by John Keller | Nov 19, 2012 | Industry News
The city of Chicago has selected a new fleet of garbage trucks to be electric vehicles rather than hybrids or compressed natural gas vehicles. The award is based on research using a city bus with the same technology from Motiv Power Systems, the contract award winner based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. Conclusions from the research are that operations costs will be reduced by 50% over an eight year period.
The range of these trucks will be 60 miles.
From a fuel price management perspective, this award won’t cause even a ripple in the fuel volume market, but it is one more data point showing how overall fuel demand is likely to decrease as municipalities and other government fleet vehicles start using alternative fuels besides gasoline and diesel.
The article announcing the award may be find here.
by John Keller | Nov 10, 2012 | Fuel Pricing Software, PriceAdvantage
In their quarterly results released today, Susser Holdings announced their retail fuel volumes were up year over year, while retail fuel margins were lower.
Average fuel volumes sold per store per month increased 6.6% to approximately 132,000 gallons per store. But retail fuel gross margins declined from $0.277 per gallon from the same period last year to $0.201 per gallon this quarter.
From a fuel price management perspective, these financial results hit home the point that it’s nearly impossible to make gains in both retail fuel volumes and retail fuel margins. Pull the lever to increase volumes, and fuel margins will have to be sacrificed. Change strategies to improve fuel margins, and fuel volumes will suffer.
Only with a fuel price management optimization solution like PriceAdvantage can the fuel manager keep a close watch on both levers to achieve corporate goals.
by John Keller | Nov 5, 2012 | Industry News
In their Q3 quarterly earnings report, Hess Corporation announced today their retail fuels volumes for the quarter were 2.5% lower than the same period last year.
Total c-store revenues were down 6% for the same quarter year over year.
For the nine months ending September 30, 2012, total retail fuels volumes are down 1.5% compared to the same nine months last year.
by John Keller | Oct 23, 2012 | Industry News
Congratulations to Parker’s on the successful opening of their 28th store. Parker’s uses PriceAdvantage as their cloud solution to manage fuels prices and monitor company-wide fuels performance down to the store level.
According to a WTOC Channel 11 interview with Greg Parker, president and CEO of Parker’s, now is the right time to expand in the c-store industry. “We are hoping to open a new store every two months for the foreseeable future. We think it is the right time to be growing. Land costs are coming down and construction costs are down. Unemployment is up. There are a lot of good people out there looking for jobs. Money is cheap. This is a great time to be growing,” said Parker. The channel 11 interview may be found < a href="http://www.wtoc.com/story/19357405/new-parkers-convenience-store-to-open-in-rincon" target="_blank">here.
The PriceAdvantage team is proud to have Parker’s as a PriceAdvantage fuel price management customer and to contribute to their continued success.
by John Keller | Oct 8, 2012 | Industry News
Analyst Peter Sklar of BMO Capital Markets has written in a report that Couche-Tard would only be able to acquire the Valero retail business if Valero decided to split the retail business into a set of smaller, regional units. The report estimates Valero’s entire 1030 store retail network is worth between $3.5 billion and $4 billion, which is in line with the $3.5 billion estimate reported by Reuters. Sklar reported that Couche-Tard would not be able to raise enough new debt to acquire the entire network at that price.
Of course, it is still unknown if Valero will sell off their retail operations at all, given the tax advantages to shareholders of spinning off the retail unit vs. selling it.
That’s exactly what Statoil, Exxon, and Royal Dutch Shell have done over the past five years. Couche-Tard is the company who ultimately acquired the Statoil retail stores, and who now operates 3585 stores.
by John Keller | Oct 8, 2012 | Fuel Price Management, Industry News
In their third quarter 2012 investor news letter, hedge fund manager Third Point, LLC urged Murphy Oil to spin off their retail fuel business. In the letter, Third Point says spinning off the retail fuel business would result in a share price increase of about 60%.
In the letter, Third Point used Alimentation Couche-Tard, Casey’s General Stores, and Susser Holdings as a reference to suggest the Murphy 1100 store retail fuel business would be worth $2.3 billion to $2.8 billion if it were a standalone public company.
This makes for an interesting comparison to the recent Valero announcement of a pending course of action for their retail fuel business, including a possible spin off. Valero has a 1027 store network comparable in size to Murphy. Reuters and others have estimated the value of a Valero spin off to be $3.5 billion. There have been some reports that Valero is looking to sell their retail units, but Valero sees < ahref="https://www.priceadvantage.com/blog/2012/10/01/297-fuel-price-management-blog-valero-sees-advantages-to-spinning-off-their-retail-fuel-division-" target="_blank">advantages to a spin off vs. a sale.
The Third Point letter may be found here.
