APC

Greetings, and welcome to the ARKO Petroleum Corp First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. You may be placed in the question queue at any time by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Ashleigh McDermott. Ashley, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to ARKO Petroleum Corp.'s First Quarter 2026 earnings conference call and webcast. On today's call are Arie Kotler, chairman, president, and chief executive officer, and Jordan Mann, chief financial officer. Our earnings press release and quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the first quarter of 2026, as filed with the SEC, are available on our website at www.arkopetroleum.com. During our call today, unless otherwise stated, management will compare results to the same period in 2025. Before we begin, please note that all first quarter 2026 financial information is unaudited. During this call, management may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Please review the Forward-Looking and Cautionary Statements section at the end of our first quarter 2026 earnings press release for various factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements made during our call today. All forward-looking statements made during this call reflect our current views with respect to future events, ARKO Petroleum Corp is under no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements made on this call, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law. On this call, management will share operating results on both a GAAP and a non-GAAP basis.

Descriptions of those non-GAAP financial measures that we use, such as adjusted EBITDA, discretionary cash flow, net debt, and the ratio of net debt to adjusted EBITDA, and reconciliations to these measures to our results as reported in accordance with GAAP, are detailed in our earnings press release or in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. Additionally, management will share profit measures for our individual business segments along with fuel contribution, which is calculated as fuel revenue less fuel costs and excludes intercompany charges by our GPMP segment. Now I would like to turn the call over to Arie.

Thank you, Ashleigh, and thank you all for joining. Before we begin, I want to emphasize the tremendous opportunities we believe lay ahead for ARKO Petroleum Corp. Our historically consistent growth, strong financial discipline, and cash generative platform uniquely position us to capitalize on market trends and deliver superior value to our investors. With a proven track record of resilience, we remain confident in our ability to further expand our business and continuously enhance shareholders' return. We are excited to share that in the first quarter, APC delivered strong year-over-year growth in adjusted EBITDA of approximately 18%, a testament to the power of our business model. We achieved this performance during significant volatility in fuel costs, further highlighting the resilience of our platform and our ability to generate value for shareholders even during difficult market conditions. Our results this quarter underscore two key characteristics of our platform.

First, the stability of the cost-plus margin profile attached to approximately 85% of our gallons distributed. APC structure, combined with its negotiated prompt pay discount from our supplier partners on the higher cost of fuel, contributed to higher margin in our wholesale segment. Second, our performance highlights the strength and discipline of our dedicated team that executed impressively through daily volatility, delivering strong results related to the roughly 15% of our gallons distributed that are not cost-plus, namely, gallons sold in our fleet fueling segment and at our consignment agent location in our wholesale segment. The team continued to monitor events in the Middle East and maintain pricing discipline, enabling it to capture additional margin on these gallons.

Our strong performance this quarter demonstrates the robust asset light and cash flow generative nature of our platform that attracted quality investors to our successful initial public offering in February. The capital raise allow us to meaningfully reduce debt and strengthen our balance sheet, positioning us well for growth. While during the roadshow, we expected net leverage below 2.5 times, as of quarter end, our net leverage was even lower at 2.1 times. With this low net leverage and liquidity of approximately $731 million, we are uniquely positioned to seize expansion opportunities both through new to industry build in our fleet fueling segments and through discipline accretive M&A in our wholesale segments that we expect will drive long-term shareholder value.

Our financial flexibility is a significant competitive advantage in the highly fragmented wholesale and fleet fuel distribution markets. We are confident that our strategic vision, operational excellence, and disciplined capital allocation will enable us to capture additional market share. Looking at our year-over-year growth for the quarter, we delivered increased operating income across all 3 of our segments. In our wholesale segment, cents per gallon increase in Q1, mainly benefiting from greater margin capture in our consignment agent location as our team navigated the volatility in fuel costs and to a lesser extent, an increase in prompt pay discount on the higher cost of fuel. Similarly, wholesale segment gallon grew year-over-year as the wholesale segments benefited from incremental sites that our parent company, ARKO Corp, converted from retail sites to dealer locations as part of dealerization.

Going into 2026, ARKO dealerizations continue to be a tailwind for our business as ARKO retail sites continue to convert to dealer locations in our wholesale segment. In the first quarter of 2026, we converted 41 ARKO retail sites to dealer locations, bringing total converted locations since the middle of 2024 to 450. Further, there are approximately 75 additional sites committed either under letter of intent, under contract, or already converted since quarter end, and we expect that this plus additional conversion will be completed by the end of 2026. I remind you that the margin profile in our wholesale segment is typically a few cents above the margin from our sales to the ARKO retail sites. As a result, we expect the continued conversion of these sites will improve our contribution overall, as well as providing additional rental income from our dealers.

On M&A, our team continues to work on potential transactions in the pipeline, as well as increasing the pipeline of future M&A. I will note that I believe our IPO has given us even more exposure as potential acquirer, as we have seen even more opportunities since our IPO. Our fleet fueling segments also grew its operating income this quarter. Disciplined pricing and the ability to capitalize on market volatility delivered higher cents per gallon. This was more pronounced in diesel, which make up to approximately 80% of our fleet fueling gallons. As planned, we continue to invest in this segment to add on to what is one of the largest cardlock platform in the country. We have made further progress on our target of 20 new-to-industry locations. We opened 1 location in the first quarter and have identified and are working on 17 additional locations.

We are only in May. We expect to continue adding to this segment as we like the low capital investments and mid-to-high teens expected return per location. On the dividend, due to the timing of our IPO, our initial dividend of $0.26 per share that we paid in April was in respect of the pro rata portion of the first quarter following our IPO. This pro rata portion is consistent with our annual target dividend rate of $2 per share. Our dividend for the second quarter is expected to be $0.50 per share to be paid after we release second quarter results. I will note that we view our dividend as a very attractive yield.

For illustrative purposes, based on the currently anticipated dividend rate, represent an 11%-10% dividend yield at a share price of $18.50-$19.50 per share. Our balance sheet remains strong, bolstered by our use of the profit from our IPO to reduce our outstanding debt, providing us with substantial liquidity to deploy capital on accretive projects such as wholesale M&A and building our new cardlock locations. With that, I will turn it over to Jordan to walk through our financial results and outlook.

Thank you, Ari. I also would like to thank you all for joining. As Ari mentioned, our first quarter results were impressive, showing growth across the platform. Turning to our first quarter results. Net income was $8.1 million for the quarter, up from $4.5 million for the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA was $36.4 million for the quarter, compared to $30.9 million for the prior year, an increase of approximately 18%. Turning to our wholesale segment. Wholesale fuel contribution increased 14.2% to $22.9 million in the quarter compared to $20 million in Q1 of 2025.

Wholesale gallons also increased by approximately 2.8% to 233.9 million gallons, and fuel margin was approximately $0.098 per gallon for Q1, up from $0.088 per gallon in the prior year. Moving to our fleet fueling segment. Fleet fueling fuel contribution increased 9.4% to $16.7 million for the quarter, compared to $15.3 million last year. Fleet fueling gallons decreased 3.2% to 34 million gallons compared to 35.1 million gallons. Margin expanded $0.057 per gallon to $0.493 per gallon, more than offsetting the volume decline. Fleet fueling margins remain strong and have continued to reflect the durable cash flow profile of this business. Moving to our GPMP segment.

GPMP fuel contribution from related party locations, that is ARKO retail sites, was $11 million for the quarter compared to $10.6 million last year. GPMP related party gallons totaled 182.7 million gallons compared to 211.7 million gallons in the prior year, which reflects the shift of gallons from ARKO retail sites to wholesale through the active conversion of ARKO retail sites to dealer locations, as well as a decline in gallons at ARKO retail sites. As a reminder, margin in this segment was at fixed $0.05 per gallon through December 31, 2025, and has been since fixed at $0.06 per gallon. Discretionary cash flow for the quarter was approximately $25 million, up from approximately $17.1 million in the prior year.

We remain in line with our expectations for the full year. Net cash provided by operating activities for the year was approximately $6.6 million. Looking at the balance sheet, our balance sheet is strong. Following our successful IPO, we used $206.7 million of the net proceeds to reduce debt and enhance liquidity. The transaction positions us with a stronger capital structure and greater financial flexibility to execute our strategy. As of quarter end, our total debt net was $184.5 million, and our net debt was approximately $313.5 million. Our leverage ratio of net debt to adjusted EBITDA was approximately 2.1 times. Our ratio of total debt net to net income was 5.1 times.

We remain comfortable with our leverage ratio. We believe we have more than enough liquidity to deliver our strategy and continue to build momentum with our capital initiatives mentioned above. Turning to 2026 guidance. As the team continues to execute through 2026, we are encouraged by our first quarter results, which underpin the historically stable and consistent cash flow generation of the platform. Despite our impressive first quarter performance, we are mindful that there is plenty of 2026 to come. We are not revising our full year guidance disclosed in March 2026. We currently expect full year adjusted EBITDA and discretionary cash flow of approximately $156 million and approximately $110 million, respectively. With that, I'll hand the call back over to the operator to begin Q&A.

Our first question today is coming from Josh Silverstein from UBS. Your line is now live.

Good morning, guys. I wanted to see if we can get a sense as to how you're seeing customer behavior, you know, into 2Q. You know, clearly, you know, prices have been volatile but rising steadily through the quarter. Just curious if you've seen any sort of pullback in, you know, gallons sold, you know, are customers going more frequently? Any sort of update there would be great.

Yes, good morning, Josh. We don't see it customers probably putting off at the moment. Just to remind everybody, you know, one of the reason that you saw a small decline in gallons in Q1 was really related to weather, not really related to the volatility. Weather, just to remind everybody, weather at the end of January and through February was not great, and that would cause maybe some of the gallons to decline at the beginning. We start to see gallons actually improving. To answer your last question, yes, we see people coming more often, because right now with the price of fuel, you know, at the moment.

Yeah. Thanks, Arie. Just on the fleet fueling side, you know, you're on track to add the 20 locations this year. You mentioned the one that was put in place in March, 17 under progress. Can you just talk a little bit more about the timeline of this? Is there a batch that comes, you know, online at one time, or is it kind of gradual throughout the course of the back half of this year that most of these are to come online? Thanks.

Yes, we opened the first one. As I mentioned earlier, we already have 18 identified so far. Usually will take a little bit of time. It's just, I'll call it the licensing and planning that usually will take a little bit of time. You know, likely you'll see the benefit in 2027. That's what we mentioned, you know, during basically our IPO. We mentioned that the majority of it we'll see in 2027. The plan is to start to open them as they become available. I believe they will become available during, you know, more towards Q3, Q4. That's when you're gonna start to see us opening more and more of them.

Like I said, I mean, the investment is this year, and, you know, the results will start to actually take place in 2027. That's something that was planned ahead of time, by the way. This is not something new. This is what we planned when we actually, you know, during the IPO.

Got it. Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Thank you. As a reminder, that's star one to be placed into question queue. One moment please, while we poll for further questions. Once again, that's star one to be placed into question queue. Our next question today is coming from Selman Akyol from Stifel. Your line is now live.

Thank you. Good morning. Congratulations on the nice results. Can you just talk a little bit about the acquisition outlook in the more volatile commodity environment? Are you seeing sellers' expectations get more reasonable? Are you know, seeing any changes in any of that?

I don't see any changes at the moment. Like I said, it's too early. Remember, we are in this environment only for the past 60 days. I don't see anything change other than with our liquidity, you know, after the IPO, you know, we start to see more interest, you know, maybe coming towards us, you know, given our liquidity and given that, you know, this is You know, we are very, very active in the marketplace right now, but nope, nothing really changed.

Okay. I just wanna clarify on the question about sort of consumer behavior. You said you see them coming in more often, so I assume no change to sort of gallons sold. They're coming in more often, filling up fewer gallons at a time, but offsetting that with more frequent visits?

Yeah. That's that's accurate. Going back again, you know, I think it's a little bit earlier. Like I said, we saw the trend actually going up in Q1, you know, since I'll call it since January and February. March was better, April was better, like I said, I think it's too early to tell. There is no question, Selman Akyol, that if price of fuel will stay above $4 a gallon at the pump, you know, right now it's close to $4.50, if the price of fuel will stay towards the summer at $4.50, there is no question that you're gonna see a decrease in gallons. That will be, you know, very well offset by the prompt pay discount that we are receiving because of that.

Got it. Just turning to fleet fueling, and again, nice results. We think about it, and you're on track for your number of stores this year. Two questions really. Number one is, once you bring a site on, how long does it really take to ramp up to get to the economics that you expect? Then number two, as you think about it longer term, should we be thinking, you know, is 20 the right number every year? Is it smaller than that? Any thoughts on that when you think about that longer term?

To answer your first question, typically it take anywhere between, I'll call it 6-12 months to ramp up. So, you know, we'll call it 9 months just to be on the safe side. And if you ask Arie Kotler the question if 20 is the right number, I think 40 is the right number if you ask Arie Kotler. You know, the team may push me for time. I think 20 is the right number. Like I said, we are only in May, just the beginning of May, we already identified 18 for 2026. I feel very confident that 20, it's not about the right number, it's something that we committed, and we will actually stand behind our commitment. No question about that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Arie Kotler for any further closing comments.

Thank you, operator. I would like to end the call by thanking our dedicated employees that executed diligently through a volatile macro environment to deliver strong results. It is through their efforts that we continue to drive the business forward, serving our customers and creating value to our shareholders. Once again, a big thank you to our shareholders for their continued support in our unique company. We look forward to continuing to execute on the growth strategies we outlined at the time of our IPO to support stable cash flow generation and a healthy dividend. We appreciate everyone joining us this morning. Thank you very much.

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time. Have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.