CrossAmerica (CAPL) Q1 2026 Earnings Transcript

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Date

Thursday, May 7, 2026 at 9:00 a.m. ET

Call participants

• Chief Executive Officer and President — Maura Topper
• Interim Chief Financial Officer — Jon Benfield

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Takeaways

• Adjusted EBITDA -- $35.1 million, up 45% year over year, representing a first-quarter record.
• Net Income -- $10.7 million, reversing a net loss of $7.1 million from the prior year.
• Retail Segment Gross Profit -- $74.3 million, an 18% increase, driven by higher motor fuel margins and merchandise sales.
• Retail Fuel Margin -- $0.437 per gallon, compared to $0.339 per gallon in the prior year; cited as benefiting from “better sourcing costs and a favorable retail market.”
• Retail Segment Same-Store Volume -- Down 7%, despite higher gross profit, with company-operated locations down 4% and commission sites down 14%.
• Merchandise Margin Percentage -- 29.7%, up 180 basis points due to “better merchandise mix and better execution,” resulting in merchandise gross profit of $27 million, an 8% increase.
• Wholesale Segment Gross Profit -- $23.3 million, down from $26.7 million due to “decline in fuel volume and rental income.”
• Wholesale Motor Fuel Gross Profit -- $14.5 million, down 8%, attributed to a 3% drop in margin per gallon and a 6% decline in volume.
• Asset Sales -- 16 properties sold for $12.7 million in proceeds, primarily used for debt reduction.
• Credit Facility Balance -- Reduced by $10 million quarter over quarter; leverage ratio decreased to 3.35x from 4.27x.
• Operating Expenses -- $56.4 million, declining by $2.4 million, representing the sixth consecutive quarterly decline; retail and wholesale segments down 3% and 10%, respectively.
• Distribution Coverage Ratio -- 1.07x for the quarter (up from 0.46x), and 1.25x on a trailing 12-month basis.
• Distribution -- $0.525 per unit paid for the quarter.
• Growth and Sustaining Capex -- $3.4 million total with $2.1 million for growth and $1.3 million for sustaining investments.
• Lease Amendment -- Getty lease covering 106 sites extended by 10 years to April 2037, leading to a $56 million increase in finance lease obligations on the balance sheet.
• Interest Expense -- Decreased from $12.8 million to $10.8 million and cash interest declined from $12.4 million to $10.3 million.
• Fixed Rate Swaps -- Over 55% of credit facility at a blended fixed rate of 3.4%; effective rate on facility at quarter end was 5.6%.
• Company-Operated Store Count -- 340 at quarter-end, down by 12 sequentially and 36 year over year, attributed to asset sales and class-of-trade conversions.

Summary

Management emphasized a disciplined approach to portfolio optimization, utilizing class-of-trade conversions and selective real estate asset divestitures to reinforce cash flow and balance sheet flexibility. The organization highlighted ongoing margin strength in retail fuel despite macro price volatility, attributing gains to rapid cost transfers and a rational competitive environment in key markets. A major lease extension, now accounted for as a finance lease, altered the liability structure but had negligible impact on quarterly results.

• Retail segment investments in food operations and merchandise mix were cited as supporting same-store sales growth and margin expansion, with segment expense controls also contributing to operating leverage.
• Wholesale segment outperformed national benchmarks in same-store volume decline, but total segment figures reflected contract attrition due to ongoing portfolio strategy.
• Management described the balance sheet strategy as centered on maintaining leverage near 4x while continuing to fund growth, optimize assets, and sustain distributions.
• Quarterly results reflected lower exposure to non-core rent and legal expenses, confirming the company’s ongoing focus on reducing non-operating costs.
• Recent asset sales and targeted reductions in site count are expected to moderate in pace relative to 2025, but management indicated a continued pipeline of optimization for the remainder of the year.

Industry glossary

• Class-of-Trade Conversion: The process of reclassifying a business location from one selling model (e.g., wholesale supply) to another (e.g., company-operated retail or commission-operated site), affecting revenue streams, cost structure, and segment reporting.
• Finance Lease: A lease arrangement recognized on the balance sheet as an asset and a liability, reflecting the economic substance of ownership rather than operating lease treatment.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Maura Topper, CEO and President; and Jon Benfield, Interim Chief Financial Officer. We'll start off the call today with Maura providing some opening comments and an overview of CrossAmerica's operational performance for the first quarter, and then Jon 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 the 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 Maura.

Maura Topper: Thank you, Randy. Thank you to everyone joining us this morning. We appreciate you making the time to be with us today. I would like to lead off by saying that I'm excited and grateful to be with you today in my first call as CEO. Stepping into the CEO role over the past 2 months has been both humbling and energizing. I'm grateful for the opportunity to lead this organization and to keep learning alongside our team every day. I also want to take a moment to thank Charles Nifong for his care and thoughtfulness as our CEO over the past 6 years. We have become a larger and stronger organization under his leadership.

I have learned much from him over the years that we have worked together, and I deeply appreciate his mentorship. I'm also happy to introduce Jon Benfield as our Interim Chief Financial Officer, who will be going through the quarterly financials in more detail. Jon has been with the partnership since 2012 and has worked in various capacities in our accounting and finance team over the years. Jon's deep familiarity with the partnership makes him exceptionally well suited for this role, and I'm glad to have him with us on the call today. We are working with a strong foundation here at CrossAmerica.

Over the past few years, we have been deliberately shaping the partnership, increasing our exposure to retail operations and retail fuel pricing through our class of trade conversion activities and utilizing targeted real estate asset sales to generate capital to reinvest in the business. These portfolio optimization efforts have positioned CrossAmerica to perform well across a range of economic environments as I think our first quarter results demonstrate. Our team remains focused on ensuring the competitiveness of our sites in the markets where we operate with continued investment to drive growth and enhance the durability of our earnings.

The result is an organization that is both disciplined and flexible and one that we believe is well positioned to capitalize on the opportunities ahead. If you turn to Slide 4, I will review some of the operating highlights of our first quarter. Overall, we had a strong first quarter, generating $35 million of adjusted EBITDA, a record amount for the first quarter and a 45% increase when compared to the first quarter of 2025. We benefited from strong gross profits from our retail segment, driven by motor fuel margins and merchandise sales and focused expense control across our operations.

For the first quarter of 2026, our retail segment gross profit increased 18% to $74.3 million compared to $63.2 million in the first quarter of 2025. The increase was driven by an increase in motor fuel gross profit due to higher retail fuel margins for the quarter compared to the prior year, along with strong growth in merchandise gross profit. For the quarter, our retail fuel margin on a cents per gallon basis was $0.437 per gallon compared to $0.339 per gallon in the first quarter of last year.

We experienced a strong start to the year on a fuel margin cents per gallon basis during a relatively benign pricing environment in January and February, helped by better sourcing costs and a favorable retail market conditions. As we entered March and continuing into April, we, along with the broader industry, have experienced a generally rising but also very volatile price environment. Historically, that type of rising fuel environment would have resulted in fuel margin compression, though with pockets of volatility providing margin opportunities.

During this period of rising prices, however, fuel markets have generally remained rational with retailers quickly transmitting their increased costs to the pump, providing a practical floor to fuel margins during this period, which benefited our results. The corollary to our fuel margin cents per gallon results is obviously fuel volume. On a same-store basis, our retail segment reported a 7% decline in volume year-over-year, though with fuel gross profit ultimately $8.7 million higher than last year as a result of our strong cents per gallon results. Our team remains focused on ensuring our retail locations are competitively priced to balance long-term customer loyalty with the day-to-day volatility we are currently experiencing.

Our volume results differed between the two classes of trade in our retail segment, company-operated locations and commission locations, which I'll spend a few moments talking about. Same-store volume at our company-operated locations was down approximately 4% for the quarter, with January and February experiencing less of a decline and March, a higher decline as we and the industry began to feel the impact of the higher fuel price environment we find ourselves in. This volume performance is relatively in line with reported industry averages for the first quarter of 2026 from the sources we review. For our commission class of trade, our commission same-store site volume was down approximately 14% for the quarter.

As we have noted for the last 2 quarters, the decline was due in part to our decision at select sites to adjust our pricing strategy to better balance volume and margin while ensuring competitiveness within our markets whenever possible. Our commission location volume was also impacted by the overall volume decline in the market. Moving from our retail fuel operations to our store sales. Our first quarter 2026 results continued a series of important positive performance trends in this critical area of our business.

On a same-store basis, our overall inside sales were up 2% for the first quarter compared to the prior year, with growth in the areas of packaged beverages, other tobacco products and food, both branded and proprietary. As we've noted in a number of our recent quarterly calls, during 2024 and 2025, we made important investments to expand our food operations at locations across our company-operated footprint with those investments contributing to both our results and customer traffic at this point in their life cycle. The first quarter of 2026 was also a high watermark for the partnership for our merchandise margin percentage.

We reported a merchandise margin gross profit percentage of 29.7%, up 180 basis points from the prior year. We benefited from a better merchandise mix and better execution that improved margins on some of our core categories. This includes such promotions around breakfast sandwiches and chicken tenders that we ran during the quarter. A good example of our team leaning into growth, a focus on execution and providing value to our customers. The strong sales and margin percentage results contributed to an increase in our merchandise gross profit of 8% to $27 million. Jon will touch on this more in his comments, but we also had a very positive quarter focusing on expense control in our retail locations.

Our results in this area [ took ] great amount of focus from our operations team as well as technology-assisted improvements that are benefiting our operations. Closing out my comments on the retail segment, we finished the quarter with 340 company-operated retail sites, down 12 sites from the fourth quarter of 2025 and 36 sites relative to the first quarter of last year due to our asset sale and class of trade conversion activities. We remain up 85 locations from the end of 2022 when we began our strategic activities to increase our retail operations.

While the pace of our class of trade conversions has slowed in recent quarters, we continue to focus on maximizing the value of each site through class of trade conversions while focusing on being in retail in the right markets. In the period since the quarter end, we have benefited from continued strong fuel margins through April in spite of the rising price environment, so with volumes experiencing more pressure than our first quarter results. Moving on to the Wholesale segment. For the first quarter of 2026, our wholesale segment generated gross profit of $23.3 million compared to $26.7 million in the first quarter of 2025.

The decrease was primarily driven by a decline in fuel volume and rental income, primarily driven by our class of trade change activities. As a reminder, our wholesale segment rental income declines when we convert sites to our retail class of trade and when we divest locations. Wholesale segment fuel volumes are also impacted by conversions to the retail segment, though less so by divestitures as we look to maintain a supply relationship with most sites we are divesting. Our wholesale motor fuel gross profit decreased 8% to $14.5 million in the first quarter of 2026 from $15.8 million in the first quarter of 2025.

This was driven by a 3% decline in fuel margin per gallon and a 6% decline in volume for the quarter. Our first quarter fuel margin of $0.094 per gallon was a generally strong quarter as we continue to benefit from our fuel sourcing efforts. With regards to our volume performance, our same-store volume in the wholesale segment was down approximately 2% year-over-year, with the remaining decline primarily due to the net loss of independent dealer contracts. Our same-store volume performance in the first quarter of 2026 continues our outperformance relative to national benchmarks that we have seen for several quarters in a row now for our Wholesale segment.

I'll close out my comments with a few words on the asset sale portion of our portfolio optimization activities during the first quarter. We continued with our real estate rationalization work during the first quarter, selling 16 properties and realizing approximately $12.7 million in proceeds that we primarily used to pay down debt. As we discussed in February, 2025 was the biggest year ever in regards to property sales for the partnership. We are continuing our targeted real estate sales efforts in 2026, and we continue to have a strong pipeline for the balance of the year, though at a lower level than 2025.

Jon will touch on this more during his comments, but I did want to mention that we reduced our credit facility balance by approximately $10 million during the quarter and decreased our credit facility defined leverage ratio from the prior year. These both highlight our disciplined approach to our balance sheet in conjunction with our strong first quarter. The first quarter was a solid quarter for the partnership with a material increase in our EBITDA versus the prior year and solid operational results across the business. Our priorities remain paying down debt, generating strong and durable cash flow for our unitholders and investing in the quality and competitiveness of our network.

And I believe our first quarter results reflect exactly that continued focus. Before I turn it over to Jon, I want to be sure to thank our team members around the country for their hard work and dedication this quarter. We navigated the winter months in a volatile fuel price environment together, and our results speak for themselves. Our organization succeeds because of our people, and we thank all of you for your hard work. With that, I will turn it over to Jon for a more detailed financial review.

Jonathan Benfield: Thank you, Maura. First of all, I am humbled and grateful for the opportunity to serve as Interim CFO, and I'm excited to work more closely with the broader organization in this expanded role. Now if you would please turn to Slide 6, I'll go over our first quarter financial results. We reported net income of $10.7 million and adjusted EBITDA of $35.1 million for the first quarter of 2026 compared to a net loss of $7.1 million and adjusted EBITDA of $24.3 million for the first quarter of 2025. Adjusted EBITDA increased 45% or $10.8 million year-over-year.

Net income increased primarily due to the increase in adjusted EBITDA and a decline in interest expense from $12.8 million for the first quarter of 2025 to $10.8 million for the first quarter of 2026. Net income also benefited from lower impairment charges included in depreciation, amortization and accretion expense. As I mentioned, adjusted EBITDA increased significantly compared to the prior year period. As Maura noted in her comments, this increase was driven by a series of positive factors across the business, including an increase in motor fuel margin per gallon and an increase in merchandise gross profit in the retail segment as well as a decline in operating expenses.

Our distributable cash flow for the first quarter of 2026 was $21.5 million, more than double over the $9.1 million for the first quarter of 2025. 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 credit facility during the period due to our strong results combined with our asset sales. Our distribution coverage ratio for the first quarter of 2026 was 1.07x compared to 0.46x for the same period of 2025.

For the trailing 12 months, our distribution coverage ratio was 1.25x compared to 1.04x for the trailing 12 months ended March 31, 2025. During the first quarter of 2026, 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 first quarter of 2026 of $56.4 million, a $2.4 million decrease year-over-year and our sixth consecutive quarter of declining operating expenses across the organization. Retail segment operating expenses for the first quarter declined $1.7 million or 3% and wholesale segment operating expenses declined by $0.7 million or 10%. In our Retail segment, our average segment site count was down approximately 4% year-over-year.

On a same-store, store-level basis, operating expenses in our retail segment were down approximately 3% for the first quarter of 2026 compared to the first quarter of 2025. The decline was primarily driven by reduced store-level employment costs as we remain focused on efficient staffing in our stores as well as continued reductions in repairs and maintenance spending year-over-year at both our company-operated and commissioned class of trade locations due to realized ongoing efficiencies in our maintenance operations.

As we have touched on during the 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 a 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 $0.7 million or 10% for the quarter.

This decline was driven primarily by a 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 $6.5 million, a $1.2 million decline year-over-year, primarily driven by lower legal fees and equity compensation expense. We remain focused across the organization on efficient expense management at our locations as well as 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. Moving to the next slide.

We spent a total of $3.4 million on capital expenditures during the first quarter with $2.1 million of that total being growth-related capital expenditures and $1.3 million of that being sustaining capital expenditures. The decline in sustaining capital expenditures versus the prior year and the 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 assets controlled site count. Regarding our growth capital spending, we remain focused on our company-operated locations, especially in food-related investments that will contribute to our merchandise sales and margin results.

One additional item I wanted to touch on is that we entered into an amendment of our lease with Getty in January of this year that covers 106 of our leased sites and extends the term by 10 years to April 2037. The amendment triggered a reassessment of our lease accounting, which resulted in us accounting for this lease fully as a finance lease. While the economics overall are not all that different, the change in accounting will result in $3 million of the rent payments under this lease being accounted for as principal and interest, whereas previously, that $3 million was accounted for as rent expense.

For the same reason, we will have higher interest expense on lease financing obligations going forward, although the impact to the quarter was negligible. Lastly, our finance lease obligations on the balance sheet increased $56 million from the December 31, 2025, balance. Turning to our balance sheet. The asset sale activities that Maura noted in her comments helped us reduce our credit facility balance by approximately $10 million during the quarter. The decrease in our balance, along with the gains on sale generated from our asset sales resulted in a decrease in our credit facility defined leverage ratio to 3.35x compared to 4.27x as of March 31, 2025.

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 first quarter of 2026. Our cash interest declined from $12.4 million in the first quarter of 2025 to $10.3 million in the first quarter of 2026. 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 credit facility at the end of the first quarter was 5.6%. In conclusion, the partnership has started the year with a strong first quarter and with the portfolio positioned for continued success as we move deeper into 2026. Our strong results, along with our asset sales, enabled us to reduce our debt by $10 million this quarter while also positioning our portfolio to generate durable and consistent cash flows into the future.

We are looking forward to the summer driving season, maintaining a strong balance sheet and generating value for our unitholders. With that, we will open it up for questions.

Operator: [Operator Instructions]

Maura Topper: As it appears we don't have any questions coming in at the moment. We want to thank everybody for joining us here this morning and for your interest in the partnership. If you do have any follow-up questions, please feel free to contact us, and have a great day. Thank you.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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