funeral Group announcement (October 22, 2026, saved); Landmark Funeral Group Our Brands page (fetched October 23, 2026, saved); Landmark Meet Our Team page (fetched October 23, 2026, saved); Brenton Point Capital Partners portfolio page (fetched October 23, 2026, saved); FuneralVision (October 22, 2026, saved); Private Equity International (October 22, 2026, saved); Dignity Memorial funeral-homes finder and Brown Funeral Home Elizabethtown pages (fetched October 23, 2026, saved); Landmark Dawson announcement (October 5, 2026, saved); Milestone/Atlas announcement (October 16, 2026, saved in deals-log sources).*
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