by John Keller | Aug 14, 2012 | Fuel Pricing Strategy, Retail Fuel Margins
Valero Corner Store extends gasoline pricing strategy to GasBuddy.
Valero Corner Stores is the second PriceAdvantage customer to extend their gasoline pricing strategy to the web via GasBuddy OpenStore. Rutter’s Farm Stores is also using GasBuddy OpenStore to publish their gasoline pricing to the Web. Corner Store and Rutter’s locations now appear on their GasBuddy browser map with their gasoline prices, easy for consumers to find.
Valero and Rutter’s recognizes that a key part of the fuel price optimization strategy is to not only push prices to the store POS, pumps and gas price signs, but to push it to the web as well. With the advent of smart phones and the plethora of gas price smart phone apps, travelers can now easily check the price of gasoline while on the go, and that means the fuel price optimization strategy must include marketing gasoline prices via virtual gas price signs on these apps.
by John Keller | Aug 9, 2012 | Retail Fuel Margins
Susser announces retail fuel margins of $0.324 in Q2.
Susser announced in their 2012 Q2 report retail fuel margins of $0.324 per gallon, slightly above the retail fuel margins of $$0.312 in the same quarter last year. For the first six months of 2012, retail fuel margins are at $0.23, essentially unchanged from the same period last year.
Retail fuel volumes per store reached 30,800 per week, up from 28,600 from the same period last year. Susser operates approximately 545 convenience stores across Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico under the Stripes name.
by John Keller | Aug 9, 2012 | Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
Delek US Holdings reports retail fuel margins of $0.182 for Q2.
In their Q2 report for 2012, Delek US Holdings reported retail fuel margins of $0.182 per gallon, compared to $0.186 per gallon in 2011. For the first six months of 2012, retail fuel margins stand at $0.153 per gallon compared to $0.157 per gallon in 2011.
Retail fuel volumes per store for the quarter were up roughly 7% from 86,505 gallons to 92,662 gallons. Average retail fuel gallons per store for the period was 278,000 gallons, up from 260,000 gallons for the same period last year. That equates to approximately 92,660 gallons per store per month for the quarter across their 372 stores.
Delek US Holdings operates 372 MAPCO Express c-stores throughout the southeastern United States.
From a fuel price optimization strategy perspective, it’s interesting to compare these results with the results from The Pantry. Both chains operate c-stores in overlapping states, one can assume with similar market pressures. Yet The Pantry shows struggling results with decreased retail fuel margins and gallons sold, while Delek US Holdings shows retail fuel margins holding steady with increased fuel volumes.
by John Keller | Jul 31, 2012 | Retail Fuel Margins
Valero retail fuel margins and volumes generate record high operating income.
In today’s Q2 business update, Valero announced the Corner Stores retail division contributed record high quarterly operating income, thanks to the combination of their robust retail fuel margins and retail fuel volumes. The US Corner Stores retail division had quarterly retail fuel margins of $0.303 up from $0.204 for the same period last year. Retail fuel gallons per store per day were 5,162 which was up from 5,094 the previous year.
For the first six months of the year, Valero Corner Stores retail fuel margins in the US stand at $0.178 which is up from $0.142 year over year.
The Valero earnings report for this quarter may be found here.
The PriceAdvantage team is proud to have Valero as a partner that selected PriceAdvantage as its fuel price optimization software, and we are happy to share in the great success of the Corner Stores retail group.
by John Keller | Jul 6, 2012 | Retail Fuel Margins
Retail fuels prices remain flat this week says AAA.
According to AAA, OPIS and Wright Express, national regular gasoline prices held steady for the week at $3.358 per gallon after having dropped almost $.60 per gallon since early April.
Michael Green, a spokesman for AAA, says this could be a sign that the cycle of declining gas prices has come to an end.
From a fuel price management standpoint, these times require a watchful eye on fuels prices on a market by market basis, because margins may begin their decline as retail prices hold steady.
by John Keller | Jul 5, 2012 | Fuel Price Management, Retail Fuel Margins
Today we had an interesting conversation with a CEO about what benefits he gets out of using PriceAdvantage as his retail fuel price management solution. He listed two specific interwoven benefits.
He described what it was like before PriceAdvantage, where he would send fuel price changes to the stores, and the store personnel would assure him they had implemented the price changes. Then he would drive by his stores and see they still displayed the old prices because the store folks hadn’t in fact changed the prices. Then there would be hours spent following up with the locations to follow through with the price changes. As you can imagine, this was a source of great frustration because his stores did not have the right prices at the street, and there were a lot of hours wasted on operations that would be better spent on strategic thinking.
Now with PriceAdvantage, he says he knows the price change has been completed when his Fuels Manager receives the automated successful price change confirmation email. In most cases, the Store Manager is removed from the fuel price change process completely because his company has integrated PriceAdvantage with the VeriFone POS. And in those cases where there is an operational problem, the Fuels Manager receives an automated email notification of a delayed price change, allowing her to follow up on an exception basis. That results in a savings of upwards of two hours each day.
So the PriceAdvantage benefits for this CEO are two-fold: confidence that based on their gasoline pricing strategy, the right retail price is at the right store at the right time, and hours gained each day in the operational fuel price change process.
