Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Global Partners Second Quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]. With us from Global Partners are President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Eric Slifka; Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Gregory Hanson; Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Mark Romaine; and Chief Legal Officer and Secretary, Mr. Sean Geary. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Geary for opening remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Today's call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws, including projections and expectations concerning the future financial and operational performance of Global Partners. No assurances can be given that these projections will be obtained or that these expectations will be met. Our assumptions and future performance are subject to a wide range of business risks, uncertainties and factors, which could cause actual results to differ materially as described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Global Partners undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements. Now it's my pleasure to turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Eric Slifka.

Thank you, Sean, and good morning, everyone. The company delivered year-over-year growth across all key profitability metrics in Q2. Our results continue to reinforce the strength of our business model and our integrated portfolio of liquid energy terminals, fueling stations and convenience markets. Looking at our overall performance in Q2, we posted gains in operating income, net income, DCF and adjusted EBITDA driven by strong results in both our Wholesale and GDSO segments. Over the past 9 months, we've invested more than $500 million to significantly expand our Wholesale segment footprint through the strategic acquisition of a combined 29 terminals from Motiva Enterprises and Gulf Oil, more than doubling our storage capacity to 21.4 million barrels. These terminals expand our geographic reach within New England, along the Eastern Seaboard and into Florida, the Gulf Coast and Texas. We have identified numerous opportunities to invest and optimize in these newly acquired terminals. As we've discussed on prior calls, the Motiva transaction is underpinned by a 25-year take-or-pay throughput agreement that includes minimum annual revenue commitment. I also want to highlight GDSO's solid performance. The segment continues to benefit from healthy retail fuel margins and successful merchandising initiatives in our convenience markets. Turning to our distribution. In July, the Board declared a quarterly cash distribution on our common units of $0.72 or $2.88 on an annualized basis. This distribution represents a 6.7% increase over the prior year and is payable on August 14 to unitholders of record as of the close of business on August 8. Let me turn the call over to Greg for the financial review. Greg?

Thank you, Eric, and good morning, everyone. As we review the numbers, please note that unless otherwise noted, all comparisons will be with the second quarter of 2023. Adjusted EBITDA was $121.1 million in the second quarter compared with $90.4 million and net income of $46.1 million compared with $41.4 million in the second quarter of 2023. Distributable cash flow was $73.1 million in the second quarter of '24 compared with $54.8 million in 2023. And adjusted DCF was $74.2 million compared with $53.3 million. LTM distribution coverage as of June 30 was 1.8x or 1.6x after factoring in distribution to our preferred unitholders. Turning to our segment details. GDSO product margin increased $22.4 million in the quarter to $221.5 million. Product margin from gasoline distribution increased $19.4 million to $147.3 million, primarily reflecting higher fuel margins year-over-year. On a cents per gallon basis, fuel margins increased $0.05 to $0.36 in Q2 '24 from $0.31 in Q2 '23. Station operations product margin, which includes convenience store and prepared food sales, sundries and rental income increased $3 million to $74.2 million in the second quarter of 2024, highlighting the continued success of our merchandising efforts. At quarter end, our portfolio of fueling stations and C-store sites totaled 1,595. Additionally, we operate 64 sites under our Spring Partners Retail joint venture. Looking at the Wholesale segment. Second quarter 2024 product margin increased $32.2 million to $91.9 million. Product margin from gasoline and gasoline blendstocks increased $31.4 million to $70.4 million, primarily due to the acquisition of the Motiva terminals in December of '23 and more favorable market conditions in gasoline. Product margin from distillates and other oils increased $0.8 million to $21.5 million, primarily due to more favorable market conditions in distillates, partially offset by less favorable market condition in residual oil.…

Thanks, Greg. In closing, we began the second half of the year with positive momentum. We look forward to building on our success in the first half of 2024 by continuing to execute our strategic growth objectives and deliver value for our unitholders. With that, Greg, Mark and I would be happy to take your questions. Operator, please open the line for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Selman Akyol with Stifel.

Congratulations on a nice quarter. Wanted to just follow up on your opening comments where you talked about the Wholesale, all the investment that you've done and you tied it up with sort of opportunities to invest. And I wanted to explore that. Can you just maybe explain that a little bit more in the sense of are you seeing more terminals to add? Are you talking about trying to fill in GDSO around terminals that you now have that you didn't previously? Maybe you could just explain that a little bit more.

Selman, it's Eric. I would say generally, M&A remains active, both in the terminal business as well as in the retail business. But we bought a lot of terminals relative to our total terminal count here in the last 6 months. And so I think there's a real opportunity to make sure that we're maximizing the value that we can get from each asset that we now have. And there will be some investment there, but it's also how we operate, how we operate differently, and it could be things that are around rail capacity and building out unit trade capacity. It's just about trying to provide flexibility around the existing assets that we have. And so I think there's a real opportunity for us to drive value just through the existing assets as well.

Got it. And then also, you talked about increased merchandising efforts. And I'm just wondering, has that rolled through out all your stores? Or should we expect that as an ongoing effort and to see benefits in future quarters as well?

Yes. It's Mark. Those efforts are spread across the entire portfolio. They're not new. I mean we have always tried to optimize our merchandising plan, optimize our SKUs, optimize our pricing and introduce new items as things change in the marketplace. So that's an ongoing effort. I think we continue to improve in that area. We continue to see the benefit of that through our execution. So that's something you -- that's an ongoing effort through the entire portfolio, and we'll continue to work away at that.

Understood. And then just the last one for me. Any update on your JV down in Houston and potentially more sites coming?

Selman, it’s Greg. Yes, I mean we continue to be encouraged by the JV. And I think it opens up another geography for us on the retail front, especially very large state and one of the largest convenience store markets in the U.S. And yes, I mean we hope to continue to grow that joint venture. As Eric mentioned, the retail M&A market continues to be pretty active. So we can continue to look at all opportunities in that geography to potentially hopefully expand that.

I will now turn the call back to Mr. Slifka for closing comments.

Thanks for joining us this morning. We look forward to keeping you updated on our progress. Thanks so much, everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.