by John Keller | Mar 24, 2014 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software, PriceAdvantage, Retail Fuel Margins
Earlier this month, CSPnet.com reported that CST Brands has identified 100 stores that are candidates for sale. You may find the article here. This is part of an ongoing effort at CST Brands to “assess its asset base and close convenience stores that are no longer core to its ongoing strategy”.
Kim Bowers, the CEO of CST Brands, said in the latest earnings call that in 2013 CST Brands closed 11 stores based on their “lower cash flow levels”. In other words, CST Brands pruned their portfolio of stores to rid the company of their bottom performers.
PriceAdvantage provides the analysis views and reports to quickly zero in on the under-performing locations by comparing store performance to target, to last year, and to other stores. Easy to read tools such as heat maps with color coded push pins show at a glance stores that are dragging down entire regions with their lower fuel volumes and fuel margins.
CST Brands, when they were under the Valero umbrella, worked closely with the PriceAdvantage team to develop precisely these sorts of views and reports so they could optimize their entire fuels business. Since rolling out PriceAdvantage across all their stores in 2012, CST Brands now reaps the benefit of this rich information in PriceAdvantage to deliver on the promise to Wall Street that CST Brands will continue to identify the stores that are the best candidates for sale, and the best candidates for the CST Brands wholesale business.
by John Keller | Mar 24, 2014 | Customer News, Fuel Software, Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
According to a recent research note from Raymond James & Associates, retail fuel margins averaged $0.185 per gallon in January (up 39% year over year) and $0.141 per gallon in February (down 13% year over year). The research is based on tracking retail fuel margins from Casey’s General Stores, CST Brands, Murphy USA, The Pantry, Susser, and TravelCenters of America.
Raymond James & Associates uses this information, as well as data from OPIS and futures contracts, to predict retail fuel margins of the first quarter to be $0.11 per gallon for CST Brands. That would be a 38% improvement year over year, attributed to a new pricing strategy that has a greater emphasis on margins, implemented after CST Brands spun off from Valero last year.
CST Brands uses PriceAdvantage as their fuel software across all their US stores.
by John Keller | Mar 24, 2014 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Fuel Software, PriceAdvantage
The first meeting of the PriceAdvantage Customer Advisory Board was held at the corporate headquarters of CST Brands in San Antonio, Texas, and the meeting was a smashing success.
The members of the PriceAdvantage Customer Advisory Board are
- Tony Castro, Manager Fuel Pricing, CST Brands
- Gabe Olives, Director of Fuels, Rutter’s
- Bryan Zeiger, Director of Fuel Marketing, Spinx
- Joe Wills, Fuels Manager, The Wills Group
- Lance Gentry, Director of Fuels and Information Technology, Kocolene
- Jeff Bush, Director of Fuel Management, Parker’s
Tony Castro showed us how CST Brands uses their PriceAdvantage fuel software to manage fuel prices across each of their stores, as well as how CST Brands uses PriceAdvantage for executive level reporting. We also had a lively discussion about what is most important for the upcoming releases of PriceAdvantage.
The mission of the Customer Advisory Board is to connect industry leaders for the purpose of innovation. The PriceAdvantage team has always put an emphasis on customer collaboration, and the Customer Advisory Board is one more way to make collaboration happen.
We learned a lot from our inaugural gathering, and I look forward to our upcoming meetings as we build the future of PriceAdvantage together.
by John Keller | Mar 21, 2014 | Fuel Price Management, Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
In today’s OPIS report, the US average retail fuel margins are down $0.002 per gallon to $0.143 per gallon. That makes for the second consecutive drop in retail fuel margins. The year to date average now stands at $0.157 per gallon and the six week average is at $0.142 per gallon.
This day in 2013 the average retail fuel margin in the US was $0.05 per gallon higher, at $0.195 per gallon. That makes four consecutive weeks where the retail fuel margin last year was higher than this year.
The weekly average for the month of January this year was $0.172, for February this year was $0.147 per gallon, and so far the weekly average for this March stands at $0.148 per gallon. In comparison, last year the January retail fuel margin average was $0.148, February was $0.105, and the March retail fuel margin average was $0.212. So it appears that even though 2014 started off strong with a solid January and February compared to last year, March is going out like a lamb with margins much lower than 2013.
by John Keller | Mar 20, 2014 | Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software
The PriceAdvantage team is pleased to announce the first new release of the year, version 2014.1. This is yet another release based on close collaboration with our customers. See the following list for some highlights.
1. The average retail fuel price for Regular Unleaded displays at the top of the Fuel Pricing view and All Stores web page, allowing you to quickly see the average Unleaded retail fuel price for any market you are viewing.
2. Hover over the Replacement Margin and see the rack cost and import date, so you can be certain the displayed margins are current and up to date.
3. Maps display the Regular Unleaded price for stores and competitors without having to click the pushpin, allowing you to see at a glance your price relative to the price of your competitors, and quickly know whether or not your current prices are in-line with your strategies.
4. Optionally set the retail sales tax for each store and include that percentage in the dynamic calculation of replacement margins when playing what-if pricing scenarios.
The feedback from our customers is that version 2014.1 continues to raise the bar in our easy to use interface. We take great pride in making fuel software that offers our customers a highly intuitive user interface, and we will continue to focus on that as a strategic advantage throughout 2014.
In 2013 we released five versions of PriceAdvantage, and we’re off to a great start in 2014. Stay tuned for more exciting software releases from us this year, and as always, please contact me at johnkeller@skylineproducts.com with any suggestions you’d like to see in a new version.
by John Keller | Mar 14, 2014 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Software, Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
The latest OPIS report shows that average retail fuel margins across the US dipped slightly this week. The average retail fuel margin average now stands at $0.145 per gallon, down $0.012 per gallon. The year to date retail fuel margin average is $0.159. The six week average is $0.148 per gallon, down for the fourth consecutive week.
The equivalent day this time last year saw average retail fuel margins at $0.218 per gallon. Still, even with margins that high for this specific week last year, the year to date margins for 2013 at this point in time were $0.151 per gallon, so average retail fuel margins this year are up $0.008 compared to 2013.
Last year retail fuel margins remained flat to finish off the quarter. Hopefully history will repeat itself and we’ll see a strong finish to 2014 Q1 margins and remain at the $0.159 level.
by John Keller | Mar 13, 2014 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Price Optimization, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Software
It’s interesting to mine retail fuel information from financial results of publicly held c-store companies. For example, take a look at the numbers achieved by CST Brands and compare them to Susser for the 2013 fiscal year.
Go beyond the store count, and the fact that CST Brands is managing nearly twice as many stores. Zero in on the specifics of gallons per store and gross margin in cents per gallon. Then extrapolate the average fuel profit per store in 2013. The results are displayed in the table below.
| |
Stores |
Gallons Sold |
Gallons/Store |
Gross Margin (CPG) |
Average Profit Per Store in 2013 |
| CST Brands |
1,036 |
1,889,565,580 |
1,823,905 |
$0.140 |
$255,347 |
| Susser |
561 |
936,232,000 |
1,668,863 |
$0.114 |
$190,250 |
| |
|
|
|
Difference
|
$65,096 |
Not only is CST Brands out performing on fuel volumes, but on fuel margins as well.
These results lead to the question, what is CST Brands doing so right? Certainly one answer has to be that CST Brands has been using PriceAdvantage as their retail fuels software for over one year now, and achieving great results.
As one PriceAdvantage customer put it “It helps when you have PriceAdvantage to manage stores!”
by John Keller | Mar 13, 2014 | Customer News, Fuel Software
The PriceAdvantage team would like to extend a warm family welcome to Speedy Q Markets, our latest partner and customer. Speedy Q Markets is the convenience store business under the umbrella of By-Lo Oil Company.
Speedy Q Markets successfully implemented a pilot program using PDI as their back-office software, and VeriFone Sapphire as their POS. This PriceAdvantage implementation is yet another one in the cloud. It is interesting to note that PriceAdvantage implementations in the cloud now outnumber implementations on-premise behind corporate firewalls.
Speedy Q Markets needed a solution that would allow them to remain competitive in markets where prices are changing multiple times a day. According to Kyle Lawrence, President of Speedy Q Markets, “We were quite impressed with how easy the PriceAdvantage software and the Skyline team was to work with. They got us exactly what we needed”.
Speedy Q Markets compete across the thumb region of Michigan. Their parent, the By-Lo Oil Company, has been family owned and operated since 1962.
Welcome Speedy Q Markets – we look forward to our mutual ongoing success together!
by John Keller | Mar 7, 2014 | Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
Today’s OPIS report shows the average retail fuel margin across the US rose $0.023 per gallon this week to $0.157 per gallon. That’s the second consecutive margin increase, returning average fuel prices to levels last seen one month ago.
The year to date average is $0.160 per gallon and the six week average is $0.154 per gallon.
It was a year ago this week that retail fuel margins jumped nearly $0.10 per gallon, where they reached a high for the 2013 year to date of $0.261 per gallon. That means current retail fuel margin levels are now nearly $0.11 per gallon below last year.
Last year at this time we saw two consecutive margin decreases, and then a particularly difficult spring, where out of ten consecutive weeks from March into May, there were only two weeks showing margin increases. We can only hope that prices have already reached seasonal highs, giving retail fuel margins a chance to catch up and perhaps even gain some ground.
by John Keller | Mar 5, 2014 | Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software
When you are managing the volatile and highly competitive retail fuel business of today, you need the best near-real-time information you can get in order to gain a competitive advantage. But at many levels within the organization, the data is simply not readily available in near-real-time. And if this data is available, it is not presented in a meaningful way for managers of retail fuel to quickly see answers to their questions. For example, we have found that accounting reports at the end of the week, month and quarter fall far short of providing retail fuel managers what they need.
PriceAdvantage provides 26 industry-specific reports and SNAP analytics designed specifically with the fuel manager in mind, equipping him with the insight needed to make the strategic decisions that rise above the competition. Our integrations with back office partners like PDI, Pinnacle, and TelaPoint make data retrieval and data presentation a core competency of PriceAdvantage.
For example, the PriceAdvantage Volume Correlation report allows the fuel manager to see the correlation of in-store sales with fuel sales. View market trends graphically and in heat maps so you can quickly identify any strategy changes happening in the market landscape. Use scorecard reports to see the store execution of fuel pricing responsibilities, allowing the fuel pricing team to make pricing decisions hour to hour, and equipping executives with the insight they need to make strategic market decisions.
When you manage your retail fuel business with the PriceAdvantage solution, you are working with a partner who can make you successful with the largest and most price-sensitive product category: FUEL.
