Welcome to the CrossAmerica Partners Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. My name is Keisha, and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. Later we will conduct the question-and-answer session [Operator instructions]. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Jon Benfield. You may begin.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining the CrossAmerica Partners Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. With me today are Charles Nifong, CEO and President and other members of our executive leadership team. I should point out that today's 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 Web site. Before we begin, I would like to remind 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 the 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 CrossAmerica's 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 CrossAmerica's management as of today's date, and the 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 on the CrossAmerica website for a period of 60 days. With that, I will now turn the call over to Charles.

Thank you, Jon. I appreciate everyone joining us this morning. As always, we thank you for your interest in the partnership and hope that you're all well. During today's call, I will briefly go through some of the operating highlights for the third quarter. I will also provide some color on the continuing impacts from COVID-19, along with a few other updates, similar to what I provided in our first and second quarter earnings call. Jon will then review in more detail the financial results. Before I begin going through the operating highlights, I wanted to note that we have announced the appointment of Eric Javidi as our Chief Financial Officer. Eric has an extensive amount of experience in the energy industry, most recently with Southcross Holdings in Houston. Before joining Southcross Holdings, Eric was a Managing Director at Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors and in energy investment banking with several large institutions. With this announcement, Jon Benfield, who was interim CFO, has been appointed Chief Accounting Officer. I want to welcome Eric to our team and also say thank you to Jon for his hard work during this challenging period of time. We are fortunate to have both of these talented individuals as part of our management team. Now if you turn to Slide 4, I will briefly review some of our results from the quarter. For the third quarter of 2020, our wholesale fuel volume increased 26% when compared to the third quarter of 2019, largely due to the acquisitions and exchanges that were completed over the past months, offset by the impact of COVID-19. We experienced a strong increase in overall volume for the quarter relative to last year and also saw a strong increase in our wholesale fuel margin per gallon year-over-year, driving our wholesale fuel gross…

Thank you, Charles. If you would please turn to Slide 7, I would like to review our third quarter results for the partnership. We reported adjusted EBITDA of $30 million for the third quarter of 2020, which was an increase of 3% when compared to the same period of 2019. Our distributable cash flow for the third quarter of 2020 was $29.7 million versus $25.7 million for the third quarter of 2019, reflecting an increase of 16% year-over-year. Our distributable cash flow for the third quarter benefited from the performance of our wholesale segment, lower cash interest and a current tax benefit from bonus depreciation on the eligible assets acquired in the sixth tranche of the asset exchange and capital expenditures. Our distribution coverage on a paid basis for the third quarter of 2020 was 1.50x, an approximately 5% improvement versus 1.42x for the third quarter of 2019. Our distribution coverage on a trailing 12-month basis was 1.24x, which was an approximately 9% improvement over the 1.14x that we experienced for the 12 months ended September 30, 2019. As Charles touched on earlier, our operating expenses increased over $14 million for the third quarter of 2020 compared to the third quarter of 2019, driven by the increase in our average company-operated site count as a result of the April 2020 acquisition of retail and wholesale assets. Excluding rent expense, operating expenses at our company-operated sites increased $11.5 million or 426%. Our average company-operated site count increased 456%, and so our operating expenses, excluding rent expense, on a per site basis decreased 4%. Additionally, a greater percentage of our company-operated sites are leased than in the prior year. And so the rent component of operating expenses at our company-operated sites increased $3.3 million. If you would please turn to the next…

This is Charles again. Well, it looks like everyone's still tuned in to or trying to figure out the election results. So we thank everyone that was listening on the call today. We appreciate each of you joining us. If you do have follow-up questions, feel free to reach out to us. Thank you, and good day.

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