Earnings Labs

CrossAmerica Partners LP (CAPL)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Fri, May 6, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the CrossAmerica Partners’ First Quarter 2016 Earnings Call. My name is Brandon and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note this conference is being recorded. And I will now turn it over to Mr. Randy Palmer, Director of Investor Relations. Mr. Palmer, you may begin.

Randy Palmer

Management

Thank you, operator and good morning, and thank you for joining the CrossAmerica Partners’ first quarter 2016 earnings call. With me today are Kim Lubel, Chairman; Jeremy Bergeron, President; Clay Killinger, Chief Financial Officer; Steve Stellato, Chief Accounting Officer; and other members of our executive leadership team. Jeremy will provide a brief overview of CrossAmerica’s operation performance and an update on current strategic initiatives and then we will turn the call over to Steve to discuss the financial results. At the end we will open the call up to questions. I should point out today this call will follow some presentation slides that we will utilize during this morning’s event. These slides are available as part of the webcast and are posted on the CrossAmerica website. Before we begin, I would like to moralize everyone that today’s call, including the question-and-answer session may include forward-looking statements regarding expected revenue, future plans, future operational metrics and opportunities and expectations of this organization. There can be no assurance that management’s expectations, beliefs, and projections will be achieved or that actual results will not differ from expectations. Please see filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including Annual Reports on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for a discussion of important factors that could affect our actual results. Forward-looking statements represent the judgment of the Company’s management as of today’s date, and our organization disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statements. During today’s call, we may also provide certain performance measures that do not conform to U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles or GAAP. We have provided schedules that reconcile these non-GAAP measures with our reported results on a GAAP basis as part of our earnings press release. Today’s call is being webcast, and a recording of this conference call will be available there for a period of 60 days. And with that, I’ll now turn the call over to Jeremy Bergeron.

Jeremy Bergeron

Management

Thank you, Randy. This morning we reported solid first quarter earnings results which Steve will go through in detail in a few minutes. I want to spend a brief time talking about how CrossAmerica's position today and our long-term strategy and execution. As you turn to Slide 3, you can see that the Partnership has grown dramatically over the past couple years and now has a strong presence across the number of regions of the United States. Distributing over 1 billion gallons annually and generating annual rental income of approximately $80 million. At the end of the first quarter we had over 1,180 fielding locations in 29 states. We continue to hold an interest in CST Fuel Supply providing us with a 17.5% interest and a $0.05 wholesale fuel margin on approximately 1.9 billion gallons annually, which represented over $4 million of EBITDA to the Partnership this quarter. We have a strong diversified platform and we continuously optimizing and expand as we implement our strategy to maximize cash flow and provide a steady consistently growing distribution for our investors. If you turn to the next slide, I want to make a few comments about how we are executing on that strategy. Since going public in 2012 acquisitions has been a vital component of our growth strategy. We feel that completing acquisitions at favorable terms and successfully integrating them as we recognize synergies and other costs savings has been a competitive advantage for CrossAmerica. With the tightness in the capital markets we don't believe the door is closed in acquisition opportunities rather this is creating opportunity for prudent, diligent buyers to continue to grow at lower multiples and what we're seeing just a year or two ago. Our acquisition of 34 sites from SSC Corporation is evident at just that type…

Steven Stellato

Management

Thank you, Jeremy. If you would please turn to Slide 6, I would like to touch on our overall first quarter results of CrossAmerica. Today, we reported a strong first quarter with adjusted EBITDA of approximately $22 million, up 43% compared to last year. As you look at distributable cash flow it was slightly over $17 million in the quarter or an increase of 71% when compared to the same period last year. On a per unit basis, our DCF increased 27% during the quarter with distribution coverage at 0.88 times at the end of the quarter. Overall, the growth during the quarter was primarily driven by our acquisitions as well as the strong performance in our wholesale segment as we executed on our strategy to reposition our assets. As we look at how each of our segments contributed on the next couple of slides you will see that, thanks to the fuel volume and rental income growth achieved from our acquisitions. Our wholesale segment grew adjusted EBITDA by 37% for the quarter. This is despite the reduction in our terms discounts due to wholesale gasoline prices averaging over $0.40 below last year. We also experienced an 18% reduction in our operating expenses period-over-period primarily due to the divestment of certain non-core assets in 2015. Turning to the retail segment on the next slide, which includes our company-operated and commission agent sites, our segment EBITDA declined during the quarter due to a thinner rack to retail margin, as we saw the crude price decline start to bottom out and reverse direction. We also experienced a lot of site change in the period as we completely dealerized the one stop location, while adding the SSG sites late in the quarter. We look forward to the successful integration of those stores with…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And we will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And from Stephens Inc. we have Ben Bienvenu. Please go ahead.

Ben Bienvenu

Analyst

Yes, thanks. Good morning.

Jeremy Bergeron

Management

Good morning, Ben.

Ben Bienvenu

Analyst

So I would be curious to hear a little bit about your thoughts around M&A and your appetite that continue to reduce some of these smaller deals, obviously you have some nice tuck-in opportunities and there is opportunities to capture synergies as you bring those into the fold. I’d be curious your thoughts there and then on the recent stores that you’ve acquired even within the last year, how much more views do you think there is to squeeze out in terms of integration synergies?

Jeremy Bergeron

Management

Sure. You are right. I mean the acquisition market is still strong and still a great opportunity for us to participate in these types of deals that we've closed on such as the SSG acquisition in the first quarter as a kind of exactly what we're looking for. Strong asset base and asset transaction where we can have the tuck-in into our existing operations in the upper Midwest where we can leverage kind of a team that we have there to help run those locations and immediately recognize some of those synergies and savings. So those continue to be out there. We continue to look for them and we look forward to doing those going forward. As far as how much additional opportunity there are to further reduce overall savings in G&A I mean we just closed on SSG, so obviously there is some opportunity there, but we still continued to digest the acquisitions done last year with Freedom Valu, Ericsson acquisition earlier last year as well as the One Stop acquisition. So we continue to bring those into the folds so you should see a bit more reductions going forward in that process and continued improvement.

Ben Bienvenu

Analyst

Great. And then your merchandise sales were up nicely in the quarter. The margin was pressured a little bit. On the margin side, what opportunities are there inside the stores that you have that you want to continue to operate that you can enhance profitability?

Steven Stellato

Management

Right. So if you go back to our slide deck that we posted on Slide 4, you see really a change in the mix over all of our stores. And I think what underscores does the most is if you look at all of our stores that we operate in the first quarter of 2015 versus first quarter of 2016. Although, we went from 144 locations to 97. There are only 11 of those stores were in there for the full period in 2015 and full period in 2016. So I just underscore the amount of mix and turnover that we have there as we complete acquisition and dealerized and then move forward. So when you look at our statistics I would caution you to not just look at what's happening period-over-period, but what excites us is the continuous improvement we see on the cash flows we're acquiring and the improvement we're seeing along the way, because we're actually moving merchandise margin up as we go in and we leverage our buying power and we implement our systems and recognize other opportunities. So we think there is continued improvement with what we have in the portfolio right now and we look to for that to continue going into the second quarter.

Ben Bienvenu

Analyst

Got it. That's really helpful. Okay, thanks. Best of luck.

Steven Stellato

Management

Thanks Ben.

Jeremy Bergeron

Management

Thanks Ben.

Operator

Operator

From Jefferies we have Chris Mandeville. Please go ahead.

Christopher Mandeville

Analyst

Yes. Good morning. Just very quickly…

Jeremy Bergeron

Management

Good morning, Chris.

Christopher Mandeville

Analyst

Can you reaffirm that you do plan in fact to perform some asset dropdowns in 2016.

Jeremy Bergeron

Management

Well Chris, we discuss that in 2015 in terms of what our expectations were for 2016 and as we are going deeper into 2016, we continue to look in terms of what's our availability with our revolver and our opportunity to complete acquisitions and other transactions and managing our capital so that we can - as I mentioned earlier so that we can address what we understand and respect is the concern of shareholders which is managing the balance sheet, managing our coverage ratio. And we think opportunities like what we've done with SSG provide great third-party acquisition opportunities to buy assets at very attractive multiples and are good uses of our available capital. Dropdowns are still an opportunity, but as we said all along with CST, we're going to be opportunistic with those transactions and with the growth we have and what we've done so far. We will continue to evaluate that as an option for us in 2016 and beyond, but that is on the table as well as third-party acquisitions, but we like the third-party acquisition market and the multiples of which we can execute those.

Christopher Mandeville

Analyst

Okay. Could you remind me what your leverage was at the end of the quarter?

Steven Stellato

Management

Yes, the leverage was approximately [4.3 times].

Christopher Mandeville

Analyst

Okay. And then lastly, you made some nice progress on the dealerization front in this quarter. Can you just kind of provide some qualitative factor as it relates to the level of interest as it remains or is it relates to the remaining 94 stores or so?

Jeremy Bergeron

Management

Sure. I mean one of the advantages of CrossAmerica as we continue to grow, our dealer network continues to grow as well and dealing with a lot of good operators out there that we work with and continue to identify as good dealers and good business partners for us, good customers. So there are ample opportunities to identify additional dealers to go in there and operate the stores or we can continue to get good rental income back into the partnership as well as good wholesale margin which are both qualifying pieces. So yes, there are opportunities obviously there is a lot of stores. We are now in the partnerships today which are in the upper Midwest region. We are just closing on the acquisition of SSG and being associated with the holiday station stores. We will look forward to working with them in the foreseeable future and continue to grow our margin capture inside the store and then we will continue to look and identify long-term to find the right dealers to go into those stores that can be a success for us in the long-term.

Christopher Mandeville

Analyst

Great. And actually just one quick follow-up as it relate to that thing you now have a very solid concentration in the upper Midwest. Would you be looking for one party to primarily take over the majority of the remaining stores or would you still be willing to kind of break that up into smaller pieces?

Jeremy Bergeron

Management

It's a combination. We've done that. What we've done? We've done transactions where we have brought lessee dealers into the stores where it's multiple locations, 10 plus, sometimes even more and we do some where it’s kind of one-off. So it's going to be a combination of those. So they're not really mutually exclusive so we're going to look at both options.

Christopher Mandeville

Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Jeremy Bergeron

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We have no further questions at the moment. Mr. Palmer, I will turn it back to you for closing remarks.

Randy Palmer

Management

Okay, operator. We thank everyone for joining us today. If you do have any follow-up questions, afterwards please feel free to reach out to us. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect.