CrossAmerica Partners LP (CAPL) Q4 2025 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to CrossAmerica Partners Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Thursday, February 26, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Maura Topper, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining the CrossAmerica Partners Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call. With me today is Charles Nifong, CEO and President. We'll start off the call today with Charles providing some opening comments and an overview of CrossAmerica's operational performance for the fourth quarter and full year, and then I will discuss the financial results. We will then open up the call to questions. Today's call will follow presentation slides that 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 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, Maura. Maura and I appreciate everyone joining us this morning, and thank you for making the time to be with us today. During today's call, I will go through some of the operating highlights for the fourth quarter and full year 2025. I will also provide commentary on the market and a few other updates as I typically do on our calls. Maura, will then review in more detail our financial results. If you turn to Slide 4, I will briefly review in more detail some of our operating results for the quarter. Overall, we had a very solid fourth quarter with strong retail and wholesale fuel margins, good results from our retail segment merchandise sales, and we also benefited from our overall expense control. We outperformed the prior year significantly and finished the year with the business performing well across both segments. Specifically, for the fourth quarter of 2025, our retail segment gross profit increased 10% to $82.9 million compared to $75.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The increase was primarily driven by an increase in motor fuel gross profit due to higher retail fuel margins for the quarter compared to the prior year. For the quarter, our retail fuel margin on a cents per gallon basis increased 19% year-over-year as our fuel margin was $0.449 per gallon in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to $0.376 per gallon in the fourth quarter of 2024. In comparison to the prior year, crude oil prices trended down during the quarter and along with better sourcing costs and favorable retail market conditions, our retail fuel margins were higher year-over-year as a result. For volume on a same-store basis, our overall retail fuel volume declined 8% for the quarter year-over-year. For our company-operated sites, retail fuel volume was down approximately 6% relative to the prior year. I'll note that our fourth quarter of last year was a particularly strong volume quarter with our company-operated stores volume up 3.8% relative to the prior year. With that context, our company-operated sites volume performance this quarter was, to some extent, a reversion to the exceptionally strong results from the prior year, and our volume still remains over the last 2 years, strong relative to national volume trends. We also continue to focus on pricing competitively for our company-operated sites and our pricing philosophy and its execution for these sites overall has not changed. For our commission class of trade, our commission site same-store volume was down approximately 11% for the quarter. As we noted last quarter, the decline was due in part to our decision at select sites to adjust our pricing strategy. With many of the sites that we converted throughout last year, we were very aggressive with fuel pricing initially at conversion, which generated strong volume growth and provided us with data about the volume potential of the locations. We are now working to optimize the balance between volume and margin performance of these locations, which led to lower overall same-store volumes in our commission same sites for the quarter in addition to the overall volume decline in the market. Based on national demand data available to us, national gasoline demand was down approximately 5% for the quarter. So our overall relative results trailed the broader market this quarter, largely due at our company-operated sites to the strong volume growth in the prior year and for our commission sites, due to our continued work to optimize volume and margin at sites we have converted to commission from other classes of trade. In the period since the quarter end, national fuel volume has been down approximately 3.5%. At our company-operated sites, volume for the same period has been in line with national volume demand, while our commission sites volume has been lower as we continue to adjust our commission pricing strategies relative to prior periods for the reasons I just outlined. Since quarter end, retail fuel margins have been slightly lower than the very strong fourth quarter retail fuel margins, but remain at overall very favorable levels and significantly above what we have experienced in January and early February in the 2 preceding years. For inside sales on a same-site basis, our overall inside sales were slightly up compared to the prior year for the fourth quarter. Inside sales, excluding cigarettes, increased 1% year-over-year on a same-store basis for the quarter. Our inside sales growth was driven by continued strong performance in our other tobacco products and packaged beverage categories. Also, our food category, both branded and proprietary positively contributed to our growth in same-store sales for the period. Overall, national demand for inside store sales for the quarter was slightly down, indicating our relative outperformance for the quarter. On the store merchandise margin front, our merchandise gross profit increased by 3% to $28.8 million, driven by an increase in sales in our base business and an increase in store merchandise margin percentage. Our merchandise gross margin percentage was up strongly over the prior year, approximately 70 basis points. This was primarily due to strong growth in certain higher-margin categories like other tobacco products and to our transition from a commission-based model for certain products in the third quarter of last year into owning and selling these products directly for the current quarter and also due to better execution in certain product categories. In the period since the quarter end, same-store inside sales have been up approximately 2.5% compared to the prior year. In our retail segment, if you look at our total number of retail sites at the end of the quarter, we finished the quarter with 352 company-operated retail sites, down 1 site from the third quarter and 13 sites relative to the fourth quarter of last year. The decrease in the company-operated sites relative to the prior year reflects the asset sales and class of trade conversions we completed throughout the year as we continue to execute on maximizing the value of each site through class of trade conversions while focusing on being in retail in the right markets. Similarly, in the commission class of trade, we were down 2 sites from the third quarter and up 2 sites relative to the prior year. Overall, we will continue to look for opportunities in our portfolio to increase our retail exposure while simultaneously seeking to maximize the value of each asset through optimizing its class of trade. The retail segment performed well for the fourth quarter with strong fuel margin, store sales and store margin results. Our volume performance at first glance underperformed the market, but this is in comparison to a particularly strong prior year for us at our company-operated sites and also due to deliberate decisions we made in our commission class of trade to optimize our volume and fuel margin mix at select sites. Additionally, on the expense side, we are seeing the benefits of the decline in class of trade-related conversion expenses and our disciplined focus on operating expenses, both of which Maura will touch on in her comments. In the period since the quarter end, we have benefited from a continued very strong fuel margin environment through January and into February and overall are off to a much better start to the year than in the previous 2 years. Moving on to the wholesale segment. For the fourth quarter of 2025, our wholesale segment gross profit declined 7% to $24.2 million compared to $25.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The decrease was primarily driven by a decline in fuel volume and rental income, offset by an increase in fuel margin. A material factor for the fuel volume decline was the conversion of certain lessee dealer sites to company-operated and commission agent sites, which are now accounted for in the retail segment. Rental income declined for the same reason and due to the site divestitures we have completed this year. Our wholesale motor fuel gross profit increased 6% to $15.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 from $14.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. Our fuel margin increased 13% from $0.082 per gallon in the fourth quarter of 2024 to $0.093 per gallon in the fourth quarter of 2025. The increase in our wholesale fuel margin per gallon was primarily driven by better sourcing costs and favorable movements in crude oil prices. Our wholesale volume was 168.9 million gallons for the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to 180.5 million gallons in the fourth quarter of 2024, reflecting a decline of 6%. The decline in volume when compared to the same period in 2024 was in part due to the conversion of certain lessee dealer sites to our retail class of trade. The gallons from these converted sites are now reflected in our retail segment results. For the quarter, our same-store volume in the wholesale segment was down approximately 3.5% year-over-year. So the additional approximately 3% drop in volume, the difference between the overall volume decline of 6% and our same-store volume decline of 3.5% for the segment was largely due to converting sites to the retail segment or the loss of independent dealer volume. As I mentioned in my retail segment comments, national demand data available to us indicated national volume demand was down around 5% for the quarter. So our same-store wholesale volume performance for the fourth quarter outperformed overall national volume demand. In the period since the quarter end, wholesale same-store volume has been down approximately 4%, so slightly worse than the national volume demand, which has been down approximately 3.5%. Regarding our wholesale rent, our base rent for the quarter was $8.1 million compared to the prior year of $10.3 million, a decrease due to the conversion of certain lessee dealer sites to company-operated sites as well as our real estate rationalization efforts. As we have previously explained, the rent dollars for these converted sites, while no longer in the form of rent are now effectively in our retail segment results through our fuel and store sale margins at these locations. If you turn to the next slide, I will briefly review segment performance for the full year. For the full year of 2025, our retail segment gross profit increased 4% to $32.2 million compared to $28.7 million for the full year of 2024. Merchandise gross profit was $6.3 million or 6% gross profit increased $6.3 million or 4%. On a same-store basis, our total retail segment increased 4% for the full year 2025 relative to 2024, in line with national demand. Our retail store sales, excluding on a same-store basis increased 2% for the full year of 2025, which compares favorably to national data on industry same-store sales. Our wholesale segment generated gross profit of [ $10.5 ] million for the full year 2025, a 7% decline when compared to the $108.6 million reported in 2024. The decrease was driven by a 7% decline in fuel volume. Our wholesale fuel volume was 688.7 million gallons for the 12-month period ending December 31, 2025, compared to 743.5 million gallons for the same period of 2024. For the full year, our same-site wholesale volume was down approximately 3%, which based on national data available to us was slightly better than the overall national volume. The remainder of the volume decline was driven by the conversion of certain lessee dealer sites to retail and to a lesser extent, [ indent ] dealer business. We experienced an increase in fuel margin per gallon, up 7% for the 12-month period. Our fuel margin for the wholesale segment was $0.01 per gallon for the full year of 2025 compared to $0.85 per gallon for the full year of 2024, with the improvement driven by better sourcing costs and favorable crude oil price dynamics. During the fourth quarter, we continued with our real estate rationalization, selling 11 sites and realizing approximately $8.8 million of proceeds that we primarily used to pay down debt. For the most part, we sold sites with continuing fuel supply relationships, so we realized extremely attractive effective multiples on these divestitures, strengthening our financial position today and positioning our portfolio for the future. For the full year, we realized over $100 million in proceeds from asset sales, our biggest year ever, and we continue to have a strong pipeline of asset sales for 2026. While we don't expect this year to be the record volume of sales we execute in 2025, we do expect it to contribute meaningful proceeds for us to either put into the balance sheet or to invest into the business. The fourth quarter was a solid quarter for the partnership with a material increase in our EBITDA versus the prior year and strong overall operational results. Since the end of the fourth quarter, we've had a strong start to 2026, continuing the momentum from the fourth quarter results, in particular, benefit from fuel margin environment to start the year and our results year-to-date this year are challenging starts to the prior 2 years. Overall, 2025 was a good year for us and move the business forward during the course of the year. Operationally, we focused on our retail network, generating increases in our same-store sales and margin while maintaining full volume in line with actual demand and realizing strong fuel margin performance. Our wholesale segment performed well for the year on the strength of higher fuel margins, driven in large part by our success and lower product costs. Strategically, we made significant progress on our long-term objectives with a record year of asset sales, the largest volume of asset sales in our history. These asset sales not only position the portfolio for long-term success, but they also benefited our balance sheet and increased our financial flexibility for future growth opportunities. We continue to do site class of trade conversions throughout the year, optimizing locations for the class of trade to maximize our long-term value for the partnership. In short, we finished the year in a strong position with a stronger operating portfolio of assets than at the start of the year and a balance sheet with lower overall leverage and more flexibility for future success. We will turn to the next slide. In terms of our outlook for 2026, we will continue to work to execute well on the fundamental basis of our retail operations to ensure we provide a great experience and value to our retail customers. For our wholesale customers, we will continue to provide great service and partner with them to ensure our business success in 2026 and beyond. During 2026, we also expect to continue our site divestitures, however, not at the same level that we executed in 2025. Once again, we expect to use the proceeds from the divestitures to invest in our business and strengthen our balance sheet. We will also continue to do site class of trade conversions with an emphasis on increasing our retail exposure as we seek to maximize the value of each location, we can trade locations operating in the best class of trade for that particular location. We expect the overall level of site conversions in 2026 will be at a lower level in 2025. In summary, we start 2026 with a business that has a solid core operating portfolio, one that is overall better and higher quality than it was at the start of the prior year and with a team that has demonstrated the ability to produce operational results and execute on strategic plans. Our balance sheet is stronger than it was at the start of 2025 with enhanced financial flexibility to pursue growth opportunities. Overall, the partnership is well positioned to generate a solid economic return and cash flow for this year and for years to come and to be good stewards of the capital that you, our investors, have entrusted to us. With that, I will turn it over to Maura for a more detailed financial review.

Thank you, Charles. If you would please turn to Slide 8, I would like to review our fourth quarter results for the partnership. We reported net income of $10.2 million and adjusted EBITDA of $43.4 million for the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to net income of $16.9 million and adjusted EBITDA of $35.5 million for the fourth quarter of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA increased 22% year-over-year. Net income declined primarily due to lower net gains on asset dispositions, offset by a decline in interest expense, both compared to the prior year period. As I mentioned, adjusted EBITDA increased 22% or $7.9 million compared to the prior year period. As Charles noted in his comments, this increase was driven by a series of positive factors across the business, including an increase in motor fuel margin per gallon in both the retail and wholesale segments, an increase in merchandise gross profit in the retail segment and a decline in operating expenses. Our distributable cash flow for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $28.5 million, a 35% increase from $21.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2024. The increase in distributable cash flow was primarily due to higher adjusted EBITDA, along with lower cash interest expense and lower sustaining capital expenditures. The decline in interest expense we experienced during the quarter was due to a lower average interest rate and a lower average outstanding debt balance on our CAPL credit facility during the period. Our distribution coverage ratio for the fourth quarter of 2025 was 1.43x compared to 1.06x for the same period of 2024. During the fourth quarter of 2025, the partnership paid a distribution of $0.525 per unit. Turning to the expense portion of our operations. In total across both segments, we reported operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2025 of $57.3 million, a $2 million decrease year-over-year and our fifth consecutive quarter of declining operating expenses across the organization. Retail segment operating expenses for the fourth quarter declined 1% or $0.7 million and wholesale segment operating expenses declined by $1.3 million or 18%. In our Retail segment, our average segment site count was down approximately 2% year-over-year for the quarter. On a same-store store level basis, operating expenses in our retail segment were down approximately 1% for the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to the fourth quarter of 2024. The decline was primarily driven by reduced store-level employment costs as we remain focused on efficient staffing and operations in our stores as well as continued reductions in repairs and maintenance spending year-over-year at both our company-operated and commission class of trade locations due to realized ongoing efficiencies in our maintenance operations. As I touched on during our last few quarterly earnings calls, we have cycled through the first year of operations at many of our locations in their new classes of trade, which typically results in elevated expenses to onboard and upgrade the converted locations. As a result, we are experiencing the stabilization of our expense profile in our current class of trade site count. We will, of course, continue to experience seasonality of certain types of operating expenses in our stabilized portfolio, like increased labor in the summer and increased snowplowing in the winter. Returning to our wholesale segment. Operating expenses declined by $1.3 million or 18% for the quarter year-over-year. This decline was driven primarily by the 23% decline in lessee dealer or controlled site count within the segment year-over-year due to asset sales and to a lesser extent, conversions to our retail class of trade. We reported G&A expenses for the quarter of $7.2 million, a $0.5 million increase year-over-year, primarily driven by higher management fees and equity compensation expense. We remain focused across the organization on efficient expense management at our locations and at the corporate level, ensuring that we are investing in customer-facing areas at our locations that will drive the long-term health and sustainability of our sites and driving operating efficiencies in our above-store operations. Turning to the full year of 2025. We reported net income of $41.8 million and adjusted EBITDA of $146 million for the full year of 2025 compared to net income of $22.5 million and adjusted EBITDA of $145.5 million for the full year 2024. With adjusted EBITDA roughly flat year-over-year, the primary driver of the increase in our net income was the gains on sale recognized as part of our real estate optimization efforts that Charles discussed, offset by higher resulting tax expense due to those asset sales as well as a decrease in interest expense due to a lower average interest rate along with a lower average outstanding debt balance. For the full year of 2025, distributable cash flow was $87.8 million compared to $86 million for the full year of 2024. The increase in distributable cash flow was primarily due to a decrease in cash interest expense that also positively impacted our full year 2025 net income, offset by higher current income tax expense following our very strong fourth quarter results. Our distribution coverage for the full year of 2025 was 1.10x compared to 1.08x for the full year of 2024. Operating expenses for the full year of 2025 increased $3.7 million or 2% compared to the full year of 2024. Retail segment operating expenses were up $8.5 million or approximately 4% for the year compared to 2024, in line with the approximately 4% increase in average segment site count during the year. Wholesale segment operating expenses declined $4.7 million in 2025, approximately 15% compared to 2024, primarily due to our reduced site count in the wholesale segment, as I noted earlier in my comments. On a full year basis, our G&A expenses declined from $28.8 million in 2024 to $28 million in 2025, primarily driven by lower acquisition-related costs and legal fees, partially offset by higher management fees. Moving to the next slide. We spent a total of $7.1 million on capital expenditures during the fourth quarter with $5.7 million of that total being growth-related capital expenditures and $1.4 million of that being sustaining capital expenditures. The decline in sustaining capital expenditures versus the prior year and prior 2025 quarters is in line with our expectations as we experienced a stabilization of our current class of trade site count as well as a reduction of our real estate controlled site count. Moving to our growth capital spending during the quarter. Our spend remained focused on our company-operated locations and included the completion of various projects to increase food offerings as well as targeted real estate acquisitions from our existing lease portfolio. Our food-related growth investments have and will continue to contribute to our merchandise sales and margin results. For the full year of 2025, capital expenditures were $35.7 million, with $27.2 million being growth-related CapEx and $8.5 million being sustaining capital expenditures. Turning over to our balance sheet. The asset sale activities during the fourth quarter that Charles reviewed in his comments helped us meaningfully reduce our credit facility balance by approximately $13 million during the quarter. Our year-to-date asset sale activities helped us to reduce our credit facility balance by $75 million in 2025, leading us to end the year with a balance of $692.3 million. We have materially applied the proceeds of our asset sale activities in 2024 and 2025 to pay down our revolver balance. The decrease in our balance, combined with the gains on sale generated from our asset sale activities resulted in a decrease in our credit facility defined leverage ratio to 3.51x compared to 4.36x as of December 31, 2024. Our management team remains focused on the cash flow generation profile of our business, utilizing our normal course operations and our targeted real estate optimization efforts to manage our leverage ratio at approximately 4x on a credit facility-defined basis. Our asset sale activities during the quarter reduced our credit facility balance and the lower average interest rate environment also helped improve our cash interest expense during the fourth quarter and for the full year of 2025. Fourth quarter 2025 cash interest declined from $12.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2024 to $10.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. For the full year of 2025, cash interest expense declined from $50.4 million in 2024 to $46.2 million in 2025. Our existing interest rate swap portfolio continues to benefit us as well. At this time, more than 55% of our current credit facility balance is swapped to a fixed rate of approximately 3.4% blended and our effective interest rate on the total CAPL credit facility at the end of the fourth quarter is 5.6%. In conclusion, as Charles noted, the partnership finished 2025 with a strong quarter and with a portfolio positioned for success as we move into 2026. Successfully completing a number of asset sales during the year helped reduce our debt by approximately $75 million and strengthened our balance sheet while also positioning our portfolio to generate durable and consistent cash flows into the future. We are looking forward to the year ahead, maintaining a strong balance sheet and generating value for our unitholders. With that, we will open it up for questions.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. It doesn't look we have any questions today. So as always, we thank you for joining us. Should you have a question later, please feel free to reach out. Thank you, and have a good day. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.