by John Keller | Sep 7, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Technology, PriceAdvantage
High’s of Baltimore goes all out with PriceAdvantage at all 53 of their Shell and Citgo branded locations. Now High’s is changing prices with no human interaction at the store for every store in their chain. The Fuel Pricing team uses PriceAdvantage to review current competitor, volume, and margin information to determine the optimized price each day. Then from corporate headquarters, the Fuel Pricing team initiates the price change from PriceAdvantage, and with no human interaction, prices are changed at the VeriFone POS and pump. This process formerly took upwards of 5 hours each day, and now with PriceAdvantage, the roundtrip fuel price management process takes place every day in less than 1 hour.
by John Keller | Aug 24, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, PriceAdvantage
Skyline Products is proud to congratulate Stewart Spinks, Founder and CEO of long-time customer The Spinx Company based out of Greenville, SC, for being inducted into the Convenience Store News Industry Hall of Fame. This Hall of Fame recognizes convenience store industry pioneers and innovators.
The Spinx Company uses PriceAdvantage for their enterprise fuel price management solution across all their stores. With over 65 stores, the Spinx Company is the largest privately held gasoline convenience retailer in the state of South Carolina.
The Spinx Company uses PriceAdvantage in conjunction with Skyline signs to manage the four-phase closed loop fuel pricing process from survey collection, to fuel price analysis and optimization, to pushing fuel price changes from headquarters, to fuel price change confirmation at the sign, POS and pump. Stewart Spinks personally uses his PriceAdvantage fuel pricing software daily to monitor competitor changes and to push fuel price changes to each of his stores.
by John Keller | Aug 12, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Technology, PriceAdvantage
“Now that we have PriceAdvantage rolled out to all our 70 stores, I can change gas prices any time of day or night!” That was the feedback we just got back from one of our PriceAdvantage c-store customers in the Southeastern US.
Prior to using PriceAdvantage as their fuel price management solution, this well recognized c-store chain could only effectively change gas prices once a day. They would start the gas price change process by sending an email out to all stores. Only the store manager had the managerial code required to change gas prices, so that meant if there was no manager onsite, there could be no gas price change.
Now with PriceAdvantage, the Fuel Price Management team can change gas prices whether the store manager is there or not. The Fuel Price Manager sets the new gas price in the PriceAdvantage software, and automatically the price change appears at the store. Any cashier can click the accept gas price change button on the POS, the price change completes at the store, and the PriceAdvantage headquarters software is automatically updated with the completed price change confirmation time stamp, letting the Fuel Price Manager know that the gas price change is complete.
Now that there is no reliance on the store manager, they are changing gas prices at all hours of the day, sometimes multiple times a day. And that’s what they say makes PriceAdvantage so valuable.
by John Keller | Aug 10, 2011 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Industry News
Fuel Price Managers should base their fuel pricing strategies on the general consensus that retail gas prices will continue to drop through the rest of 2011.
USA Today picked up a story from the New York Times, proclaiming that gasoline prices are sure to continue to drop. The article predicts that next month, the national average for Regular Unleaded could drop to $3.25/gallon. That would be over $.40/gallon less than today’s national average. A spokesman from NUS Consulting, the often quoted specialist firm in energy sourcing, risk management and sustainability, was quoted as predicting that crude will fall from today’s price of $82 to between $55 and $60 before finishing the year at $70.
UPDATE 8/12/11 The Los Angeles Times published an article saying “motorists should see pump prices drop as much as 50 cents a gallon over the next several weeks…”.
Today’s US Energy Information Administration Short-Term Energy Outlook projects Unleaded fuel price national averages to drop $.09/gallon in the 3rd quarter of this year and reach $3.58/gallon; predictions for the 4th quarter include an additional $.14/gallon drop to reach $3.44/gallon. That’s about $.06/gallon lower than what the US EIA published last month. On August 8th, the US EIA announced the national average for Unleaded was $3.67/gallon, a $.04 drop from the previous week.
Fuel Price Management strategies should include consumer expectations that fuel prices will fall.
by John Keller | Aug 10, 2011 | Retail Fuel Margins
Susser Holdings announced in their earnings report that retail fuel margins were at $.178/gallon after credit card fees for the past six months, compared to $.140 for the previous year.
They announced “higher margins in our fuel business” as contributing to their “record results” in the second quarter total revenues.
by John Keller | Aug 9, 2011 | Retail Fuel Margins
TravelCenters of America announced in their quarterly earnings report that retail fuel margins per gallon during the 2011 second quarter was $0.162 versus $0.147 for the 2010 period. CEO Tom O’Brien attributed falling fuel prices during May and June for helping these retail fuel margins.
On a same-site basis, their fuel sales volume increased by 2.1% in the 2011 second quarter versus the 2010 second quarter. TravelCenters believes the trend of modest year-over-year sales growth “reflects the condition of the U.S. economy and the trucking industry, which has improved over the prior year, but done so slowly and with considerable inconsistency”.
On a same-site basis, their 2011 second quarter gross retail fuel margin was approximately $9.7 million or 13.1% more than in the comparable 2010 quarter. Andrew Rebholz, CFO, said “The increased level of gross retail fuel margin resulted from both the increased level of sales volume as well as a $0.016 increase in margin per gallon. This reflects the fact that we’ve declined to chase less profitable fuel sales during 2011.”
by John Keller | Aug 8, 2011 | Industry News
In today’s US Energy Information Adminstration weekly fuel price report, the USEIA revealed a $.04 drop for the national average price of Unleaded Regular fuel. The US national average retail fuel price of unleaded gasoline now sits at $3.67/gallon, a gallon of midgrade dropped to $3.79, and a gallon of premium dropped to $3.92.
All regional areas saw fuel price decreases except for the Rocky Mountains, who saw a $.01 increase. The Gulf Coast and the Midwest each saw a $.05 decrease.
As for individual states, Minnesota had the largest fuel price decrease of the week, where prices lowered $.09/gallon for unleaded, with an average price of $3.73/gallon. All states now have Unleaded averages under $4.00 for the first time in two weeks.
The highest average price in the nation for Unleaded continues to be in New York, at $3.99/gallon. In Chicago, a gallon of Unleaded is priced the highest in any major city, at $3.96 per gallon which is $.05 less than last week.
by John Keller | Jul 28, 2011 | Retail Fuel Margins
In Murphy Oil’s quarterly earnings report, US retail fuel margins were $.199 for Q2 and $.146 gallon for the first six months of the year. Quarterly fuel margins were up $.03 compared to last year, and for the first six months, $.04 compared to last year.
US fuel sales volume per store was about 10% below 2010 levels.
by John Keller | Jul 27, 2011 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Price Optimization, Retail Fuel Margins
Valero Energy in their quarterly report announced that US retail fuel margins for the past three months were $.204 per gallon. That’s an increase of nearly $.02 compared to the same time period last year.
For the six months ended June 30, retail fuel margins were $.142 per gallon, essentially unchanged compared to $.148 for the same six months the previous year.
For the three months ended June 30, Valero retail sales in the US were 5,094 gallons per day per site (154,518 gallons per month per site), down 2% from 5,196 gallons per day per site the previous year. For the six months ended June 30, Valero retail sales in the US were down 1.5% from the previous year, with 2011 sales reaching 4,995 gallons per day per site (151,515 gallons per month per site) compared to 5,070 gallons per day per site for the same period in 2010.
According to NACS, the average US c-store sells 121,000 gallons of fuel per month annually. That means over the past three months, Valero stores sold about 27% more than the US national monthly average.
According to Valero’s press release, “Valero’s retail segment continued its record-setting performance with $135 million in operating income, which was the best second quarter in Valero’s history. The increase in operating income was mainly due to higher retail fuel margins….”
Clearly Valero is tremendously successful with their retail fuel price management solutions.
Valero has nearly 1000 company operated stores in the US.
by John Keller | Jul 19, 2011 | Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. in their quarterly report announced that US retail fuel margins for the past three months were $.14 per gallon. That’s a decrease of 1.2% compared to the same time period last year.
For the 12 months ended April 25, retail fuel margins were $.1579 per gallon, up from $.1451 for the same 12 months the previous year.
For the three months ended April 25, Couche-Tard retail sales in the US were approximately 145,000 gallons per month per site. Same-store US motor fuel volume was up .3% for the quarter.
According to NACS, the average US c-store sells 121,000 gallons of fuel per month annually. That means over the past three months, Couche-Tard stores sold about 20% more than the US national monthly average.
Couche-Tard currently has a total store count of 5795.
