Austin Harkness
Analyst · Barclays
Theresa, this is Austin. Let me maybe start in sort of reverse order answering your question. So starting with CPG, as you pointed out, as a result of the transaction, our margin profile has evolved higher. Whether to put stock in $0.177 and pegging that as the new water line, I think is probably it's directionally accurate in terms of direction and magnitude. But with precision, I think we've always said a couple of caveats. One, there's going to be quarter-to-quarter variability in our CPG numbers. And then second, as Karl shared in his prepared remarks, as a result of this acquisition, we're going to be breaking out and executing against our playbook on gross profit optimization and channel management. And so for those reasons, there might be movement in both our volume and CPG numbers independent of what the market might afford. And in terms of do we have a specific number in mind, historically, we haven't we don't target or solve for a CPG number. What we solve for as we've shared in the past, is fuel profit and sustained EBITDA growth over time. And so with that said, in terms of drivers, it might make sense to walk through the different geographic regions in our kind of newly expanded portfolio now and what's driving that? Because essentially, what you're going to -- what we found is Parkland had more street margin exposure in their portfolio than the legacy Sunoco business. And we've always said we were very specific and selective in where we want that street margin exposure in the geographies that Parkland had exposure to, we really like. So, starting with the U.S. business. I think the story is pretty familiar. Demand from an EIA standpoint has been flat to slightly off toward the end of the year on a year-over-year basis. Obviously, Sunoco outperformed those trends, given our deployment of growth capital. And then on the margin side, we continue to see a bullish margin environment buoyed by elevated breakevens. And so if demand moves one way or the other relative to trend, if it exceeds trend, we're well positioned to participate in that environment. If it underperforms trend, obviously, as we've seen in the past, you guys know that, that creates a pretty bullish margin environment for us to operate in. And so we feel really good about the U.S. business. And then turning to Canada, as we shared and Joe and Carl shared in the prepared remarks, we're really excited about the Canadian business and the closer we get to it, the more we like it. And that's for a couple of reasons. If you think about demand, from a trend standpoint, Canadian refined product demand tends to mirror that in the U.S. albeit on a relative basis, it's been stronger in recent years. So where the U.S. has been flat to slightly off on a year-over-year basis, Canada has been flat to slightly up over the last couple of years. And the margin environment is actually very strong. So where we have street margin exposure in Canada are markets that structurally look and feel very similar to the West Coast in the U.S. and the Northeast, where you have high barriers to entry, highly regulated markets, high real estate costs, high labor costs. And if you followed our story, you know that those things are highly correlated with strong margin environments. So we feel really good about the business. And overall, the Canadian business is going to be an outstanding addition to our portfolio. And then moving on to the Caribbean. Matt, we continue to be really excited about the Caribbean. I think it's important to remember that we talk about the Caribbean as if it's the singular monolithic region. The reality is we deliver refined products to 25 different jurisdictions in the region, 22 of which we have onshore business in. And so each of those are going to come with their own specific volume and demand -- or volume and margin profiles. What I will say largely is volume is very strong in the region. A lot of that's driven by markets where exposure like in South America, where, for example, a country like Guyana, where we're the major share player has had 20-plus percent GDP growth over the last 3 years. and Suriname is likely up next, given the offshore oil discoveries in both of those countries. But across the region, we've seen strong demand. And then on the margin side of things, the markets kind of fall into 1 of 2 categories. What we've seen is there's highly regulated pricing environments, which has actually had the result of stabilizing margins higher for all participants in those markets. And then there's the more kind of free market open competition markets where our share, our global supply chain and our scale allow us to enjoy and command a significant margin advantage over other participants in the market. So just to wrap it all up, I think overall, I think we've proven over the years the consistency and resiliency of the field distribution segment and our ability to grow EBITDA year-over-year. And now with our addition of the Canadian business and the Caribbean business, we're better positioned than ever in the segment to continue to grow EBITDA going forward.