Welcome to the CrossAmerica Partners First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. My name is Cheryl, 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. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Maura Topper. You may begin.

Thank you, operator. Good morning and thank you for joining the CrossAmerica Partners First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. With me today is Charles Nifong, CEO and President. Charles will provide some opening comments a brief overview of CrossAmerica's operational performance and highlights from the quarter and then I will discuss the financial results. At the end we will open up the call to questions. 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 website. 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 US 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, Maura. Maura and I appreciate everyone joining us today. We thank you for making the time in your schedule to be with us this morning. During today's call, I will briefly go through some of the operating highlights for the first quarter. I will also provide some color on the market and a few other updates similar to what I provided on previous calls. Maura will then review in more detail the financial results. Now, if you turn to slide 4, I will briefly review some of our operating results. For the first quarter of 2023, our wholesale fuel gross profit increased 3% to $16.7 million compared to $16.2 million in the first quarter of 2022. This growth was driven by an increase in fuel margin. Wholesale segment gross profit was $31.2 million, an increase of 3% when compared to $30.3 million in the first quarter of 2022. Our wholesale fuel margin increased 5% from $0.079 per gallon in the first quarter of 2022 to $0.083 per gallon in the first quarter of 2023. The year-over-year increase was primarily driven by better sourcing costs as a result of brand consolidation and other fuel sourcing initiatives offset by lower terms discounts for certain of our fuel sourcing cost which was driven by lower crude prices for the quarter compared to the prior year. Our wholesale volume was 201.9 million gallons for the first quarter of 2023 compared to 203.9 million gallons in the first quarter of 2022. The decline in volume when compared to the same period in 2022 was largely due to lower volume in our base business, partially offset by the acquisition of assets from Community Service Stations that was completed in the fourth quarter of 2022. The first quarter wholesale results include the first full quarter…

Thank you, Charles. If you would please turn to Slide 6, I would like to review our first quarter results for the partnership. We reported a net loss of just under $1 million for the first quarter of 2023 compared to net income of $5 million in the first quarter of 2022. The decline in net income was primarily driven by the year-over-year increase in interest expense due to the elevated interest rate environment. We did experience an increase in gross profit in the wholesale and retail segments with each segment benefiting from the favorable fuel margin environment that Charles spoke about in his comments, which was offset by an increase in operating expenses. Adjusted EBITDA was $31.7 million for the first quarter of 2023, which was a slight decrease of 1% when compared to adjusted EBITDA of $32 million for the first quarter of 2022. Our distributable cash flow for the first quarter of 2023 was $19.1 million versus $24.4 million for the first quarter of 2022. The decrease in distributable cash flow was primarily due to the increase in cash interest expense that impacted our first quarter net income. I'll speak further in a few moments about the interest rate environment and some steps we've recently taken to continue to manage this line item and our credit facility overall. Our distribution coverage for the current quarter was 0.96 times compared to 1.22 times for the first quarter of 2022 reflecting the seasonality of our business that we have historically seen since the partnership went public. On a trailing 12-month basis, our distribution coverage was 1.7 times for the 12 months ended March 31, 2023 compared to 1.39 time for the comparable period ended March 31, 2022. The business overall continues to benefit from the strategic initiatives and growth…

Okay. Everyone this is Charles, again. Thank you for joining us today, on the call. Should you have questions later, feel free to reach out to us. We'll be happy to take them. Again, thanks for joining us today. Have a great day.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. At this time, you may disconnect from the call.