by John Keller | Dec 18, 2014 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Industry News
CST Brands continues its buying spree this month with the acquisition of Landmark Industries, growing their store count by 22. These newly acquired locations are in the San Antonio and Austin area, so they’re right in the CST Brands headquarters back yard.
CEO Kim Lubel is a self-proclaimed “deal junkie” who sees consolidation in the industry as a great opportunity. The CST acquisition of Lehigh Gas GP LLC allows CST to work around a post-spinoff agreement they had with Valero, where they would have been forced to delay acquisitions until summer of 2015. The Lehigh Gas acquisition also allows CST to build the number of stores they wanted, where previously they were limited by the prior year’s EBITDA.
In the past two years, CST opened 60 new stores. In 2015 they may build as many as 45-55 new stores.
The PriceAdvantage team is proud to be a partner in the success of CST Brands. CST has been using PriceAdvantage at all their stores since 2012, and they have a position on the PriceAdvantage Customer Advisory Board. CST is also a customer of Skyline signs, so they can take full advantage of the closed loop fuel price management process from competitor surveys, to price determination, to price execution, and finally to price confirmation.
by John Keller | Nov 19, 2014 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software, Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
CST Brands announced their financial results for the quarter ending September 30, 2014. Earnings were $.90 compared to expectations of $.57.
From the report: “Motor fuel gross profit (per gallon) in the U.S. for the third quarter of 2014, after deducting credit card fees, was $0.25 compared to $0.16 in the third quarter of 2013, which was primarily caused by a declining crude oil and wholesale gasoline pricing environment combined with the Company’s fuel pricing strategy.” [bolded text from this author]
In the US stores separately, the numbers are as follows:
- Q3 retail fuel margin before credit card fees of $0.288 per gallon up from $0.203 for Q3 in 2013
- Q3 gallons per site per day of 4,921 gallons or approximately 152,000 gallons per month
- Q3 NTI stores gallons per site per day of 9,547 gallons or 295,000 gallons per month
The numbers are quite impressive, and the financial analysts are noticing. CST stock is now trading at $43.27 a share, up 23% over the past three months, and up 32% for the year.
by John Keller | Nov 18, 2014 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Fuel Pricing Technology, Industry News
In the November 2014 issue of CSP Magazine, Greg Parker explains how the success of Parker’s has allowed the company to achieve his extraordinary goals. You may find the article online here.
Previously, Mr. Parker had written a guest article for CSP magazine’s October 2013 issue, where he outlined what he calls a “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal” to grow the Parker’s Company from a $500 million company to a multibillion one over the upcoming decade.
The numbers in the article are quite impressive:
- eight stores built in 10 months
- EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) has increased 36.8%
- overall gas sales at Parker’s have increased by 33% over last year
- gas sales for stores open at least a year have increased by 5.9% over the previous year
- in-store sales have surged to 28% over last year
The PriceAdvantage team is proud to have Parker’s as a customer and partner. For many years, Parker’s has been an electronic gas price sign customer of Skyline Products, the parent company of PriceAdvantage. In January 2012, Parker’s completed their rollout of PriceAdvantage to all their stores. Besides using Skyline electronic gas price signs, the Parker’s fuel price management solution also includes the PriceAdvantage integration with the NCR Radiant POS and GasBuddy OpenStore. Click here to see a video interview with Jeff Bush, Director of Fuel Management at Parker’s, discuss how he uses PriceAdvantage Optimization.
by John Keller | Nov 7, 2014 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software, Retail Fuel Margins
The quarterly financial report from Murphy USA, Inc. showed an increase in both retail fuel margins and volumes for the three months ended September 30, 2014.
Retail fuel margins hit $0.175 per gallon for the quarter, up from $0.148 per gallon year over year. Retail fuel volumes were up 2.7% year over year to 281,185 gallons per store per month. Combining both increases yielded a fuel margin dollar per store per month of $49,347, an increase of 2.7%.
The NACS industry research states that the average c-store sells approximately 123,000 gallons per month. That means Murphy is selling more than double the average.
Skyline Products and Murphy Oil have an exclusive license agreement for the PriceAdvantage fuel price management software. The patent is based on the PriceAdvantage software determining the price of a fuel product, sending those price changes to the store including the electronic price signs, the POS, and the pumps, and then verifying the completion of the change. This rapid closed loop fuel pricing software process is key to the Murphy Oil fuel price management success.
by John Keller | Nov 3, 2014 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Industry News, PriceAdvantage
PriceAdvantage customer CST Brands opened yet another store last week, this time in Humble Texas, which is in the Houston Metropolitan area.
As part of the opening ceremony, CST Brands presented a check for $5000 to the Humble High School Band, as a sign of commitment and appreciation to the community.
This year, CST Brands plans to build 30 brand new stores in the U.S., adding to its network of 1,046 stores throughout Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona and California.
CST Brands selected PriceAdvantage as their fuel price management solution company-wide when they were still under the Valero umbrella in 2011. The full PriceAdvantage implementation was completed in 2012.
Read more about the opening ceremony here.
by John Keller | Oct 30, 2014 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
An article in CSPNet.com reported the latest C-Store Grab-N-Go research note by Raymond James & Associates shows retail fuel margins were strong in September, following record margins in July and August. September margins were the third-highest average for the month in the past 10 years.
For the entire third quarter, margins hit a record average, beating 2013 by 18%. Retail gasoline margins averaged between 20 and 29 cents per gallon in Q3. Diesel margins were up $0.12 per gallon, 60% higher than 2013.
The Raymond James research is based on following publically held c-store chains including Casey’s General Stores, The Pantry, Susser Petroleum Partners (Sunoco LP), Murphy USA, CST Brands and TravelCenters of America.