We are especially proud of the fact that our capital discipline and capital allocation strategy has allowed us to pay down approximately $62 million on our credit facility since we closed the Greenlawn acquisition at the end of the first quarter last year. The combination of decreasing leverage and increasing our EBITDA has resulted in a decrease in our leverage ratio slightly below the 5x threshold, ending at 4.99x net debt-to-EBITDA as defined by our bank covenant compliance ratio. I would like to note here that our bank leverage ratio does not allow us to add back the entirety of our special item expenses, in particular, expenses related to our review of strategic alternatives. And as a result, our leverage ratio may seem higher than a normal leverage ratio calculation.
Despite the pay down, interest rates continue to hover on the same weighted average interest rate of 8.9% on our credit facility for the quarter as compared to 7.9% in the same quarter last year. However, we will receive a 25 basis point relief on our interest rate spread now that our leverage ratio has landed below 5x. Lastly, I will turn to our full year 2024 outlook, which remains unchanged despite this quarter’s outperformance in our 2 noncore divestitures closed in the quarter. As a reminder, our 2024 outlook already included our 2 noncore divestitures since we already had line of sight into these transactions at the time of our last earnings call in late February. Our 2024 outlook includes for total revenue, the range is $380 million to $390 million for adjusted consolidated EBITDA, the range is $112 million to $118 million for adjusted diluted earnings per share, the range is $2.20 to $2.30.
And lastly, for adjusted free cash flow, which is aligned with our historical methodology of maintenance capital expenditures only, the range is $55 million to $65 million. Though our first quarter financial performance is a solid start to the year, we are remaining prudent in reaffirming our 2024 guidance range due to the unpredictable COVID pull-forward effect that Carlos mentioned earlier, which may be combined with historically lower seasonality in the second and third quarters. We will reevaluate our performance in observed macro trends versus our guidance ranges on our next earnings call. I will conclude my remarks by reiterating my earlier point that as a management team, we are pleased with our disciplined approach around capital allocation and executing on our strategic objectives has translated into continued momentum in our first quarter 2024 results.
The results speak for themselves with increased revenue, EBITDA and cash flow paired with reduced overhead and leverage with the distraction of the review of strategic alternatives behind us and an emphasis on enhancing our finance and accounting organization with key additions, especially Kathy Shanley, our new Superstar Chief Accounting Officer, who brings more than 30 years of industry experience and best practices, 2024 is a transformational year for Carriage with critical initiatives to execute on as we position the company to return to his focus on opportunistic growth through acquisition in 2025 and execute on our five year strategic and financial objectives. With that, I’ll pass it back to the operator for questions.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] We’ll go first to Alex Paris with Barrington Research.
Alex Paris: Congratulate on the strong start to the year. I got a few clarifying questions here. Starting first with the funeral segment. Revenue is up 1.8%, driven by according to the press release, a 2.6% decline in contract volume and a 4.1% increase in the average revenue per funeral contract. I think Carlos just said, just the total funeral volume was down 1.9% press release said down 2.6%. First of all, what’s the difference between the 2 figures you’re quoting?
Carlos Quezada: So one of those numbers include a consolidated view and the other one is post divestitures. So it’s kind of what we call an operating revenue perspective, so that’s on a go-forward basis.
Alex Paris: So the $1.9 million excludes the impact of divestitures.
Carlos Quezada: That is correct. That’s current operating volume, it’s more reflective of our current activities.
Alex Paris: And then the increase in average revenue per funeral contract, how does that break out between traditional funeral and cremation?
Carlos Quezada: We had, for the first quarter, an increase on barrel contract of 3.2% and on cremation contract of 4.5%, totaling 4% for total contract improvement on our pricing.
Alex Paris: And then, again, just to dig into that comment that you made, Carlos, that March was the most significant decline year-over-year in volume year-to-date. And I know we’re still dealing with the headwind of the COVID pull-forward effect. And you had previously said that’s going to kind of be present for the full year. Do you expect that, that will diminish in the coming quarters? And then for the full year, do you expect volumes to be comparable to last year’s volumes?
Carlos Quezada: So what we experienced is January and February had a little elevated death rate potentially from some flu seasons or something related to more debt than we were expecting because we’re expecting a little bit more of a decline on our volume year-over-year perspective or basis. However, March came a little slower than we thought on volume. And so that’s why we wanted to just be mindful. Our projection is to continue to have a slow decline on volume throughout the rest of the year, progressively down through the first fourth quarter. So we are around 1.9% by now. We believe by December, we should be just maybe 50 basis points around those lines. That’s our hope in projections. We’ll see margin between 1% to 2%, but we are continuing to work through market share gains to continue to make up if we can and where we can for whatever volume we lose from post COVID-19 normalization.
Alex Paris: And then related to the divestitures completed in the first quarter. I think you had previously said the impact is $5.5 million to revenue and $1.5 million to EBITDA. And then you got proceeds of roughly $11 million for those. Are those all pretty much in line where you had expected them to be. And I realize that, that’s already included in the full year guidance.
Kian Granmayeh: That’s correct, Alex. So what we did is when we were looking at the upcoming year and our 24 guidance, we had already eliminated, as you mentioned, the $5.5 million of revenue and $1.5 million of EBITDA. So our ’22 guidance is already reflective of that adjustment out.
Alex Paris: And then are there others that you think might represent similar characteristics in terms of being a noncore asset ripe for divestiture in 2024.
Steve Metzger: We’ve got a couple of things we’re working on now that are real estate transactions solely. So nothing big on the business front. We’ll continue to take a look at opportunities. When we do that, we weigh everything, including potential impact to our effective tax rate. So as those things come through the door, we’ll take a look at them, but nothing right now of substance to report.
Alex Paris: And then the last question I have for now is on debt. You paid down $25 million on the credit line. You’re at roughly $153 million. Now your leverage ratio is 4.99. I think you had a year-end target of 4.75. Are all those still in line with your thinking?
