Michael Kasbar
Analyst · Ben Nolan from Stifel
Sure, great and important question. So I'll try to, I'll try to be as clear as possible in my response. If you start with marine, of course, we all know we had a phenomenal year next year, which was impacted by a couple of things, honestly, one was tremendous amount of volatility, record prices, but also rising interest rates, and we're able to address that head on and more immediately in marine because as we've said, over and over again over the years is Marine is generally a spot business. So when I am I'm not doing it personally, but when we're quoting a customer, we can react to market conditions every day, every hour of the day. And of course, if interest rates are moving up, we can factor that into our thinking in our in our in our return hurdle rates etcetera on a very regular basis. In aviation, in a large part of aviation, commercial passenger cargo, etcetera most of that activity, very large percentage of that activity is under annual contract, a very large percentage of those annual contracts roll over on the first of July. Some of them in Europe are enrolling over this quarter, but a very large percentage rollover in July. So over the course of July 1, 2022, to June 30, of 2023, the margin is what the margin is right. As, as those contracts come due, and this higher interest rate environment, being focused, as we always are on returns, we're obviously, hyper focus on making sure that those returns don't deteriorate. And actually, we hopefully catch up a bit, as we're able to price the, the current interest rate into our return criteria and tried to drive higher markets. One of the reasons I mentioned on in my remarks, that volume may be tempered a little bit where we can't do that, in some cases, we may forego some volume upon renewal. And there's also the other lever is terms, right. It may not always be achieved by getting a higher cent per gallon number in a customer engagement, but that number can stay the same in some circumstances. And, and we may have tighter terms and therefore have a positive contribution to the interest line. So we can mix and match that way. So it's all about, increased acceptable level of returns in this interest rate environment. So, we've, we've, we've certainly raised the bar there, as rates have gone up. Land is a bit more of a mixed bag. Land, you've got some spot business, where, many parts of flyers are spot, we have seen our core margin per gallon and land, 2022 was higher than 2021. And first quarter of 2023 was higher than 2022. So we are in parts of that business able to achieve a higher margin. There's a part of that business, which is the retail gas station distribution, much of that is over contracts that spanned many, many years where we don't have the ability to go in and, and reprice on a on a regular basis, that that's a business where the way that we achieve the return that we need is higher environment has to be achieved by driving greater operating efficiencies. Right. So there are different levers for different parts of the business. But overall, we've clearly, we clearly gotten the the offset in marine, we have a chance to get some higher margins in aviation the second half of the year. And then obviously, same to same goes for most of the land business except for that retail segment.