Alimentation Couche-Tard A Stock

[Interpreted] Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Alain Bouchard, Founder and Executive Chairman, of the Board of Alimentation Couche-Tard. It is my pleasure to welcome you to our annual shareholder meeting. Here with me this morning, I have Melanie Charbonneau, Chief of Legal Affairs and Corporate Secretary; Alex Miller, President and CEO; and Filipe Da Silva, Chief Financial Officer. I now declare the meeting open. In accordance to the corporation's bylaws as Executive Chairman of the Board, I will chair this meeting. And Ms. Melanie Charbonneau will act as Secretary as she is the Chief of Legal Affairs and Corporate Secretary. I will now ask Melanie to present the agenda and the procedures of the meeting.

[Interpreted] Thank you, and good morning to all. The agenda of the meeting includes one, the receipt of our audited consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year ended April 26, 2026, together with the auditor's report; two, the appointment of our independent auditor and the authorization that the Board of Directors has to set its remuneration; three, the election of directors of the corporation for an advisory vote on our executive compensation approach and five, the review of and vote on 3 shareholder proposals. This will be followed by corporate presentations by Alex, Filipe and El as well as a question period. The Chairman will present all proposals. They will not need to be seconded.

Only holders of record as of July 8, 2026, and their duly appointed proxies who are registered with our transfer agent and have obtained a control number prior to this meeting may participate, ask questions and vote at the meeting. All other persons may attend the meeting as guests. Voting is now open on all items of the agenda. Voting on all items is made using a single electronic ballot. You can vote until the Chairman closes voting. We encourage you to vote as soon as you can. If you have already voted on the platform and you vote again, it will change your previous vote. If you voted by proxy before the meeting, you do not need to vote again unless you wish to change your vote. All duly registered shareholders and proxy holders may ask questions during the meeting.

There are 2 ways to proceed. Questions can be submitted in writing during the meeting using the dialogue box in the message function or by phone, by leaving your name, telephone number and the subject of your question using the dialogue box in the messaging function to be contacted by telephone during the question period. Questions regarding items on the agenda will be addressed at the time of the discussion on the relevant matters. Questions of any other topic will be addressed at the end of the meeting during question period. So that as many questions as possible are answered, shareholders and proxy holders are asked to be brief and concise and to address only 1 topic or question.

Questions from multiple shareholders on the same topic or that are otherwise related will be grouped together, summarized and answered together. If we do not have the time to address all -- address all questions during the meeting, the corporation will publish on its website the questions, which we did not have time to answer with the corporation's response. As noted in the management information circular, the corporation reserves the right to not address questions that are inappropriate repetitive not related to the business of the meeting or that concern nonpublic information. We advise you that some statements we'll make today may constitute forward-looking statements issued with the usual provisions. We refer to the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements in our management proxy circular. We shall now proceed.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Melanie. I now appoint the TSX Trust Company as scrutineers for this meeting. We're represented today here by is Costin Bose and Ms. Jenny Kokam. The Secretary has informed me that we have received confirmation from TSX Trust Company that it has sent the documents regarding the meeting to all shareholders of record on the corporation's books as of the record date. I've instructed the secretary to keep these documents in the corporation's records with the affidavit from the TSX Trust Company, confirming that they have indeed been sent to Coustas shareholders. The scrutineer has submitted to me its report on attendance at the meeting. showing that a quorum has been reached. I ask the Secretary to attach the scrutineers' report to the minutes of this meeting. Accordingly, I declare this meeting duly convened and legally constituted to conduct the business for which it was called.

The first item on our agenda here today regards receipt of the corporation's financial statements. I now submit for receipt -- the consolidated financial statements of Alimentation Couche-Tard and its subsidiaries for the fiscal year ended April 26, 2026 as well as the auditor's report on these financial statements. Melanie, have we received any questions on this matter?

[Interpreted] No, we have not received any questions on this matter.

[Interpreted] Thank you. The next item on our agenda regards the nomination of the auditor for the current year. And giving the Board of Directors authorization to set its remuneration. As indicated in the circular, the corporation recommends the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers until the next Annual Meeting of Alimentation Couche-Tard. I propose that PricewaterhouseCoopers be appointed auditor of the corporation and that the Board of Directors be authorized to set the auditor's compensation. Melanie, have we received any questions on this matter.

[Interpreted] No, we have not received any questions on this matter.

[Interpreted] Thank you. As indicated in the circular, the Board of Directors has set the number of directors to be elected today at 16. Biographical notes on the candidates are included in the management proxy circular made available to our shareholders. The 16 candidates nominated for election are as follows: Louis Bernie Eric Boyko, Marie demo, Janis Fields, Eric Varta, sartan Harper, Melanco, Mario Selamat Monique Leon, Alex Miller, Real Louis Teche and myself, Alan Bucha. Each candidate has indicated their desire to serve as a Director of the corporation I move that each of these individuals be elected as a Director of the corporation. -- until the close of the next Annual Shareholders Meeting or until a successor is duly elected or appointed Furthermore, I confirm that the corporation has not received any notice to nominate a person for election to the Board of Directors at this meeting within the time period provided under the corporation's advance notice bylaw. Melanie, have we received any questions on this matter.

[Interpreted] No, we have not received any questions on this matter.

[Interpreted] Thank you. As mentioned previously, the voting is now open on all items of the agenda. The next item on the agenda is the advisory vote on the corporation's executive compensation approach -- the Board of Directors is confident that -- the corporation's performance-based approach is well aligned with our shareholders' long-term interest. The result of the vote will not be binding on the board. However, the board will take account of this result and of all other comments from shareholders. The full text of the advisory resolution appears in the management proxy circular. I move the adoption of the advisory resolution concerning the corporation's executive compensation practices as set out in the management proxy circular. Melanie, do we have any questions on this matter?

[Interpreted] No, we have not received any questions on this matter.

[Interpreted] The next item on the agenda concerns the 3 shareholder proposals received this year from the fans. These proposals relate to: number one, shareholder engagement to format of annual meetings. and three, advisory vote on environmental policies. The full text of these 3 proposals and the corporation's response can be found in Appendix D of the Management Information Circular. And we invite our shareholders to vote against these 3 proposals. Melanie, do we have any questions on this subject on this topic?

[Interpreted] No, we have not received any questions on this topic.

[Interpreted] We have addressed all items on the agenda. The vote will close shortly. If you have not yet entered your vote, please do so immediately. I remind you that the items to be voted on are as follows: one, the appointment of the auditor and to authorize the Board of Directors to set its remuneration. Two, the election of directors; three, an advisory vote on our executive compensation policy and for 3 shareholder proposals. The vote is now closed. I've received the scrutineer's report on the voting results, and I confirm the following. I confirm that the resolution on the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers has been adopted. I confirm that each of the candidates nominated for election to the Board of Directors have been elected.

I confirm that the corporation's approach to executive compensation has been adopted and I confirm that the 3 shareholder proposals were rejected. Details of the results will be available shortly on the corporation's website and on SEDAR+. With the legal portion of the meeting now completed, it is time to move on to the corporation's presentations. I therefore declare the formal portion of this meeting closed.

As I look back on the past year, I do so, first and foremost, with gratitude and pride for our people. I recognize their commitment, how they continue to serve customers on a daily basis and for the discipline that has guided us through a challenging environment. This year, once again, we have shown the resilience and the strength of our business model and the resilience of what we do every day. The world around us remains uncertain. Geopolitical tensions persist, and many consumers continue to feel pressure on their everyday purchases and budgets. And yet even in times like these, I am reminded why this business has always mattered to me so much.

Retail is at its core, a people business. It relies on trust, close relationships and always being there for customers and communities. Since the opening of our first store in Laval, I've always believed that we have had to maintain basic fundamentals. Is the store clean and ready? Our customers greeted warmly? Did we make their visit just a little easier? Those questions still guide us today and are at the heart, the core of our customer promise, which is to be fast, friendly, customer-ready and embody compelling values. This is how we continue to deliver on our promises 1 store, 1 interaction at a time. As we've grown, our principles have remained central to our success. Best decisions are made so that we remain as close to the customer as possible. This belief is what is at the heart of our decentralized operating model.

Local teams understand their customers and their communities the best. It is by empowering people to act and giving people support and resources necessary that we can build a resilient and successful company, and this is how we've done so for decades. You can also see this approach reflected in a way in which our leadership team has refined the company's strategic focus this year. We emphasize what we do the best. Core was more. We avoid unnecessary complexities and continue to invest thoughtfully where real value is created. In doing this, we can continue to serve our customers today while capturing growth opportunities tomorrow.

This said, the thing I'm most proud of is our people. Across our network, I see committed teams who take ownership, who care deeply about their work and who step up for customers and communities every single day. Our stores are part of the fabric of neighborhoods and our team, our team members understand this responsibility, take it to heart and continue to win customers over day after day. This is why our fifth consecutive Gallup Exceptional Workplace award was awarded to us. This year, we've been a winner with distinction and this win is of particularly meaning to me because this recognition reflects a culture grounded in respect grounded in trust and grounded in empowerment.

Strong and great culture doesn't happen by accident. It is built over time through consistent actions with engaged teams and with strong leadership. I am therefore fully confident that when it comes to the future of this company, we will continue to thrive. It's such an exciting thought. I have full confidence in Alex and the leadership team. and the way they are guiding Couche-Tard forward with clarity, discipline and respect for the special culture that we have built over the past 45 years. To our team members, our customers and our shareholders, thank you for the trust that you place in us. This trust is precious, and we will never take it for granted. We'll continue to earn your trust in the same way that we've always done 1 store at a time. On that, I'd like to turn the floor over to Alex. Thank you.

All reinforce a reality for our business. The market is changing quickly. Consumers continue to face pressure from inflation and tighter household budgets. Trips have consolidated, competition across retailers has intensified channels are blurring and expectations for speed, reliability and value are higher than ever. In that context, focus and disciplined matter. Our ability to win the customer still comes down to how well each location operates day in and day out. That means simplifying what we do, keeping priorities clear and dedicated well-supported team members executing consistently at the store level and across our business. It is against this backdrop that we introduced a refreshed strategy in February. Cores more sharpens our focus on the categories where customers rely on us most and where we already need fuel, nicotine and thirst. As we continue to invest in the areas that will drive future relevance such as food, offer, network development, e-mobility and car wash, it is enabled by a more integrated supply chain and stronger digital, data and technology capabilities, and it is funded through the savings realized by the cost discipline and process efficiencies, we continue to drive across the organization.

At Tard, cores more is about doing what matters most to our customers and executing it at pace. I've said this often over the past year, less is more. When the organization is aligned around the right things, results follow. This year, they did. We delivered same-store sales growth across all 3 of our geographies, the United States, Canada and Europe, while outperforming the broader convenience industry. At the same time, we refreshed our vision to be the world's favorite stop for people on the go. Every day, millions of customers choose us as part of their routines, fueling up, grabbing a coffee or meal, washing a car or recharging well on their way. Our role is to make those moments easier, faster and more rewarding.

Realizing this vision requires more than convenience. It requires relevance Customers expect speed, friendly service and stores that are clean, in-stock and ready for them. And in today's environment, they expect felt. Compelling value means using our scale strong vendor partnerships and data-driven insights to deliver fewer, better promotions and more personalized offers on the products that matter most. When we get that right, we deliver on our customer promise. -- visits grow, baskets increase and loyalty depends. And we are seeing the impact of those efforts across our business. Within our convenience business, we continue to build momentum across our key categories. Food remains 1 of our biggest opportunities and meal deals continue to resonate with customers looking for simple high-value options.

This past year, we expanded variety and choice through strong vendor partnerships further differentiating our offer against the options typically found on a QSR menu. We sold more than 40 million bundles in the U.S. and introduced them in Canada and Europe, while simplifying our broader food offer, and emphasizing execution, particularly on our best-selling hero items. Thirst continues to be our most important in-store category. 7 out of 10 customers who enter our stores purchase a beverage, providing a powerful foundation to build trips and baskets. Energy & Functional Drinks delivered strong growth across all regions, and we continue to widen our advantage through smarter assortment, expanded cooler capacity exclusive partnerships and products and personalized offers delivered through our loyalty platforms.

Meanwhile, dispensed beverages continue to play an important role in driving daily traffic and value. This past year, we grew units gained share and generated incremental revenue per store through strong attachment and disciplined execution. In nicotine, we maintained strong leadership positions while guiding the transition toward modern oral and alternative products. Although traditional cigarettes continue to decline, overall nicotine consumption remains resilient. -- and we outperformed the market by staying close to customers and manufacturers. As the transition continues, we are committed to leading and selling responsibly. Our loyalty platforms also delivered another strong year. We saw traffic and trips grow with existing members, supported by more personalized offers and more real-time communication at the point of decision. When customers are fueling, washing their car or shopping in our stores. This ability to meet customers in the moment is becoming a meaningful driver of growth.

And our programs are reaching more customers. Inner Circle expanded to 5,000 stores in the U.S. and surpassed 15 million members while we completed the rollout of Extra 2.0 in our legacy Europe business. Mobility remains a core strength today and a critical growth opportunity for the future. In fuel, we gained more market share while maintaining strong margins, supported by the scale and sophistication of our global fuel supply organization. Visit-based loyalty campaigns and seasonal fuel day events that continue to surprise and delight our customers. Across Europe and North America, our B2B business is performing with resilience. Thanks to disciplined margin management and transit charging growth in Europe and via share gains in commercial diesel, deeper fleet relationships and strong adoption of our proprietary card and loyalty platforms in North America. And e-mobility is 1 of the clearest examples of our core plus more strategy already translating into meaningful customer behavior.

In Europe, we surpassed 4,000 charge points with more than 8 million charging transactions last year. building on our leadership while demonstrating we can win as a charging destination when we pair fast, reliable charging with great location, food, beverages and amenities customers value. Our network continued to grow stronger, and our focus remains clear: grow with discipline, optimize our assets and deploy capital where it creates lasting value. This past year, we added or improved 130 sites in our network, continuing a development program that delivers attractive industry-leading returns. Looking ahead, we're ramping up our growth plans to add 750 new sites by 2030. With the completion of the get-go acquisition, we welcomed a talented team and a food first operating model with made-to-order expertise that we are looking to test elsewhere in our North American network. We also made meaningful progress integrating the Total Energy assets bringing the Circle K brand to more sites across our mid-European business units, and we are tracking in line with our synergy plans.

Further, as we're growing our footprint, we're also strengthening our supply chain to support it. This past year, we opened 3 new distribution centers in the United States, enhancing our self-distribution network to support more than 3,200 stores. Greater supply chain control improves availability, lowers our cost to serve and allows us to bring the right products to the right stores more efficiently, further enabling core plus more. And we've begun our new fiscal year by taking a transformational step in our growth journey. As we announced in late July, we have agreed to acquire a controlling stake in Shopko Group. Poland's largest convenience retailer. This is the largest acquisition in our history and one that significantly advances core plus more.

What stands out most is the quality of the platform. the strength of its people and how closely Zabka aligns with the future we are building. With more than 13,000 stores in an entrepreneurial franchise model, it brings best-in-class capabilities in food digital engagement, loyalty and personalization. We have tremendous respect from what the team and its franchisees have accomplished, and we are looking forward to welcoming them to our team, supporting their continued growth while drawing on their strengths to accelerate our strategy. Subject to regulatory approvals, we expect to complete the transaction by the end of the calendar year. But our strategy only works if our people are set up to succeed across our global network, it is our store teams and leaders who bring our customer promise to life every day and we continue to invest in them with intention and purpose.

In the U.S., our focus on frontline engagement is delivering results. We have achieved 4 consecutive years of declining turnover outperforming industry benchmarks over the past 2 years, and it's showing up in team satisfaction across our enterprise. For the fifth consecutive year, Circle K was recognized with the Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award, reflecting strong engagement across our teams and reinforcing our belief that a focused people-first approach drives better outcomes for customers and the business alike. Even as we enter a new phase of our strategic journey with core+ more, our commitment to operating responsibly remains as strong as ever. We continue to look at our business through the lens of sustainability, balancing growth with responsibility and ensuring our actions create long-term value for our customers, team members, communities and shareholders.

I encourage you to read our 2026 sustainability report for a deeper look at the work our teams are doing across our framework of planet, people and prosperity. In closing, I'm excited about the road ahead. The fundamentals of this business remain strong, and they will continue to drive us forward. While the environment remains challenging, cores more is helping us stay focused on what matters most. -- executing with excellence and discipline, staying close to our customers, bringing them compelling value and making their lives easier. To our team members around the world, thank you for everything you do to our customers, thank you for choosing us. To our Board, thank you for your stewardship and to our shareholders. Thank you for your continued confidence. And now I'll hand the presentation over to Filipe.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Alex. Let's begin with a discussion on our overview of financial performance since 2016. The following metrics illustrate the work that our teams have done year after year. As you can see, total gross profit has grown at an annualized rate of 9% since 2016 and by 11% over the past year to hit nearly $14.5 billion. In addition, since 2016, our EBITDA has grown at an annualized rate of 11.7%, and our adjusted diluted earnings per share have grown at an annualized rate of 11.5% to hit approximately $7 billion and $3.20 per share, respectively, which demonstrates our capacity to maintain operating leverage. And finally, shareholder equity, a good indicator of value creation has grown by more than 12% and per year since 2016. If you look at this chart showing EBITDA growth since 2000, you can determine the long-lasting equation that has been in place for a decade.

The equation of strong revenues and gross profit generation, combined with discipline and good execution has driven a sustained streak of excellent performance, generating EBITDA and growing by 18%. We have continuous improvement, and it is at the heart of our core plus more strategy today. It's amazing to determine that we've gone from $100 million in the year 2000 and to see how far we've come in terms of EBITDA to hit more than $7 billion this year. Over the past 10 years, Alimentation Couche-Tard shares have increased in value by more than 200% outperforming the main benchmark index in Canada. It's important to say that Alimentation Couche-Tard has been a publicly carried company for 4 decades.

To give you an idea of the creation over the past 30 years $1,000 in our shares invested in July 1995 will be worth more than $1 million today at the share price at the trading closure of July 31, 2026, excluding dividends paid over the years. Last year, we saw the resiliency of our business model, including the strength of the cash flows generated. Our EBITDA increased by 18.2% compared to the previous year to hit more than EUR 7 billion. And over the past same period, we have cash flows of over EUR 3.1 billion. Over the years, we have seen strong growth in free cash flows with a compound annual growth rate of CAGR of 12.2% between '16 and 2026. Over fiscal 2026, we were able to maintain a strong return on capital employed, a particularly important metric for assessing our operational efficiencies.

Disciplined operating performance, combined with effective or efficient capital allocation strategies enabled us to achieve 13.7% return on capital employed this year. And finally, we have strong financial performance, cash generating, so that we'd be around a quarterly dividend of 10.5%. We also increased the dividend every year in the first -- since the first dividend payment on November 15, 2005, and this just demonstrates our commitment to rewarding our shareholders for the long term as profits grow. On July 31, 2026, we announced our plan to acquire all the shares of Zabka Group through a voluntary tender offer representing a total equity value of approximately USD 8.6 billion and the largest acquisition in Couche-Tard's history.

The transaction is unanimously supported by because key managers, shareholders representing approximately 57% of that because its outstanding shares we have entered into hard irriverable undertakings to tender all their shares. This is a large convenience retailer in Poland, more than 13,000 stores in Poland and Romania. And bringing our businesses together is expected to create scaled complementary growth platform in Central and Eastern Europe because this is Europe's most advanced convenience ecosystem. On a pro forma basis, we generated revenues of approximately USD 84 billion and USD 7.8 billion in adjusted EBITDA. We also identified synergies worth of USD 250 million, which will be achievable by the third year all in closing.

We expect this transaction to improve adjusted EBITDA from the get-go and have an impact on earnings per share by the second year with pro forma leverage at approximately 3x at closing and no anticipated impact on our credit rating. As Alex said, this partnership is an excellent opportunity to have high-quality platforms that complement our existing business and further advance our core plus more strategy. With that, I'll turn the floor back over to Alain Bouchard.

[Interpreted] Thank you very much, Filipe. SP323646097 This concludes our corporate presentation. We will now continue with our question period. As mentioned previously, you can ask questions by using the messaging function by writing in either your question or your mobile phone. Melanie, do we have any questions?

[Interpreted] No, we have not received any questions.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Melanie. This concludes our meeting. We will now end the webcast, and thank you to all of you for your attendance here today. See you next year.

[Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

Good morning. My name is Joelle, and I will be your conference operator today. [Foreign Language]

I will now introduce Mr. Mathieu Brunet, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury at Alimentation Couche-Tard. [Foreign Language]

[Foreign Language]

[Interpreted] Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to this web conference presenting Alimentation Couche-Tard financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2027. [Operator Instructions] We would like to remind everyone that this webcast presentation will be available on our website for a 90-day period. Also, please remember that some of the issues discussed during this webcast might be forward-looking statements, which are provided by the corporation with its usual caveat. These caveats or risks and uncertainties are outlined in our financial reporting. Therefore, our future results could differ from the information discussed today.

Our financial results will be presented by Mr. Alex Miller, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Filipe Da Silva, Chief Financial Officer. Alex, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Mathieu, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss our first quarter results. We're encouraged by the start to fiscal 2027 and we're seeing evidence that our strategy is resonating with customers and strengthening the business for the long term. Our performance reflects the resilience and diversity of our business, with our markets, capabilities and growth platforms coming together across our unique global footprint to drive the business forward.

Over the summer, we activated some of our best promotional campaigns across the network, such as our America 250 campaign and Fuel Day events, delivering compelling value offers for our customers while helping expand our loyalty base for the long term. As I visited stores, I saw firsthand how our teams brought these campaigns to life while remaining focused on being customer [ red ]. This is translating into deeper engagement and continued growth in loyalty, which I'll come back to in just a moment.

Before I discuss the quarter, I want to touch on the most significant development of the summer. Our recent agreement to acquire a controlling stake in the Zabka Group. Zabka is one of Europe's most dynamic convenience retailers with significant scale in Central and Eastern Europe. Best-in-class capabilities in food and digital and a talented entrepreneurial team we deeply admired.

This acquisition accelerates our Core + More strategy, expands our global footprint and adds complementary strengths in food, private brands, supply chain capabilities, digital engagement, loyalty and personalization, while supporting our organic growth ambitions.

We look forward to welcoming the Zabka team into the Couche-Tard family as we work toward closing, which we expect to be completed by the end of this calendar year.

With that in mind, let's dive into our results. I'll start with Convenience before walking through the quarter using the same lens that guides our Core + More strategy.

Merchandise same-store sales increased 1.6% across the network, led by 1.7% growth in the United States, marking our fifth consecutive quarter of positive same-store sales growth. What we are seeing today is a consumer who is increasingly intentional about where they spend, and we are leveraging our strengths to adapt to those changes in behavior, consistent with broader industry trends, elevated living cost and fuel prices continue to weigh on discretionary spending in certain markets.

However, when the proposition is compelling, customers continue to engage. We see that come through in energy, other nicotine products food offers and loyalty-driven promotions. That shift in selective spending behavior is also reshaping the category mix. Packaged carbonated soft drinks as well as traditional center store categories such as salty snacks and packaged suites remains softer than historical levels as consumers become more deliberate in what they put in their baskets. Excluding those categories, underlying merchandising performance would have been around the midpoint of our same-store sales growth algorithm.

At the same time, we are seeing growth in areas where we have been investing, including functional, protein-rich and better-for-you categories. Our teams are actively reallocating space, refining assortments and tailoring promotions to ensure we are meeting customers where demand is moving.

As Filipe will discuss, we are also being purposeful on pricing decisions in categories facing volume pressure, balancing profitability with customer relevance and long-term loyalty. More importantly, traffic improved as the quarter progressed, reinforcing our view that customers will engage and spend when the proposition is right.

In Canada, same-store sales were stable. As continued strength in thirst helped offset regulatory pressure in nicotine. While the quarter finished flat overall sales trends improved materially over the course of the quarter and turned positive in the final period.

In Europe and other regions, same-store sales increased 1.2%. Despite softer trends in Asia, Europe delivered growth across key geographies and categories, particularly beverages and next-generation nicotine products. Turning to our core categories and starting with fuel. We saw mixed volume trends across our regions. Same-store fuel volumes were down 1.6% in the United States and 4.3% in Europe. Canada extended its positive trend to eight consecutive quarters of growth with volumes up 1.1% in the quarter.

Importantly, every business unit across North America posted positive for core traffic during the quarter. Although customers purchase fewer gallons on average, they continue to choose our network, reinforcing the relevance of our value proposition and customer offer as our fuel business continued to generate attractive gross profit.

Despite softer demand, our U.S. same-store volumes outperform most peers and our fuel margins remained well ahead of our competitive set.

Market volatility and favorable supply conditions certainly contributed during the quarter. But these results are also a reflection of the fuel platform we've built over many years across sourcing, supply, pricing and network management. That platform helped us gain sequential market share in the U.S. and deliver fuel profitability across the network.

Beyond retail fuel, B2B continued to build momentum. Mobile payment adoption in Europe increased roughly 40% year-over-year, while our Circle K Pro card drove another quarter of growth with fleet operators in North America, contributing to a 20% increase in B2B volumes. Together, these initiatives are extending the reach of our fuel platform and creating additional avenues for growth.

Turning to [ first ], one of our most impactful traffic drivers and a category where we continue to gain share across the network. Energy was once again the standout, delivering double-digit growth in the U.S. and roughly 70% of the category's gains. Protein, beverages and enhanced hydration also grew meaningfully, reflecting rising consumer demand for functional and wellness-oriented products. Carbonated soft drinks were pressured in part by changes to SNAP eligibility in certain markets. We continue to respond by focusing on value leveraging our loyalty platform and driving engagement across adjacent beverage, food and convenience categories where we're seeing stronger customer demand.

In Canada, energy delivered high single-digit growth. With similar performance across energy and functional beverages in Europe, highlighting the attractiveness of the category and the relevance of our customer offer.

Turning to nicotine. In the U.S., other nicotine products delivered one of their best quarters in recent years, posting double-digit same-store sales growth led by pouches, significantly outpacing the broader market. In cigarettes, same-store sales increased for a third consecutive quarter. While growth moderated from the strong performance we saw in Q4, we still outperformed industry volume trends by roughly 400 basis points, reflecting the effectiveness of our pricing, promotional and loyalty strategies.

In Canada, the category remained broadly consistent with recent quarters. The illicit market and evolving regulatory environment continued to pressure legal volumes, which were partly offset by disciplined pricing and a targeted customer offer.

In Europe, results benefited from growing adoption of next-generation nicotine products alongside a stable cigarette business. Pouches remained a key contributor to growth with several markets, particularly across our legacy European network, delivering solid high single-digit same-store sales growth. Our assortment, digital capabilities and engagement with age verified customers position us well as the category continues to evolve.

Now let me turn to the more part of our strategy, where food remains our single biggest growth opportunity. If you look at our latest annual report published earlier this summer, you'll see the progress we're making reflected in our mix with food now representing 13.2% of merchandise sales.

In North America, value continues to anchor the food story through our meal deals. We sold nearly 14 million meal deal bundles during the quarter, up nearly 20% from last year, demonstrating the continued appeal of a compelling value proposition.

We are also working closely with our vendor partners to keep the offer fresh and give customers new reasons to engage. A recent example is the U.S. In the U.S. is our flame boneless wings launch, our first hot food collaboration with PepsiCo and [ Frito-Lay ], following a successful rollout across our fresh food network, the product is now selling more than 40,000 units per week and helping drive larger food baskets.

More broadly, we're seeing customers increasingly trade up into higher value prepared food offerings, with hot food mix increasing since launch, demonstrating our ability to pair everyday value with attractive premium offerings.

We're also finding opportunities to further optimize our core assortment, using data and consumer insights to refine menus at both the national and regional level.

Beyond the U.S., we're seeing progress across the network. In Canada, food sales and unit growth improved year-over-year, supported by value-focused offers, stronger food conversion and continued engagement with our meal deal platforms. In Europe, food performance benefited from customers increasingly choosing larger and more satisfying meal options. Growth was led by burgers, while larger formats, including extra large kebabs and double burgers continue to resonate with consumers.

Underpinning all of this is execution. We remain focused on improving availability across our [ hero ] items, refining our meal deal platforms and simplifying operations to improve sell-through and reduce shrink. Food represents a significant opportunity for us, and we're continuing to build the capabilities needed to capture it.

Turning to our network. During the quarter, we added 26 sites across North America and Europe and today have approximately 42 stores under construction. We expect to open more than 100 stores in fiscal 2027 and continue to expand our development pipeline.

While permitting and entitlement time lines remain longer in certain markets, we expect to supplement our new build program with a growing pipeline of single-site acquisitions and remain on track toward our long-term target of 750 new stores by 2030.

Our new stores continue to meaningfully outperform the broader network with food sales 120% above the network average, while merchandise sales and basket size are 20% higher, demonstrating the strength of our site selection and customer offer.

Moving back outside the store, e-mobility remains a good example of how we're building for the future while leveraging the strengths of our existing network. In Europe, our charging network now exceeds 4,900 charge points, up 32% from last year. Customer adoption continues to grow, with charging transactions increasing more than 40% and utilization moving higher across the network. Those results reflect the advantages of our model prime locations, a reliable charging experience and the ability to combine charging with food, beverages and other convenience purchases. As adoption continues to grow, we're well positioned to capture that opportunity.

Finally, digital and loyalty continue to be increasingly important drivers of customer engagement across our network and are among the key enablers that power our Core + more strategy.

In the U.S., we added more than 1 million Inner Circle members during the quarter, bringing the program to nearly 16 million members. Nearly one in three transactions now comes from a loyalty member, while traffic attributable to Inner Circle increased 30% versus last year.

We recently launched Inner Circle 2.0, enabling members to earn rewards across more of their purchases while unlocking personalized offers and challenges. This month, Inner Circle will be live in all U.S. business units with the expansion of the program into our Northern Tier business unit.

In Europe, Extra 2.0 is driving a 13% increase in traffic across our legacy markets. We also recently brought our EV and loyalty experiences into a single app, helping drive a 19% increase in EV traffic among app members and creating a simpler, more connected experience for customers.

With that, I'll turn it over to Filipe.

Thank you, Alex. Good morning, everyone. The first quarter demonstrated the balance we are achieving across the business, delivering adjusted EBITDA growth of 10.5% and adjusted diluted earnings per share growth of 15.4%, while maintaining normalized expense growth well below inflation.

At the same time, we continue to invest in customer value and traffic-driving initiatives, advancing our strategic priorities and focusing on delivering sustainable long-term earnings growth. More importantly, these results demonstrate the strength of our diversified operating model.

You've heard Alex provide additional color on the quarter and the consumer environment. While pockets of pressure remain across parts of our network, the growth algorithm we outlined at our base strategy update continues to deliver. The combination of our geographic diversification, category mix and multiple earnings levers allows us to continue growing earnings while mitigating different market conditions.

Canada and Europe once again made meaningful contribution to our performance, reinforcing the benefits of a balanced business that is not dependent on any single geography category or initiative.

Before turning to the quarter, I would also like to briefly acknowledge the announced Zabka transaction. This is a transformational investment for Couche-Tard and an important milestone in auto journey. I could not be more enthusiastic about what this transaction brings to the organization from the quality of the business and its capabilities to the opportunities it creates for the years ahead.

I will now go over some key figures for the quarter. For more details, please refer to our MD&A available on our website. Net earnings attributable to shareholders stood at $829 million or $0.90 per share on a diluted basis. Adjusted net earnings were approximately $827 million or $0.90 per share on an adjusted diluted basis, representing an increase of 15.4% compared to the corresponding quarter of last year.

Now let's review in detail each of our business segments on an FX-adjusted basis. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of fiscal 2027 increased by approximately $165 million or 10.2% year-over-year, driven by improved road transportation fuel gross margin as well as by the contribution from acquisitions, which amounted to approximately $44 million, partly offset by inflationary pressure on our expenses, including our electronic payment fees from higher fuel retail prices.

During the first quarter, merchandise and service revenues increased by approximately $186 million or 4% primarily attributable to the contribution from acquisition, which amounted to approximately $112 million and organic growth coming from our store performance.

Merchandise and service gross profit increased by approximately $52 million or 3.1%, primarily driven by approximately $38 million from acquisition with additional contribution from organic growth across all regions. In the United States, merchandise margin declined by 50 basis points to 34.1%. This reflected several factors, including a shift in category mix increased pole in certain food categories as well as deliberate pricing discipline designed to support compelling value for our customers.

Let me take a moment to expand on merchandise margins. As you heard Alex discussed earlier, consumers continue to be thoughtful about how they spend, and we have been intentional in our pricing decisions to ensure our offer remains competitive, compelling and relevant. While that supported traffic, customer engagement and positive same-store sales growth, it also contributed to some pressure on merchandise margin during the quarter.

For example, the continued growth of Inner Circle is also driving greater participation in traffic driving programs such as Polar Pop and [ Milders ]. These initiatives are delivering the intended customer response, including increased visit frequency and deeper engagement across the network. At the same time, some of the categories that have traditionally contributed a disproportionate share of the merchandise gross profit remains softer than historical levels. As consumer place greater emphasis on value, we continue to see spending shift to our promotional and lower ticket purchases with fewer discretionary items making their way into the basket.

While these categories represent a relatively modest portion of sales, they tend to carry higher margin profiles and therefore, have a greater impact on overall margin performance.

That said, we continue to evaluate performance through the lens of gross profit dollars rather than any single quarter's margin rate. The balance between traffic, sales growth and margin will naturally shift from payer to period, but we remain confident in the ongoing economics and long-term profitability of the business.

We are also beginning to see tangible benefits from our distribution center network, distribution center network with product ability and service level now are performing our traditional wholesale model. While still early, the sourcing and procurement opportunities we are seeing reinforce our confidence that these capabilities will increasingly contribute to margin expansion over the coming quarters.

In Canada, merchandise margin declined by 60 basis points to 33.3%, primarily reflecting category mix, continued competitive intensity in cigarette and shipped with beverage within beverage categories. While these factors weighed on margin rate during the quarter, they supported volume and customer engagement in some of our most important categories.

In Europe and other regions, Merchandise margin increased by 70 basis points to 39.6%, benefiting from favorable mix, including a lower relative contribution for cigarettes and continued growth in higher-margin categories and services. Our EV charging business continued to gain momentum in Europe, with gross profit increasing by nearly 40% compared with the same period last year.

Moving on to the fuel. Road transportation fuel gross margin was $0.5261 per gallon in the United States, CAD 0.1679 per liter in Canada and USD 0.1134 per liter in Europe and other regions. While fuel margins in Europe and other regions were idle last year, this largely reflects change in market conditions during the quarter. We continue to view the regions as healthy and remain confident in our ability to generate attractive fuel profitability over time.

While market conditions remain supportive during the quarter, we believe the consistency of our fuel performance increasingly reflect capabilities that have been built over the last decade. Investment across sourcing, logistics, supply optimization and trading continue to strengthen our ability to perform through different market environments and create value across our network. More broadly, fuel remains a critical component of our growth algorithm. The scale and profitability of our fuel platform, support traffic generates significant gross profit and help fund the investments we are making across food, digital and other long-term growth initiatives.

Turning to SG&A. Normalized expenses increased by 2.7% year-over-year, well below the weighted average inflation rate across our network. This result demonstrates an important point, over the last several quarters, we have been making thoughtful investments across supply chain, technology and store operations while preserving the financial discipline that has always been central to how we operate the business. This quarter is another proof point that we can continue investing in the future while maintaining a lean cost structure to pay.

Store labor hours per location declined 1.1% compared with last year, while overtime trends across network across North -- sorry, while overtime trends across North America continued to improve. This improvement reflects ongoing efforts to better align labor with demand, simplify execution and support productivity at the store level.

We're also making good progress with [ Realex ]. Since discussing the successful pilot last quarter, deployment as expanding from approximately 200 stores to more than 1,000 locations across North America, product availability on [ Realex ] managed item has improved by more than 5%, supported by stronger forecasting, replenishment and space planning. Most U.S. business unit are expected to be live during fiscal 2027 with Canada following in fiscal 2028. Over time, we expect these capabilities to improve availability, reduce complexity and portage and further enhance productivity across the network.

Turning to depreciation, we saw an increase of approximately $21 million or 4% compared with the first quarter of last year. Approximately $60 million of the increase was attributable to acquisitions with the balance largely reflecting ongoing investment in our network, equipment replacement and other growth initiatives.

Overall, depreciation continues to evolve, largely in line with our expectations and consistent with the pace of investment across the business.

From a tax perspective, the income tax rate for the first quarter of fiscal was 23.3% compared with 23.2% for the corresponding quarter of fiscal 2026. As of July 19, 2026, returns on equity stood at 19.7% while return on capital employed was 13.7%. Our balance sheet remains in a strong position. At quarter end, our leverage ratio stood at 1.77x compared with 1.99x at the end of fiscal 2026. We also maintained strong liquidity with approximately $3 billion in cash and an additional $3.5 billion available through our revolving unsecured operating credit facility.

During the quarter, we repurchased 4.4 million shares for approximately $26 million, and we paid our EUR 750 million denominated senior unsecured note at maturity.

As part of our capital allocation framework, share repurchases are currently paused as we prepare for the expected closing of the Zabka transaction. Following the launch of the voluntary tender offer process at the end of August, we continue to make progress toward completing what we believe is a highly complementary and companying addition to the [ CoStar ] family. This will further enhance our leadership position in the convenience market.

While the final ownership level will depend on shareholder participation in the offer, we currently expect leverage to move the speed above our stated comfort range of 2 to 2.5x closing. Even so, we remain confident in the strength of our balance sheet, our cash generation capabilities and our ability to deliver efficiently following completion of the transaction.

Turning to the [indiscernible]. The Board of Directors declared yesterday a quarterly dividend of CAD 0.215 per share for the first quarter of fiscal 2027 to shareholders on record as of September 11, 2026. The and approved its payment effective September 25, 2026.

In closing, I'm very pleased with our quarterly performance, and we remain committed to executing against the long-term profitable growth algorithm outlined at our business strategy update. While quarterly results will inevitably include some variability, our focus remains on the long-term longer-term trajectory of the business. Across merchandise, fuel, customer engagement and operational efficiency. We continue to see evidence that the investment initiatives underway are moving in the right election and strengthening the foundation of the business. We are investing in the areas that matter, improving the economics of our networks and expanding the advantages that continue to set us apart.

As we look ahead, we feel good about where the business is headed. We look -- we are executing against a clear plan, building on a position of strength and remain confident in our ability to create sustainable long-term value for shareholders. I thank you for your attention, and I will now turn the call back to Alex.

Thank you, Filipe. I'll leave you with a few final thoughts. As I step back and look at the quarter, what stands out to me is the progress we're making across the business. We're attracting more customers into our ecosystem, gaining share in key categories and expanding engagement through loyalty. The quarter also highlights the strength of a business that is built on multiple geographies, categories and initiatives rather than any single driver of performance.

As Filipe noted, progress in a business like ours is measured over years, not quarters, and the results we discuss today reinforce our conviction in the Core + More strategy and the long-term direction of the business. As we look ahead to the second quarter, it's still early, but we saw trends stabilize as we exited the first quarter and are beginning to see signs of improvement.

While there remains some uncertainty in the consumer environment, the data we see today gives us optimism that there is a path towards sequential improvement and performance consistent with our long-term growth algorithm. My thanks once again to our colleagues around the world for everything they do to serve our customers.

With that, operator, let's open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Irene Nattel with RBC Capital Markets.

I'd like to start the call just talking a little more color, please, around the U.S. same-store sales number, which came in just shy of your target.

But more specifically, some of the categories that you described as being weak. I'm wondering how much of that is structural, is consumer consumption changes spend? How much just may be transitory? And how we should think about the reacceleration of that same-store sales number as we move through the year?

Thanks for the question, Irene. I think as you look at the quarter, right, we continue to see the items we've referenced is core and where we see strength, you continue to see real strength, right? We're delivering in nicotine -- you look at cigarettes, right, we were up I want to say [ 3 6 ] in Q4. We were up 18% in this quarter. So still very solid growth but a fallback versus where we were in Q4, we obviously grew other nicotine by even a greater number and continue to capture material share in that growing instance where our gross profit now is very similar in the U.S. from other nicotine to cigarettes, and it's actually higher -- pretty significantly higher in Europe than cigarettes are.

Energy inks continue to perform -- like you heard in our commentary, right, we saw some real challenge in carbonated soft drinks that impacted our packaged beverage. I think with that said, energy drinks is now twice the size of [ CSD ], where we're growing significantly, and we're also seeing changes really strong sales in hydration, functional beverages, protein beverages, and we are actively allocating more assortment to those areas.

As you look at the center store, specifically confectionery, salty snacks, some of those categories that -- there are long traditional categories in the C-store space they have been under challenge for some time. I certainly think GLP-1 drugs are having an impact on those categories. And we did see -- they were softer in this quarter than they were the previous quarter.

Is that transitory or not? Candidly, Irene, I don't know. And what I do know is we are changing assortment, and we are putting in more protein, more functional bars and things in these categories, chips in these categories, you see the vendors actively reallocating space. So we remain optimistic as we make changes to our assortment that these can continue to be strong categories for us.

Your next question comes from Corey Tarlowe with Jefferies.

Great. Alex, I wanted to ask about the test with the flaming hot chicken partnership with Pepsi. And how that, A, has informed your ability to move into different categories beyond what the business currently exists? And then, B, as you think about what this might portend for the future, how this could unlock further scale for your food platform as we look forward?

Yes, I think -- we have great relationships with our big [ CPG ] partners, first of all. And Pepsi's and [ Frito-Lay ] are one of those partners. We have great relationships with multiple other of our big [ CPG ] partners. And we continue to innovate and work with them and bring new products to market. And with our relationships and our scale, we're often able to do that with exclusive launches and bring unique products to market.

As I think about the flame and hot launch, what gives us encouragement as we think about our food, we think about -- you hear us talk to compelling value in our meal deals and you clearly see those resonating with consumers as we grow those platforms.

What also is finding midpoint price and more premium price items to bring into our mix that can help with margins and deliver additional sales growth beyond just the compelling value offers that I believe we've shown we have real capability in.

Flame and hot wings, the [ LTOs ] that we've launched with [ Dipti ]. And what we have in line to do that I think we see a path to hit at these different levels of food and contribute to our goal to grow 3 to 4x food versus our core C-store.

We grew food 5.2% in the U.S. We grew how foods over 11% in the U.S. We grew food in Canada 4.3% and grew food in Europe 3.6%. So we are growing food across the network. And we believe things like flame and hot wings and specifically having very targeted at value, midpoint and premium will accelerate our growth to our goal of 3 to 4x growth that we've shared with you that is our ultimate target.

Your next question comes from Martin Landry with Stifel.

I would like to go back to the U.S. consumer your merchandise same-store sales were growing below your growth algorithm and combined with the margin erosion this quarter versus last quarter, your growth was above your growth algorithm with a margin expansion.

So can you discuss a little bit the health of the U.S. consumer? In Q4, you had mentioned consumer resilience. And today, I think you're pointing to a more discerning in consumer spending. So have you seen a change in consumer behavior in the U.S. in Q1 versus Q4? Could you like to hear a little bit more details on that?

Yes. I think the notion of inflation. It's been here with us for a while, the notion of the K-shaped economy or the stress on the lower-income consumers. That's been a conversation for really multiple years now. I think when you stand back, the consumer in many of the metrics, they've proven to be highly resilient, right? And that gives us optimism. They are outspending. They are just being more targeted, more direct, I think more thoughtful in their choices and we need to play into that, and we are playing into that.

You hear retailers -- I think a lot of retailers have kind of signaled, hey, they're seeing some softness, but that's not the first time we've heard that and that will never be a reason or an excuse inside of Couche-Tard. We are taking share. We need to take more share. That is about the assortment and having the things that they really want not is increasingly leveraging our digital platforms to communicate with them and provide them personalized offers that resonate with them and drive them to our stores more often and to purchase more when they're on our stores. We are having success in doing that. We continue to advance those programs, advance our capabilities around personalization, add age-restricted members to our platforms, and we believe we can continue to win and take share inside of the environment that we're operating in and ultimately deliver on our growth algorithm.

15% EPS growth and 10% EBITDA growth, that's solid, right? That's solid. And yes, we slightly missed on our 2% to 3% same store. But we believe we can deliver in this environment against our growth algorithm, and I believe we're showing that we can.

Your next question comes from Chris Li with Desjardins.

I just have a very quick clarification and then a quick follow-up. First, Alex, I wanted just to confirm, did you say that Q2 to date, U.S. merchandise same-store sales is trending roughly the same as Q1, about 1.7%, but you do see maybe a path for sequential improvement, while maybe it's still a little bit early.

Yes. I think our sales thus far in the quarter are very similar to what we just announced for Q1. I think we have seen some acceleration in the past couple of weeks that gives us some optimism. Our fuel volume numbers are pretty similar to what we delivered in Q1. Our U.S. CPG up to this point is high 40s, our cost in P4 are absolutely under control, and we delivered nice margin capture in P4.

So yes, to answer your question, that's similar, but I feel pretty good about our performance up to this stage of the quarter and have some optimism in the last couple of weeks of data that we've seen.

And just a bit on [indiscernible], I think it's very important to go a bit beyond the quarter-over-quarter vision. And we believe that customers are looking for value. We have been talking about that now in a few quarters. we are seeing a very strong response there. We see when we look at loyalty, all the investment that we have met doing there, we see the traffic going up average visit is going up with the loyalty.

So there is nothing it gives us and all the food think initiative that Alex just mentioned earlier in the call, it's just showing us that we are the right path. We are there for the customers. And no longer run, there is no doubt that the growth agent that we have provided to you during the business update. We get there. We just need to continue to do what we do, and we are convinced that we are on the right path and the customer is responding well. So yes, a lot of confidence around that.

Perfect. And then just maybe a quick follow-up. Just on the fuel margins. As you know, the U.S. administration has been in talks with the refiners to try to lower gas prices. I know it's still very early, and there aren't a lot of details, but just curious to know how you think this might potentially impact your business and your margins, if any at all?

We really separate, right? We have our supply chain and our supply chain goal is to bring product to supply our stores ratably constantly and to do it at the lowest possible cost of goods.

We then compete every minute of every day on the street with our competitive set, we remain in position and competitively priced always. That is our motto. The rest of it rolls around us.

I think we have said to you multiple times that in periods of volatility they ultimately are good for us. And the platform we have built enables us to capture additional value. I think you see that in Q4. You see that in Q1 here. The environment remains volatile out there. And we continue to utilize our platform to capture value and deliver underlying costs that is advantaged against our competitive set.

Your next question comes from Vishal Shreedhar with National Bank.

At Investor Day, supply chain was indicated to be an enabler for your strategy? And I know you had some DCs that have opened and you talked to that a little bit.

I was just hoping you could update us on where you are on your and how many of the planned 1,600 stores have been onboarded? And when should we expect those benefits to become visible in merchandise same-store sales growth and gross margin and expenses.

Yes, you're right. The supply chain and the merch supply chain is one of the key initiatives that we have for within the corpus mall. And I think you should see that initiative as a multiyear journey to build this supply chain. I will make a parallel on the fuel side, it takes years, okay? So here, we are very pleased actually by the three [ DCs ] that we have put in operation during Q4 of last year.

And as I mentioned in -- earlier in the call, it's already delivering tangible results. ability, service level are already above the model that we have and the wholesale that we have in other stores or part of the network in U.S. So it's already delivering there.

On the sourcing and the procurement, we are just starting. I think here, it will take some time, as I was mentioning in the previous call, I think we'll start to see some margin benefits at the end of this fiscal year. and definitely continue to accelerate over the next coming years.

But feeling good about where we are. The team are full speed on that. Again, it's a new capability for us. but we are definitely confident that we'll be talking about the match supply thing as we are talking about the fuel supply chain today has a very strong differentiator and an enabler to margin expansion over the next [indiscernible] addition.

And Vishal, I build on Zabka. One of -- there's many things we find attractive about Zabka, certainly a primary one is there more than a decade of advancement of their own supply chain. So they have eight warehouses in Poland. They have two more under construction as we speak. They supply 99.8% of the goods to their nearly 13,000 sites in Poland. And we have 400 stores in Poland. We have a 60% SKU overlap and their cost of goods to deliver to their stores versus our cost of goods is more than 20% less.

Acquiring Zabka, we will be able to service some of our European network with their existing footprint and we believe that will advance our capabilities and our speed in Europe on this journey and also the knowledge to our six warehouses and [ DCs ] here in North America.

Your next question comes from John Zamparo with Scotiabank.

The question is about your vendor partnerships, in particular, on other nicotine and energy. And I wonder if you can talk about the state of vendor support you're receiving to spur traffic and sales in those categories. .

In the past, you've spoken positively about this contributing to sales growth and also margin expansion because these categories carry above-average margins. So I wonder how that has fared this quarter and what do you expect the rest of the year given the current environment among consumers and for consumer spending.

Yes. I think energy is just -- it's an incredible story. And that I mean, energy has been around now for 25 years. It is a massive category today, as we discussed, right? It's twice the size of carbonated soft drinks. Yet it is still growing high single digits kind of industry-wide. And for us, we're outperforming that. And as I said, we've grown more than double digits, more than 10% in the U.S. this quarter. And we're growing in Canada. We're growing in Europe.

As far as our vendor partners, right, I think we have great relationships with all those partners, Red Bull, Monster, certainly, you have Pepsi in there with can. And what you see is the core continuing to do very well and then new products coming. You look at the new products such as [ Allani ] and [ Celsius ] and you see many more females entering the category and new products. So the run rate for energy, it's been an incredible story. It is not slowing down. And we are well positioned both with our cooler space, advancement of cold space in our stores around our footprint and our relationship with vendors and being on the cutting edge of getting the new products, bringing in the innovative products and leading with those products.

So we feel great about the journey about our relationships and where we're positioned and we over-index energy and other nicotine are the two big drivers, and we have great relationships in those spaces, and we over-index heavily in those spaces.

Your next question comes from Derek Lessard with TD Cowen.

Another standout quarter in terms of your cost control. Just how should we think about your normalized SG&A growth as you start lapping your strategic investor investments? And then just maybe a reminder on the timing of that lapping.

Yes, you're right. The team is doing an amazing job here on the cost discipline. I have to say that that's something that it's across the operations, U.S., Canada, Europe are delivering very strong discipline there, which allows us actually to invest. Because yes, we know we have been talking about and we continue to talk about all these digital investments, supply chain investment. And it's possible because we are being disciplined. And a lot of stuff happening in terms of productivity. So we are seeing labor hours going down in the stores. We are seeing the GNFR procurement and leveraging our scale and getting concrete results and savings there through regional, national or global negotiation there.

So feeling very good about where we are. And yes, we are very confident on this part of the financial growth algorithm that we'll be able to deliver the normalized expense below inflation on a sustainable way. Again, here, I want just to be cautious, quarter-over-quarter, we may see some variation there. But we'll be delivering on the fiscal year this year, we'll be delivering over the color strategy 4 years plan, and we are very confident and thanks to the job that's been done by the team again there.

Your next question comes from Bobby Griffin with Raymond James.

This is Alessandra Jimenez on for Bobby Griffin. I wanted to follow up on the U.S. pricing investments. Could you provide some more detail on where those investments are concentrated by category? Why you chose to make them now? And then what you've seen from competitors in response? And should we think about the pricing investments as a multi-quarter margin headwind?

I'm not going to go into detailed category analysis on this call. I think what I would tell you is kind of two or three things. I think you've seen us grow margin expansion over the past 2 years. We have expanded margins I view this quarter as somewhat of an anomaly.

We knew we had heavy investment going into America 250 into the World Cup. We knew we had heavy investment going into our food platforms and meal deals. And then on top of that, we had some timing impacts around rebates and placement fees. And so -- we fundamentally believe that we've shown we can expand margins over the cycle, and we believe we will continue to do that. And again, I think as you heard Filipe say about our costs, it's not always going to be clean quarter-to-quarter, but over the cycle, we fundamentally believe we will continue to expand margins, and we believe we've been showing that over the past couple of years.

Next question comes from Tamy Chen with BMO Capital Markets. .

On the U.S. merchandise same-store sales, if I'm listening to you guys talk about the categories that have continued to grow well versus the categories that has been weak. It sounds like to further accelerate the merchandise comp. Like is it largely a shelf allocation hurdle at this point? So just continuing to pivot more of your shelf space to those higher growth areas, the functional beverages and less in the [ CSD ] and confectionery, and that's when we'll see that acceleration in the call.

Yes. I think the simple answer is yes. I think you've heard me discussing for multiple quarters, the change in consumer and the pace of that change. And our need to adjust and adjust rapidly.

I think the positive thing is the tools we have and the capabilities we have enable that, and we are adjusting, and we need to continue and will continue to do that. And I think we're well positioned to do that.

I also think through our digital platforms, we have the reach to reach consumers and let them know about these changes and that come into our stores and invite them to try these products, these new products that we're allocating assortment to.

And maybe an example, as we see the shift in terms of consumption and the consumer, we don't see that actually as drag in our same-store sales because I will give you an example that we have done in terms of reallocation in space is nicotine. We have done that through the last few quarters and providing more space allocation to modern overall category versus cigarette. And Alex mentioned that several times. We continue to grow in cigarettes. So it's really about being there for the consumer with the right customer value proposition in terms of assortment, in terms of price and sales will continue to come.

Your next question comes from Luke Hannan with Canaccord Genuity.

I wanted to dig in a little bit more into the Inner Circle program and specifically, Alex, I think you talked about you're going to be rolling this out across your Northern Tier [ BU ] or if not in the process already. So can you just frame up for us, I mean, the success of the program thus far once you've rolled it out into the [ BUs ] that you had targeted previously as far as the success of converting the folks who are visiting your store more frequently into members based on that, what is your prospects, I guess? Or how are you thinking about the conversion of members across Northern Tier?

And then maybe as a follow-up, that as well as you talked about the investments in price. How much of that is going to be showing up within, we'll call it, the everyday assortment versus showing up behind the Inner Circle program or within the Inner Circle program moving forward?

Yes. Thanks for -- that was a lot in that question. So I'll start with Northern Tier. Northern Tier is old holiday, right? So that's our holiday acquisition that we did 7-some-odd years ago and Holiday had a pretty advanced loyalty platform. So they had multiple partners [ Cub Foods ] as an example, in the Greater Twin Cities. So they have multiple partner programs.

I think the great thing is the reason we're launching Northern Tier is we now have the capability to plug partners across our entire Inner Circle platform. So I think you'll be hearing more from us over the coming quarters of how we are plugging partners, both nationally and regionally to drive more engagement and more use of our platforms. And so we're excited about that.

When you look at Inner Circle, just every quarter we're reporting to you more members, greater usage higher baskets and they -- it's every quarter, we are extremely pleased that what we are doing with consumers, it is resonating with them.

We all know there's a lot of loyalty programs out there. It has to be relevant and it has to provide value. It has to be personalized. We have the capabilities to do that. So we are just leveraging down on that and we're excited for our new visits base program that we just launched. We think that will be a tool to be even more personal and to give offers and benefits for people recognizing how often they're visiting us and them seeing the direct rewards from that.

Your next question comes from Mark Carden with UBS.

So I wanted to dig a bit more into the consumers becoming more intentional and where they're spending. It sounds like you're still taking market share, but as you step back and look at the broader channel, are you seeing much in the way of incremental sales dollars shifting to mass and the club channel just given where fuel prices are at today? And then are you able to quantify how much of a merch when you saw in the U.S. from SNAP?

Yes. I think when you look at the macro data macro retail data, you certainly hear and see that there are fewer trips. There are increasing value direction, value perception, value looking for value. So I think, again, if you look at retail data, you continue to see those trends coming through.

I think for us, we're actually growing traffic. You heard Filipe say, we're growing traffic onto our lots. For the last quarter, we were positive traffic, both onto our lots and into our stores. This quarter, we were slightly negative into our stores. But we have more customers coming to visit us inside of the context of fewer trips, more targeted trips for value. I think that really shows well for us, and it's why we think we're continuing to take increasing amount of market share across our categories.

And as you've heard me talk about on this call, we think there's a lot of reasons of why that's happening, but that is compelling value in the spaces that we really can compete and really have strong vendor relationships with. That is our investments into food, and that is certainly our digital platforms and our means to talk to our customers.

Next question comes from Bonnie Herzog with Goldman Sachs.

All right. I was hoping you could touch on the durability of your new unit growth over the long term. I know you have a plan to add more than 750 stores by FY '30.

So could you just maybe update us on the pace of this growth? And then how we should think about [ NTIs ] versus M&A and whether you see higher returns on [ NTIs ] or M&A. And with this, I guess I'm curious to hear how M&A multiples have trended recently considering the pressure on smaller operators.

[ NTIs ] are great for us. We have -- our real estate group continues to performed very strongly. Our pipeline is large and massive we continue to funnel that pipeline, and we continue to believe and remain committed that we will deliver our 750 sites that we committed to in Core + More by 2030 or over the period.

[ NTI ] economics for us are fantastic. I can tell you, we have pretty disciplined hurdles around return rates. If you look at our [ NTI ] program over the last several years, we are in the high teens on average around return on capital in that program. So the returns are strong.

Single-site acquisitions, we separate that from M&A, right? When we talk M&A or things like Zabka, those are big, big things. But we believe there's an increasing opportunity to acquire one site, single sites, five sites, 10 sites and our real estate teams have organized that way now. So we are much more active on the ground, pursuing those opportunities and we are starting to see more transactions in that space. And I think to have greater confidence we will be able to acquire more assets at attractive valuations, meeting our return thresholds in the financial discipline that we've always had.

So -- and then I got to talk about Zabka. Zabka's plan for this year is to build 1,300 sites. And they are on track to deliver that. And there is a plan -- their plan is to deliver another 6,000 to 7,000 sites in Poland and another 7,000 to 8,000 sites in Romania over the coming 5 years. They are a tremendous growth platform that we're excited to bring into the family. And that obviously, our goal is to accelerate that growth of that unique platform.

Yes. And just, [indiscernible] on the M&A activity, we still see a good pipeline there. As mentioned by Alex, we have now a team looking at the single store acquisition, small target as well. And there is a pipeline there. We will be active on that. We have the balance sheet for that as well. So independently of Zabka definitely, we continue to look at and at M&A and of course, U.S. is one of the prices continue to grow the network.

I will now turn the call over to Mr. Brunet for closing remarks.

Thank you, Alex and Filipe. That covers all the questions for today's call. Thank you all for joining us, and we wish you a great day and look forward to discussing our second results in November. [Foreign Language]

Ladies and gentlemen, that is your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.

Good morning. My name is Joelle, and I will be your conference operator today.

[Foreign Language]

I will now introduce Mr. Mathieu Brunet, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury at Alimentation Couche-Tard. [Foreign Language]

[Interpreted]

Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to this web conference presenting Alimentation Couche-Tard financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2026. [Operator Instructions] We would like to remind everyone that this webcast presentation will be available on our website for a 90-day period. Also, please remember that some of the issues discussed during this webcast may be forward-looking statements, which are provided by the corporation with its usual caveats. These caveats or risks and uncertainties are outlined in our financial reporting. Therefore, our future results could differ from the information discussed today.

Our financial results will be presented by Mr. Alex Miller, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Felipe De Silva, Chief Financial Officer. Alex, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Mathieu. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the presentation of our fourth quarter and full year results. As we look back on fiscal 2026. This has been an exceptional year for the company, and I'm incredibly proud of what our teams have accomplished. In February, we unveiled our Core+ more strategy, outlining how we would strengthen our core business, accelerate growth in key categories while deepening customer engagement through digital capabilities.

Our model has proven successful as customers continue to respond to our compelling value proposition. Across our network, we strengthened our competitive position, gained market share and delivered growth through disciplined execution. In the United States, we achieved our best performance in years, and we saw traffic growth in the fourth quarter, reflecting the momentum we are building with customers.

In Canada, we delivered record-breaking EBITDA, supported by strong fuel execution, market share gains and growth across the business. In Europe, we continue to benefit from the strength of our diversified footprint and the performance of our teams.

Turning to the quarter. We delivered solid top line growth of nearly 20% year-over-year and we are winning in the markets we serve, strengthening our position and widening the gap versus the broader convenience channel. Before going further, I want to recognize our frontline teams. Every day, they show up as 1 team and deliver on our promise of being fast, friendly and customer ready, bringing our offer to life, delivering value, improving availability and simplifying the experience for our customers. What stands out to me is the reliability of the operation day in and day out. Our teams are maintaining a high standard and strengthening the connection to our brand. That level of execution remains a key enabler as we invest in and optimize our network. Importantly, U.S. turnover has reached the lowest level in our company's history, outperforming industry benchmarks across part-time, full-time and managerial roles. We remain on track with our goal of building 750 new stores through 2030.

This past quarter, we completed the construction of 37 new stores and the relocation or reconstruction of 13 existing stores, bringing us to a total of 130 projects completed during fiscal 2026. At the same time, we have another 34 stores under construction that we expect to open over the coming quarters. As we expand the network organically and through M&A, we are also improving the overall quality and consistency of the customer experience. The integration of our Total energy sites in mid-Europe continues to move forward.

We implemented 95 rebranded sites during the quarter, and we are seeing encouraging signs as these locations begin to benefit from our operating model and customer offer. Let's now turn to our convenience business, where we delivered an impressive quarter. Same-store sales grew 2.2% on a consolidated basis, with the United States leading at 3.4%, marking our best quarterly result in the last 3 years. Continuing with the U.S., we also delivered positive same-store sales in every quarter this year, with each period building on the last.

During the quarter, growth was broad-based with all business units delivering positive same-store sales. We see this as a clear signal that our initiatives are resonating with customers. In Europe and other regions, same-store sales increased by 1.1% with solid contributions from Norway and the Baltics. Norway saw both traffic and basket expansion, while the Baltics benefited from promotional activity and stronger engagement. The Netherlands remained under pressure as we lap prior year tobacco-related benefits.

In Asia, we delivered positive same-store sales results. While partly timing related, it is still an encouraging sign as the team sharpens the offer and works to rebuild customer traffic. In Canada, even as same-store sales declined by 0.9%, primarily due to persistent pressure in tobacco and modern nicotine, we had a good year.

Excluding tobacco, sales were up 1.3% and key categories remained resilient with strength in alcohol and packaged beverages. Diving into our food business where our progress is becoming increasingly visible. In the U.S., foodservice same-store sales grew over 5% with fresh food fast sales growing over 10%, anchored by the continued success of our meal deals platform. At the end of the quarter, we were running at nearly 1 million bundles per week and [indiscernible] moved closer to 1.2 million bundles, reflecting growing customer adoption while responding to a simpler and more relevant offer with clear value.

Execution is also improving with her availability reaching over 90%, up from roughly 75% just a few quarters ago. As we continue to scale the category, we are investing in the capabilities required to support that growth. We see a clear opportunity to further expand the food offer with a strong focus on ensuring fresh food fast delivers consistently across the network.

In Europe, food continues to perform well, led by strong momentum in burgers and sandwiches, driven by simple execution on value and availability. Markets that are winning are those delivering a consistent high-quality offer, giving us confidence in the scalability of the [indiscernible] In Canada, we are building from the same foundation, leaning into value and execution. Meal deals have exceeded daily targets with more than 30% of our food sales coming from a bundle. The team is sharpening execution through improved key row item performance of prepared in Canada campaign and a more thoughtful offer. The overall direction in food is encouraging. We are seeing progress in execution, assortment, vendor partnerships and a coordinated supply model with meaningful runway as we move into our summer season, which will be marked by high-profile product launches and co-branded innovation.

Most notably, we have a new boneless Buffalo Chicken wing product, which was co-developed and co-branded with one of the world's leading brands. We are excited for that item to hit stores in the coming days.

Turning to [indiscernible] We saw continued progress across all regions, led by energy, where same-store sales grew over 15% in the U.S. Strong demand for functional and performance beverages, combined with favorable mix and pricing execution also contributed to margin expansion.

Overall, Packet Beverages delivered another solid quarter, up nearly 6% in same-store sales, supported by innovation, exclusive launches and deeper integration into our meal deal platform. We are also making progress in cold dispensed where improved uptime is supporting higher unit sales and a better customer experience through our loyalty platform. In Europe, packaged beverages are gaining traction, led by energy and functional drinks has improved execution and a more focused assortment are supporting growth across markets.

In Canada, performance remained strong, with energy driving double-digit same-store sales growth and continued resilience in alcohol, particularly in Ontario. We're very excited about the future trajectory of this category and more broadly, it reflects our ability to stay nimble and adapt quickly to evolving customer needs and shipping product trends.

Turning to nicotine. This remains an exciting and evolving category with strong momentum in modern oral. In the U.S., cigarette positive sales growth was driven by disciplined pricing and targeted affordability, limiting unit declines relative to the industry. At the same time, other nicotine products are seeing solid growth at 8.5% in same-store sales, supported by an expanding offer, refresh back bar formats, improved in-store visibility. We are also leveraging our age verified membership platforms, now reaching 3.2 million users, up 12% versus the prior quarter. This is drive being more targeted and personalized engagement through loyalty while improving conversion and retention.

In Europe, next-generation products continue to gain traction with other nicotine products driving category growth. In Canada, results remain impacted by regulatory dynamics and illicit trade with the team adapted through pricing and offer strategies. The performance across category is enabled by execution at scale during the right products are in the right stores at the right time.

Turning to loyalty in the U.S. Our Inter Circle program has now expanded to over 5,000 stores and has grown by nearly 50% year-over-year, reaching 15 million members by May. When you think about where we were just 2 years ago, that is truly a remarkable journey. We are also strengthening the connection between fuel and in-store trips with pump to store conversion quadrupling, reflecting a more seamless customer experience.

In Europe, we have completed the rollout of our revamped extra loyalty program across our legacy markets in Poland as well as our Baltic and Scandinavian business units. We are also beginning to integrate EV charging into the app, creating a more unified customer experience. Looking ahead, digital solutions will play a central role in scaling our initiatives, strengthening relationships with customers and unlocking additional growth.

Turning to mobility. This remains a core strength [indiscernible] the environment remains volatile with geopolitical tensions and higher fuel prices weighing on demand in certain regions. In the U.S., same-store fuel volumes declined by 2.1%, while total gallons sold increased by nearly 5%, reflecting the contribution from network expansion. Europe and other regions were down 4.4%, while Canada remained more resilient with volumes up 2%.

Continuing the positive trajectory we have seen throughout the fiscal year. Our efforts remain focused on growing gross profit across the network through disciplined pricing, margin protection, ensuring continuity of supply and market share gains and volume across our geographies. What gives me great confidence is how we built a world-class supply chain over the years. Along with the trading capabilities and network scale needed to remain competitive on price while capturing margins as market conditions evolve. We have the reach, the experience and the operational depth to manage through these cycles, and our teams know how to execute in this environment.

During the quarter, we also completed the acquisition of 3 fuel terminals in Germany, further strengthening our supply capabilities and providing greater flexibility across our European network. In B2B, across Europe and North America, we are focused on delivering a reliable competitive offering for our B2B customers, leveraging the same scale, supply chain strength and execution that underpin our broader mobility platform. We continue to see resilience in Europe where pressure on volumes was offset by margin performance. We also saw continued growth in nonfuel income with B2B transit charging volumes up by more than 50%.

We are also continuing to roll out our One card payment platform, enabling a more seamless experience from onboarding through fueling, strengthening engagement across the network and supporting market share growth and operating efficiency. Our mobile payment usage increased nearly 60% year-on-year. In the U.S., we are building momentum as we scale the business. Our focus remains on deepening relationships with fleet and commercial customers supported by a differentiated national network, expanding truck accessible sites and execution at the store level.

Large national accounts have grown by more than 15% versus same period last year. Our fleet segment grew volume by 6%, adding 11 million incremental gallons versus the same period of last year as we make strides in government fleet business development. Meanwhile, strategic partnerships continue to drive substantial growth in our truck segment with volume up more than 55% versus a year ago and nearly $27 million incremental gallons.

On e-mobility, we continue to grow the business with disciplined capital deployment as demand continues to increase across Europe. By the end of the quarter, we surpassed 4,000 Circle K branded charge points with a total network of more than 4,700 fast chargers, up 30% year-over-year. We are also seeing strong customer adoption with more than 2.2 million charging transactions in the quarter and over $8 million for the full year.

Utilization continues to improve with charging transactions up over 50% and kilowatt hours sold up nearly 60% versus last year. This reflects the progress we have made in building a scaled and increasingly utilized network in Europe. Reliability has also improved, with uptime now above 97%, reinforcing our leadership position in some of the most advanced EV markets, including Sweden and Norway, where we are respectively the #1 and #2 destinations.

I will now turn it over to Filipe, who will provide more details on our financials.

Thank you, Alex. Good morning, everyone. We delivered an excellent fourth quarter to close the year, driven by the quality of our underlying results, even excluding the impact of certain favorable items. Discipline execution enabled us to maintain operating expenses below inflation, profitability while continuing to invest in the business to support our Core+ [ smart ] strategy.

Our results are at the consistency and durability of our earnings and response of confidence as we start the new fiscal year. More importantly, these figures reflect the contribution of multiple elements and merchandise categories working together. At the same time, we are investing in capabilities that improve availability, simplify the operation and strengthen the long-term earnings potential of this business. For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, net earnings stood at $863 million or $0.94 per share on a diluted basis. These results include a onetime net gain of approximately $260 million related to the resolution of a long-standing legal matters, including a U.S. electronic payment inter-trend litigation.

Adjusted net earnings were $667 million or $0.73 per share on a diluted basis, representing an increase of 58.7% compared to the corresponding quarter of last year. For fiscal 2026, reported net earnings stood at $3.1 billion, an increase of [ $563 ] million or 21.8% compared with fiscal 2025.

Diluted net earnings per share stood at $3.37 compared with $2.71 for the previous fiscal year. Adjusted net earnings stood at $2.9 billion, an increase of $312 million or 12.1% compared with fiscal 2025. Adjusted diluted net earnings per share were $3.10, an increase of 14.4%.

I will now discuss the following section on an FX-adjusted basis. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 increased by $350 million or 28.9% compared with the corresponding quarter of fiscal 2025 mainly due to higher road transportation fuel gross margin, organic growth in our convenience activities as well as the contribution from acquisition, which amounted to $47 million, partly offset by the increase in operating expenses.

During fiscal 2026 on the same basis, the adjusted EBITDA increased by $643 million or 10.8% compared to [indiscernible]. During the third quarter, merchandise and service revenues increased by $242 million or 5.8% attributable to both the contribution from acquisitions, which amounted to $137 million in organic [indiscernible] During fiscal 2026, merchandise and service revenues increased by $1 billion or 5.5%.

Merchandise and service gross profit increased by $103 million or 7.1%. This is primarily attributable to the contribution from acquisition, which amounted to $50 million by organic growth as well as improvement on [indiscernible] and sabers margin. Let me expand a little more on margins because this quarter gives a good picture on how the business is evolving.

In the U.S., merchandise margin improved by 50 basis points to 34.4%, driven by favorable category mix enhanced vendor partnership, stronger procurement and in-store execution. This reflects higher margin growth in other nicotine products and packaged beverages, which would more than offset the continued strength of sales in cigarettes. Food gross profit dollars also increased year-over-year, even [indiscernible] some pressure on the margin rate. That pressure was largely a cut of growth, higher ability and the mix effect of a very successful new new platform rather than any deterioration in the economics of the overall -- more broadly, we are demonstrating that we can deliver server value to customers across categories without compromising the overall gross profit profile, supported by partnership, stronger procurement and more targeted commercial exemption.

In Canada, the gross margin rate decreased by 60 basis points year-over-year to 33.5%, mainly reflecting competitive pressure and mix while the impact of lower cigarette sales and higher growth in energy drinks provided a partial offset. In Europe and other regions, gross margin increased by 100 basis points to 29.6%, supported by mix including lower relative weight of cigarettes and a growing contribution from EV charging and service revenues.

For fiscal 2026, merchandise and service gross profit increased by approximately $412 million nor 64%. Our gross margin in the United States increased by 50 basis points to 24.4% by 20 basis points in Europe and other regions to 29.1% and decreased by 20 basis points in Canada to 43.5%.

Moving now on to our presentation to gross margin was $52.44 per gallon in the United States. USD 17.44 per liter in Europe and other regions and CAD 17.28 per liter in Canada. As Alex mentioned earlier, our global scale and capability across trading and the network allows us to medicate volatility while cantering margin opportunities as market conditions able.

During fiscal 2026, our transportation fuel gross profit increased by $748 million or 11.7%. Our transportation fuel gross margin was $47.49 per gallon in the United sales $11.73 U.S. [indiscernible] in Europe and other regions and [indiscernible] per capita rate in Canada.

Turning now to SG&A. For the fourth quarter. Normalized operating expenses were up 2.6% compared to the previous year of 4.4%, which remained below the weighted average inflation across our network. For fiscal 2026, normalized operating expenses increased by 3.1% compared with the previous year of 3.4%, and we're within the range of our growth [indiscernible]. We're participating in managing our expenses and increased combination of inflation, take investment and supporting growth in areas where we expect to achieve returns. These investments are tied to supply chain technology and building the capability to support our long-term ambitions.

As we can to expand the platform and improved execution, optive remains to be destination to the twist and then customer satisfaction and support long-term profitability. A good example of this is our supply chain, where our distribution center investments are about much more than are about much more than sickly expanding capacity. They provide greater control of our procurement, product availability and distribution while simplifying operations across the network. As we continue to spend these capabilities, we are unlocking opportunities to leverage our size and work more directly with suppliers, which will support improved efficiency and strong economics over time.

We are also advancing the rollout of [indiscernible] We have completed the pilot across 4 U.S. business units and have now begun scaling to more than 200 locations. Our real results are encouraging with increased inventory accuracy and product availability, supported by more precise forecasting and element between inventory, shelf space and demand. As deployments expand across the network, we expect these tools to support replenish much reduced complexity and execution started.

In addition, we remain confident in our ability to deliver $850 million EBITDA by 2030 across merchandise cost of goods, not for resale, store operations, general and administrative expenses and controllable costs. We have already covered on investments in our supply chain will allow us to expand stable distribution, improving store operations and inventory management, but also to reduce our merchandise customers. Looking at goods not for resale, we are starting to leverage procurement statilization and vendor consolidation. Recent sourcing initiatives charting fastructure demonstrates the benefit of a more co-deleted approach to purchase it as we continue to enhance procurement activities across the organization with the additional opportunities to improve purchasing conditions, reduce complexity and drive efficiencies across a broad range of categories. While many of these opportunities will take time to pre-material, we are building the capabilities required for all of them while continuing to invest in the future growth of the business.

As a result, we remain focused on balancing growth investments with operational discipline. We continue to operate with 1 of the leanest model in the sector and remain confident in our expects outlook a -- turning to depreciation for the fourth quarter fiscal 2026. -- depreciation expense increased by approximately $17 million or 3.1% compared to the fourth quarter of last year. This increase was primarily run by the impact from recent acquisitions, particularly Capco, which amount accounted for approximately $20 million as well as ongoing capital investment in epicentreplacement and networking projects. As we move into fiscal 2027, depreciation is expected to continue, reflecting the investment base made in recent years, including acquisitions, network expansion and capabilities that support the long-term growth of the business.

From a tax perspective, the income tax rate for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 was 23.7% compared with 18.8% for the corresponding quarter of fiscal 2025. The increase is mainly taken from the impact of a different mix in our earnings across the various jurisdictions in which we operate. April 2026, we recorded a return on equity at 20.2% and our return on capital employed stood at 13.7%. During the fiscal year, our leverage ratio stood at 1.99, we also had strong balance sheet liquidity with over $3 billion in cash and an additional $3.5 billion available through our revolving unsecured operating credit facility.

During the quarter, we repurchased 0.4 million shares for an amount of $22.6 million. Importantly, we have been able to improve returns while continuing to deploy significant capital during the year, including approximately $1.6 billion returned to shareholders for share repurchase alongside the integration of GetGo, which reflects the strength of our operating model and capitalization. We also issued a new real denominated senior ecutotaling EUR [ 750 ] million to replace existing notes of the same value, which were repaid subsequent to the end of the quarter.

Turning to the dividend. The Board of Directors declared yesterday a quarterly side of CAD 21.5 per share for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 to shareholders on record after July 9, 2026, and approved its payment at July 23, 2026.

Finally, let me briefly comment on our progress with Total energies. Now approximately 2 years into the integration, we continue to execute according to plan. with a clear focus on aligning the business to our operating model and capturing synergies. As of the end of the fourth quarter, our underlying synergy run rate reached over EUR 60 million, reflecting continued progress in operating expenses, cost of sales and commercial initiatives across the network. This puts us well on track to deliver our stated target of EUR 120 million by fiscal 2027 and EUR 170 million by fiscal 2029.

In closing, fiscal 2026 represented an important year for the business. We improved our top line trajectory, strengthened our position in key categories and continue to build the capability that supports sustainable growth. While encouraged by the progress we are seeing in Core+ more, while being to unlock benefits from initiatives that leverage our scale to strengthen their operating model and improve the economics of the business. As we move into fiscal 2027, our priorities are clear, execute with discipline, focus on system control and invest where we see attractive returns.

I thank you all for your attention. I will turn the call over again to Alex.

Thanks, Filipe. I'll leave you with a few final thoughts. We introduced our updated Core+ more strategy in February, and we are energized by the progress so far. The strategy is clearly working, and we are delivering strong execution against our growth algorithm in a profitable and sustainable way. We did what we set out to do, and this year, we executed against those priorities with a clear outperformance in several areas. We see better traffic, margin expansion and a more productive network while we continue to invest in the capabilities that will extend these advantages over time and reinforce our value proposition for customers.

And importantly, our fuel platform continues to perform. As our teams lean into the strength and agility of our supply chain and global scale to capture opportunities and grow market share across the network. We are seeing a constructive start to the year as we move from Q4 into Q1 with continued momentum across our key initiatives and geographies. Thanks again for your time and your continued support.

With that, let's open it up for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Michael Van is with TD Cowen.

Impressive quarter with big earnings. And a lot of it -- I mean, you're doing really well on the same-store sales growth in the U.S., but I wanted to ask first about the fuel margins -- the U.S. fuel margin was probably 30% higher than what the OPIS data would have implied. And it's clear that some of the investments that you're making and sourcing capabilities is deliver are delivering returns but it's even more evident now in these volatile markets. And I'm wondering if you could give us a few examples of how you're able to attract much higher or much better sourcing prices on the fuel side during this environment.

Michael, thank you for the question. I think you've heard us state many times over the years and the quarters that when volatility exists, we are well positioned to capture the advantages there and margin that becomes available with that volatility. And -- for us, this has been a journey for more than a decade as we've kind of pivoted and invested in our own brands and invested in our supply chain. And as we've talked about previously, it's really about building optionality that gives us sourcing choices when the market becomes volatile and/or constrained. And so you see us executing against that and utilizing that optionality to deliver against OPUS.

So that is a litany of investments over multiple years over the last decade into terminals, into positions while maintaining a very tight bar or risk management profile. So I'm not going to go any deeper than that, but it's something that we have invested in for more than a decade. I think you've heard us consistently state when there is volatility. It is a strong opportunity for us, and you see us delivering in this very volatile time.

And to be on Alex also [indiscernible] , it's not just U.S. You can see that also in Europe. We are trading there. Alex just mentioned that we know we are even further investing in additional terminals there because we receive value also on that piece. So yes, very, very excited by what we have been and what what is still there in terms of opportunities. So we're confident that we'll continue to hold platform there.

Okay. And 1 follow-up, a shorter one, I guess, I'll let others get into the same-store sales and all that. But just on the exit run rate, I know you entered Q4 with a pretty strong same-store sales growth in the U.S. I'm wondering how you exited it amid the pressures that we were coming from the [indiscernible] and whatever.

Yes. I think we continue to execute very well, Michael. Core+ more is delivering. And it's not one category. It's the things we talked with you about -- we are clearly delivering in fuel. We are delivering in nicotine. We are growing thirst substantially. We are growing food. We are growing EV and our digital platforms are enabling traffic and growth across that. Our trends in Q1 are very similar to Q4. Our volume has improved a bit. Margins remain -- fuel margins remain robust traffic and same-store sales remain within our growth algorithm, and we continue to control costs and pursue the efforts we're making to expand margins. So Q1, the momentum continues, and we're just focused on executing against the strategy we shared with you in February.

Michael, I understand that that's your last coming calls with us. So just wanted to thank you. It has been a pleasure to work with you. And yes, just wanted to wish you a happy retirement, Michael. Well deserved.

It's been a great 25 years covering you guys.

Your next question comes from Irene Nattel with RBC Capital Markets.

Thanks for the comprehensive answer to Mike's question. Let me just pivot for a second and can we talk about capital allocation, please. Balance sheet is pretty clean at this point in time, your ratios are fabulous. Can you -- and yet there was no activity on the NCIB. Can you talk about how we should think about F27 perhaps from an M&A perspective around NCIB and just conceptually, we talk about continuing investment. How much dry powder are you keeping for CapEx, et cetera?

Thanks for the question. So -- our capital allocation framework remains unchanged. And really, it's about maintaining financial flexibility. In terms of priority, I would say, first, in terms of capital allocation, it serves investing in our organic business. and you have heard us aiming at reinvesting 30% to 25% of our EBITDA into the organic business. Second is, of course, M&A and pursue attractive M&A prophecies within our disciplined financial framework. And the third 1 is maintaining a disciplined leverage profile. So today, we are within our comfort level, so between 2 and 2.5x. And all the excess capital will be used to -- through a new share repurchase program. So that's how we have defined our capital framework, and that's how we'll continue to proceed. And yes, we're keeping always in mind that we want to create long-term value creation for our shareholders. and that that remains change. So that's what I can see in terms of capital allocation, Irene.

And can you comment on the current M&A environment and sort of where your head may be at with all volatility in the market right now.

As we mentioned the last few quarters, and I'm sure that Alex can comment as well, but we continue to see activity there, their files. So of course, as it's part of our DNA. We are looking at that and remain confident that over the the framework of our Core+ more strategy. You will see us actually doing M&A in in our industry, of course, prioritizing the market we are present, but but also looking at why not expanding in other regions in the future. So yes, that remains -- we remain quite positive and optimistic in the environment in terms of M&A today. Alex?

Yes, sure. Irene, good to hear your voice. I just remind everybody, we're focused on our Core+ more, and we're not relying on M&A to deliver our growth algorithm and hopefully, we're increasingly showing you that. M&A remains very active. We're seeing multiple files and multiple geographies, large, medium, small. We just continue to pursue transactions with our focus on our strategic and financial criteria. And that's really what we can tell you, but there's plenty of activity in the M&A space right now.

Your next question comes from Vishal Shreedhar with National Bank.

Could you following on the fuel margins, which were exceptionally strong, could you comment on your fuel capability across your major geographies. I noticed that you purchased some terminals as well in Germany. My understanding is that the strongest in the U.S. to capitalize on this, but maybe you can expand and give you some context. And I'm also asking in the context of your longer inventory holds in Europe and how that might complicate your ability to take advantage of volatility.

Again, thanks for the question. Yes, we're in very volatile times. I think that's 1 of the reasons we have a little more cash on our balance sheet. It's also -- we upped our inventories in Europe a little bit. to ensure that we -- I think I shared on the last update that our supply and trading teams, their #1 responsibility is to keep our stores in product. And with the events, we thought it was wise for us to put a little more inventory into the system just to be safe. It really is about optionality. It's about recognizing various markets how those markets receive product, what options are there to supply those markets and building those options so that when you need them or when opportunity exists you can take advantage of that.

In events like this, when markets get volatile, you start to see product flows change, certain areas get quite tight on product, that's when those options benefit us. and that's what you saw flow through our financials in this quarter.

Your next question comes from John Zamparo with Scotiabank.

I wanted to ask about the merchandise margins, particularly in the U.S. And I wonder if you could update us on where you are in your journey on building out new distribution centers. what type of impact did that have in the quarter? And how should we think about margin improvements to come from increased DC penetration over the next few years?

Thanks, on for the question. Yes, pretty excited. As we mentioned in last quarter, we have opened these 3 new DCs in U.S. And associated to that, we were commenting about some ramping up cost that were impacting our G&A, but we are seeing that actually going down in this quarter, and we start to see improvement in terms of avability in the store and and getting this operation starting to mature. So very excited about what's coming -- all these investments are being done with, of course, the objective of improving capability, making sure that we have the product in stores and we can help our stores to deliver the best experience to customers.

But of course, also with the mind of getting returns on that. So yes, you will expect, we are expecting actually to have on the midterm, a positive impact in our cuts and of course, also in our SG&A because on the COG side, of course, getting deeper in the supply chain as we did with the fuel we get better economics with the vendors at some point. And we'll start to see that already this year, John. And on the SG&A side, but it's no doubt also that only the supply chain will help us actually to be more productive in store at some point. So there's a lot of benefits to see there. Of course, a supply chain, we are just at the beginning of the journey. It's a learning curve, you should expect over the end of this year. But I would say most importantly, in the coming 2 years, more positive impact in our P&L coming from the disease -- and as you know, we are continuing to assess what else we need in terms of supply chain on -- in U.S. and as well in Europe. So more to come by that, but very excited by what we see today.

And I'd just add on that, I think we've talked with you consistently about our data journey, our journey around analytics, around I think understanding better where to really push on compelling value, where to run promotions, where not to run promotions we just continue to get improved -- we continue to improve on that, and we continue to improve at our category management. And I think our pricing strategy is inside of category management I think we also talked with you on Core+ more about, we actually have some structural tailwinds around mix. And we shouldn't overlook Europe. Europe had a really strong merch margin in the quarter, and that I think we talked with you about our EV business, it continues to grow, and it is becoming meaningful for us. That is a really nice tailwind into our services. and merch margin as well as our investments in car wash. So there's some positives for us that I think we believe over the mid to long term, we'll continue to provide some momentum for our business.

Your next question comes from Chris Li with Desjardins.

So much for all the helpful comments so far. My question is I know market conditions are still obviously very fluid. But given all the positive comments you've made about the momentum of your business so far, I guess my question is, do you have a good line of sight to achieving your financial framework of more than 10% organic EPS growth this year. I just asked in the context of that, you'll be lapping some tough comps on the fuel margin at least later this year. So I wanted to just to gauge of what's your comfort level on achieving that target this year.

Thank you, Chris. And I would say we have a great momentum Alex has been mentioning what's happening in Q1. We feel very confident. The team are doing an amazing job there executing, as you know, at pace, transforming this company from 1 region to another. So there is no reason for us to tell you that our financial growth algorithm is not achievable. We announced that 5 months ago, we remain very confident and yes, we'll execute according to that. So is there good confidence there.

Just I think in this quarter, we delivered against every level of the algorithm. And that's our focus and fleet I brought up, but just -- our teams are really executing across across the geographies and the focus that they're having and the execution they're having they deserve the credit. And we sit here in a pretty confident strong position. And I think also we're just focused on winning the environment we're operating in, and we see resilience from consumers. So yes.

Your next question comes from Martin Landry with Stifel.

Given the high fuel prices during the quarter, I believe that triggers more trip to the pump as consumers put roughly the same dollar amount as usual. So I was wondering if this increased traffic at the pump has translated into more traffic inside the store -- would it be possible to break down your 3.4% same-store sales merchandise growth into traffic and basket for the quarter?

Yes. So our our fill rates are down 12%, 13%, 14%, but our traffic at our pumps are up because of the higher prices. I think the key element here is our ability to access those customers and incentivize them or entice them to go into the store and our digital platforms are what are enabling us to reach those consumers. And I referenced in my comments that we've quadrupled our capability of getting those fuel customers into our stores. The breakdown of our 3.4% we referenced, we had positive traffic that was slightly positive or up, but that's great for us, and the rest is basket. It's a mix of -- we had a really strong quarter in nicotine, really strong quarter in food. And first, we were 3.6 in cigarettes, other nicotine 8.5%, I'm doing this off my head. You heard me reference energy. I think PacBev was up 6%, 6.5% in Food, I referenced in my comments, right? We were up a little over 5% and 10% on same-store sales. So you see us executing against Core+ more and that mix is what's driving the 3.4%.

And to bid on Alex, on this traffic, we see that as an opportunity, a huge opportunity, and Alex was mentioning all the work that we are doing on the digital side and connecting the dots between the fourth court and the store. And there's an opportunity for us to to build on this profit that's coming to the forecast and to be even better and getting more customer entering in our stores. So we are doing that personalizing offer and -- and yes, I think here, we are already seeing some of that. Alex is mentioning it, but there's a huge unlock for us and a lot of opportunities to continue to grow in that space.

Your next question comes from Tom Palmer with JPMorgan.

Wanted to maybe kick off on the foodservice side. It's an area where you noted the top line strength really for multiple quarters now. last quarter. So in the third quarter, you had noted some margin pressures from shrink and I think some mix headwinds around the meal deals. Curious the progress we might have seen just given that improved margin in the fourth quarter? And any expectations in terms of continued progress as we move into '27.

Yes, I think -- thanks for the question. I think we talked with you about the need to do a reset on food, our focus on execution. We are stable now. We are executing. We are producing food. You heard me reference that our hero items are over 90% production. So we are executing and we are stable and that presents the platform one, to continue to evolve our offer and to continue to work on our production and bring our shrink down. But we are still in early innings in food, and our goal is to drive traffic and to drive sales growth.

Our meal deals are resonating with consumers. You heard me reference 1.2. Our compelling value is resonating with consumers, and we are going to lean into that over this summer in a big way with fuel unlocks, our new chicken wings I referenced, we have a $2.50 meal deal in play right now. But we are going to really focus on continuing to grow sales, but we can do that in a margin constructive way. And again, I just complement the teams. This has been a journey, and they are really executing really strongly right now.

Also I did a follow-up just on the fuel volume trends that you're seeing. You noted kind of the higher frequency, lower gallons per Philip. Do you guys look and kind of see like a price level or point where pressure becomes more acute in terms of price levels? And if so, -- are we there today? Just given some of the price moves that we've seen here over the last few weeks? Or was it maybe more pronounced if we look back to earlier period?

Yes. I think if you look at our quarter, where we had the most pressure was really out on the West Coast of the United States, and that's where prices were the highest, California, Arizona. So we reached $6.5, $7 a gallon in California, over $5 a gallon in Arizona.

So we definitely see those price points impacting demand. The Southeast United States, the Midwest of the United States really continued with with really solid volume performance. As I shared, we've been strengthening on volume performance as we've moved into this quarter and prices are coming deck. So I will never predict the future of what's there, but prices are coming down really across our geographies. And we're confident in our ability to continue to capture market share and deliver strong volume performance.

Your next question comes from Mark Petrie with CIBC.

I actually just wanted to follow up on the topic. I think you touched on in your answer to Martin's question, but the impact of the loyalty program and the personalized promotions, hoping you can quantify the impact ideally to U.S. same-store sales and volumes. And I know you called it out specifically with cold dispensed, but maybe on a consolidated basis. And then, Alex, you referenced the up to store conversion up 4x -- but I'm assuming that's off a relatively low base, so some broader contracts would be helpful. And then what you think the runway or what you think the opportunity is from here as that program gains traction.

Yes. I think our capability in the space just continues to advance. And you heard me reference our launch of our new engine and new platform in Europe, and we're seeing very solid results. So you asked me to quantify it. I think for us, it's all about membership active members, increased visits, increased basket, and we are seeing that consistently. Those numbers continue to go up month-on-month, quarter-on-quarter. And we fundamentally believe that is playing in to our improved performance on same-store sales. Can I give you an exact percentage of what we we believe or know that to be, I cannot. But we know that the program is resonating with consumers. We know we hit the top 10 app downloaded in the United States. -- during this past quarter, and we know that more and more people are using the platform. And once they're on the platform, they are shopping with us more and they are buying more from us. And you're right, the quadruple is on a low platform, but we're in the early innings of personalization, which just gives me increased confidence -- but our teams are really executing our capability in that space, the way our digital teams are working with our operators has never been stronger.

And again, this is another area that gives us confidence and we believe is underpinning the results we're sharing with you.

Okay. And maybe just to clarify, the 4 on the pump to store conversion. Like would that have been a material tailwind to the traffic growth that you're talking about?

No, it's not material enough to to be material. But the value of these platforms is we know who the customers are. We know what they're purchasing. We know when they're coming to buy fuel from us and if they're coming into our stores, and we're getting better at incentivizing them and enticing them to come into our stores.

Next question comes from Bobby Griffin with Raymond James.

I appreciate the details throughout this call. I guess, Alex, I wanted to ask more of a high-level question on just like the overall market from the fuel side of things. When you look at the last period of volatility in 2022 and compare it to this period of volatility here today, and you think about how the market reset, are there things that are different that give you confidence that the business resets differently than it did maybe last time and -- or vice versa, things that we should keep in mind. Does anything there on how you think about lapping kind of a period of volatility when the last 1 was a few years ago when we saw different aspects play out.

Yes. I think every event is different. And the global fuel and products markets are incredibly resilient. So what you see is product flows adjusting real time and movements of where product goes to really keep the world supplied with product and those flows changes and any event like this it adapts and the changes from last time are not the changes from this time. I can't predict when the next big volatile occasion will come. And I cannot predict fuel margins. What I can predict is that our ability to execute our capabilities in this space, I think, continue to grow. I think we are well prepared to compete under any environment. And when we see these volatile environments, we realize significant value.

And then just quickly for me, a second one.

Philippe, on the productivity of the capital employment, I don't believe you mentioned kind of new store productivity, but could you maybe touch quickly on what you're seeing out of the new store class as you guys have rated the organic openings and how those are opening up and hitting pro forma numbers?

Yes. Very excited by our ATI program. The stores that we're opening are for 5x more profitable than the average stores that we are in the network. -- after 3 years of operations. So both stores are really making a big difference. That's why we have to in the decision actually to accelerate our inter program -- and yes, you have heard Alex mentioning that, yes, we are well on track to open 750 stores over the next 4 years.

Next question comes from Corey Tarlowe with Jefferies.

Great. I wanted to touch on SG&A. So it was up quite substantially in the prior quarter and then the quarter you just reported costs, I'd say, were relatively well controlled. Could you give us maybe a lens into kind of what's changing from a cost perspective in the business, what we might be able to expect going forward, especially as you invest more into foodservice?

Yes, thank you for the question. And let me start saying that I'm very proud of what the team is achieving on the cost of [indiscernible] -- you're hearing us a lot talking about transformation, how we are deeply transforming this company on investing in many places this company more digital, faster and really enabling better execution, better customer experience. And that is possible because we are keeping a very significant discipline on the cost, okay? You heard me saying last quarter that, yes, we were above completion, but it was linked to some of the vestments -- so -- and directly related to the supply chain. And when you look at this quarter, we had not so significant investment control of investment ramping costs. And you can see the underlying costs, they are going down at 2.6% growth during the quarter, softening good, a lot of pending in terms of selling initiatives, Teams market in Europe in in their overhead cost structure on the marketing piece.

So when you look at U.S., a lot happening there also in the store, the rigor model on looking at supply, waste management, security, we have mentioned to you many times about all the procurement set up and the good thing that we're seeing there. So pretty excited by what we see -- the way that you need to look at gene and we have said that during the corpsman presentation is really aiming at delivering normalized expenses below inflation. That's our goal on -- and you should look at on a yearly basis, not quarter-to-quarter because again, there will be some investment there time to time. But yes, you -- you can trust -- we are very confident on the team. We were again yesterday looking at both plants. And yes, there is a lot happening on the savings that it was a huge confidence that will be there in terms of guidance from a cost perspective.

And I'd just add, you've heard me reference the execution of our teams. And at the end of the day, you look at our P&L and our cost lines, our big cost lines are our labor lines in our lines in our stores. And the teams are really executing there as well, really strong overtime management -- you'll hear me talk about turnover, that directly relates to training cost -- so you see the productivity gains, the strong overtime management, the reduction in training hours the teams are executing, and we are just fighting hard to save dollars in our core operations to enable the investments we're talking with you about. But again, the teams are executing well, and we're well positioned. And we gave you our growth algorithm, and we plan to execute inside of that growth algorithm.

Understood. And then just a quick follow-up, Alex, on the same-store fuel volumes, the margins are quite robust and better than you've seen in quite a long time if ever. So -- as you think about the level of margin that you're generating and the volumes that you have in the U.S., is there a consideration about potentially investing more into price to drive better volumes?

Yes. I mean we compete every day at every site, and it is all about customer value proposition and being extremely consistent for the customer that they can count on us to be in a certain price position against our competitor sets. And candidly, that does not change, regardless of the supply environment or our underlying margin. This is about consumer value proposition being very consistent on the to, on the price side and then leveraging our digital platforms to deliver additional value for visits and additional trips for loyal customers.

This concludes the Q&A. I will now turn the call over to Mathieu for closing remarks.

Thank you, Alex, and Filipe. That covers all the questions for today's call. Thank you all for joining us. We wish you a great day and look forward to discussing our first quarter 2027 results in September.

[Foreign Language]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.

Good morning. My name is Joelle, and I will be your conference operator today. [Foreign Language] I will now introduce Mr. Mathieu Brunet, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury at Alimentation Couche-Tard. [Foreign Language]

English will follow. [Foreign Language] Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to this web conference presenting Alimentation Couche-Tard's financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2026. All lines will be kept on mute to prevent any background notes. After the presentation, we will answer questions from analysts during the web conference. We would like to remind everyone that this webcast presentation will be available on our website for a 90-day period. Also, please remember that some of the issues discussed during this webcast might be forward-looking statements, which are provided by the corporation with the usual caveats. These caveats or risks and uncertainties are outlined in our financial reporting. Therefore, our future results could differ from the information discussed today.

Our financial results will be presented by Mr. Alex Miller, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Filipe Da Silva, Chief Financial Officer. Alex, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Mathieu, and good morning, everyone. I appreciate you joining us today. I want to start by saying how energized our team is following our strategic update last month in Toronto. We were grateful for the engagement from many of you, and I hope today gave you a clear picture of our refreshed Core + More strategy and where it will take us over the next 5 years. It is a simplified, focused and customer-centric approach built around our priorities, which are supported by value-driving enablers. It's important to note that these initiatives are already well underway and producing measurable results across the business that are increasingly visible in our performance. Our teams are executing these priorities today, and we are beginning to see the benefits in customer engagement, store performance and operational momentum across the network.

More importantly, this focus is driving traffic by delivering on our customer promise of being fast, friendly, customer-ready and offering compelling value. And at the center of it all, making our customers' lives a little easier every day. But it all starts with our people. Earlier this month, Couche-Tard recognized for the fifth straight year as a Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award winner, highlighting the world's most engaged workplace cultures. This year, we have added recognition of being a winner with distinction, joining only a handful of companies worldwide who have made significant strides to implement workplace initiatives that sustain engagement and help employees thrive. This is helping us beat industry averages and turnover and is showing up in our performance. As we sharpen our execution and focus on delivering a consistent customer experience across our network, we are also extending our reach through organic growth to bring that experience to new customers and communities.

In the third quarter, we completed the construction of 37 stores, reaching a total of 80 stores since the beginning of fiscal 2026. We have another 58 stores under construction, and we are well on our way to reaching our goal of 100 new sites this fiscal year. And as outlined during our strategic update, we are now accelerating the network expansion to add at least 750 new sites by 2030. As we grow and optimize our network, we are equally focused on building the capabilities to support it. We are strengthening our supply chain as well as investing in best-in-class inventory management, which Filipe will cover a little later.

With 3 newly opened distribution centers this past quarter, we are now supporting approximately 3,200 stores across North America with self-distribution from 6 facilities. As outlined during our strategic update, taking greater control of our supply chain and dealing directly with manufacturers, create opportunities to capture margin with benefits flowing through to better cost of goods, improved product availability and a broader assortment for our customers.

With that, let's take a look at our convenience business. I'm very pleased with how our teams performed this quarter, particularly in an environment where many consumers remain stretched. For the third consecutive quarter, same-store sales were positive across all 3 of our operating regions. We finished the quarter at 2.0% on a consolidated basis, in line with the growth algorithm we shared during our business strategy update. In the United States, same-store sales increased by 2.8%, marking our strongest performance in more than 2 years, driven by solid growth in several of our core categories, including energy, nicotine and continued progress in our food journey. While the quarter began at a slower pace following the government shutdown in November, performance strengthened across the network as the weeks progressed, with nearly all of our business units posting positive same-store sales.

I also want to highlight that traffic was up in almost half of the BUs as customers continue to respond to the value and convenience of our offer, whether in our stores, on our forecourts or through our loyalty and digital platforms. The consistent execution by our teams across the network is helping strengthen our position in the market. And as you heard me say in Toronto, we are winning in retail and widening the gap versus the convenience channel.

Turning over to Canada. Growth moderated as expected but remained positive at 0.3%, with alcohol continuing to perform well even after cycling the full year impact of the Ontario beer legislation. This reflects the strength of our product selection and the growing appeal of our stores as a destination for customers. Europe and other regions were up 0.4%, supported by our price and assortment and by the continued progress in food, where our author is increasingly making our stores a go-to destination in several markets.

Growth was moderated by lapping the earlier benefit from the tobacco legislation in the Netherlands. Excluding Asia, where results declined in the mid-single digits due to continued soft consumer sentiment, Europe delivered growth of approximately 1.4% for the quarter. Food continues to be one of the most important growth levers within Core + More, and we are seeing strong momentum as execution improves across the network. In the U.S., food same-store sales grew in the mid- to high single digits as our hot food offer and value proposition continues to gain traction with customers. The results also reflect the investments we have been making in the category and the strength of our scale and procurement capabilities, which allow us to deliver compelling food offers at price points, very few others can match. Meal deals remain a key anchor of that performance, supported by better availability, a simpler assortment and more consistent execution across our stores. We sold 13.3 million meal deal bundles this quarter and roller grill and breakfast sandwiches continue to lead the mix with the $3 price point representing more than half of transactions.

More broadly, our progress in food extends beyond meal deals as we continue to invest and build the category through innovation, stronger execution and targeted marketing, including through our digital platforms. Beyond the U.S., food also delivered mid-single-digit results in Canada, supported by meal deal promotions. In Europe, where food has remained a consistent contributor, we are now preparing to introduce a more unified platform built around breakfast, lunch and dinner occasions, supported by a broader campaign launching in May across 12 countries with the ambition of building a best-in-class burger strategy across the region.

Turning to thirst. Energy delivered solid mid-teens growth across all 3 regions. In the U.S., packaged beverages delivered another strong quarter, supported by the depth of our assortment and larger baskets, even as adult beverages stayed under pressure. Energy remained the primary growth driver with both leading brands and emerging players contributing and helping us gain share versus the broader convenience channel. In Canada, Energy also contributed to category growth, while alcohol performed well despite cycling last year's regulatory change in Ontario, driven by beer and strong gains in wine. In Europe, energy drinks continue to outperform the market, particularly [indiscernible] and sugar-free variants with functional beverages and sports drinks also contributed.

Nicotine was another area of strength in the U.S. Same-store sales grew in the mid- to high single digits. Modern oral nicotine was again a standout category, substantially outperforming the broader market. While age verified digital membership is nearing $3 million, up almost 75% year-over-year. Cigarettes also returned to growth during the quarter, supported by continued share gains and disciplined pricing, though that mix did weigh somewhat on margins.

In Canada, nicotine trends continued to face regulatory and illicit market headwinds, though we continued to perform better than the broader market. In Europe, value and margin growth remained solid, with strength in pouches and e-cigarettes helping offset volume pressure even as we lap the earlier benefit from the change in legislation in the Netherlands.

Turning to loyalty. In the U.S., Inner Circle added another 1.2 million members in the quarter, bringing total membership to $13.7 million,, with the program now available at more than 5,000 stores, engagement continues to build, supported by more relevant and timely communication at key moments across fuel, car wash and in the store. Our redesigned mobile app is also gaining traction with monthly active users up nearly 50% year-over-year. Ease of use matters, and we are seeing that come through more clearly as our digital experience continues to improve and deliver more value for customers.

In Europe, our enhanced Extra program continues to scale ahead of expectations, with average visits per member loyalty traffic and new member sign-ups all increasing versus last year. The redesigned mobile app will launch in Europe later this fiscal year, bringing customers a simpler and more relevant experience with a stronger value focus.

Shifting to our fuel business, performance remained steady and resilient across our markets. In the U.S., fuel volumes slightly declined at 0.4% year-over-year, but improved sequentially versus the prior quarter. We continue to gain share and outperform industry peers, supported by the size and scale of our network and greater control over our fuel supply chain. That is helping us capture lower-cost sourcing opportunities, respond more effectively to market volatility and support margins.

Inner Circle also continues to support engagement around fuel, with our January Fuel Day driving nearly 70,000 new member enrollments and nearly 80,000 reactivations. In Canada, volumes remained positive, up a solid 4.2%, driven by promotional activity and demand growth alongside continued share gains and maintaining pricing discipline. That performance is especially notable against the softer economic backdrop and speaks to the strength of our fuel offer.

In Europe, volumes were down 1.6%, reflecting the broader macro backdrop and extreme weather in parts of the region. Even so, margins remained healthy, supported by favorable supply conditions, disciplined execution and continued progress in expanding supply pathways across the network.

Shifting to B2B. Our European business delivered solid performance in Q3, while card volumes were slightly below last year's results, they were more than offset by strong margins. Growing nonfuel income also remains an important priority with transit charging continuing to build as part of the broader offer. In the U.S., B2B fuel share continued to grow quarter-over-quarter, leveraging the national scale and strength of the Circle K brand. We are deepening relationships across fleets of all sizes, with a deliberate focus on commercial diesel growth and executing new strategic partnerships. Large national accounts are increasing. Our proprietary card programs are demonstrating strong retention and usage within our network and Inner Circle membership among B2B customers continues to rise.

Finally, in e-mobility, we deployed over 430 DC ultrafast Circle K branded charge points across Europe in Q3. This included hitting a milestone in Sweden, where we activated our 1,000 charge point, 5 years ahead of plan. Overall, we added EV charging to 48 new locations in the network and now have 675 locations with Circle K branded chargers at the end of Q3, bringing more customers to our integrated convenience and charging offer.

The European fast charging network is now over 4,300 charge points, up 31% versus last year. Out of these, nearly 3,700 are Circle K branded charge points. Utilization reached all-time highs across Europe with nearly 3 million charging transactions on Circle K branded transit chargers.

With that, I'll now turn the discussion over to Filipe, who will provide further details on our financial performance this quarter.

Thank you, Alex, and good morning, everyone. We delivered one of our best quarterly performance in over 2 years with same-store sales accelerating as the quarter progressed and contributing to solid growth in both adjusted EBITDA and earnings per share. These results validate that the actions outlined in our business strategy update are translating into measurable outcomes. Continued focus on traffic, customer value and operational execution is strengthening our growth algorithm and driving long-term value creation.

As Alex mentioned earlier, in the United States, same-store sales were positive for the third consecutive quarter. The improvement reflects continued progress in growing basket size and reinforcing our value proposition for customers. It also highlights the positive impact of our initiatives implemented across our network, which are helping us outperform broader market trends and capture incremental share.

As we signaled in previous quarters, growth in Canada moderated as expected but remain positive. And Europe and other regions also posted positive same-store sales, supported primarily by company offers, through price and assortment which continues to resonate well with customers across our markets.

For the third quarter of fiscal 2026, net earnings attributable to shareholders of the corporation stood at $757 million or $0.82 per share on a diluted basis. Excluding certain items described in more details in our MD&A, adjusted net earnings were approximately $751 million or $0.81 per share on an adjusted diluted basis, representing an increase of 19.1% compared to the corresponding quarter of last year.

Now let's review the detail each of our business segments on an FX-adjusted basis. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of fiscal 2026 increased by approximately $196 million or [indiscernible] 11.9% year-over-year, mainly due to higher road transportation fuel gross margin, the contribution from acquisition of approximately $79 million as well as organic growth in our covenants activities partly offset by the impact of regulatory divestiture related to the GetGo acquisition, which amounted to approximately $9 million.

During the third quarter, merchandise and service revenues increased by approximately $351 million or 6.6%, primarily driven by the contribution from acquisitions of approximately $205 million and organic growth, partly offset by the impact of regulatory divestiture related to the GetGo acquisition of approximately $23 million.

Merchandise and service gross profit increased by approximately $150 million or 6.2%. This is primarily due to the contribution from acquisitions of approximately $71 million as well as by the organic growth, partly offset by the impact of the regulatory divestiture related to the GetGo acquisition of approximately $8 million.

Our merchandise and service gross margin in the United States was largely in line with prior year at 33.9%, down slightly by 0.1%, mainly reflecting change in sales mix from higher cigarette sales along with temporary pre-operating costs related to the new distribution centers as we continue to invest in strengthening our supply chain capabilities. Margins slightly decreased by 0.1% in Europe and other regions to 38.9%, mainly driven by a change in sales mix and increased by 0.1% in Canada to 32.5%.

Moving on to the fuel side of our business. Our road transportation fuel gross margin was USD 47.71 per gallon in the United States, an increase of USD 3.43, while in Europe and other regions, it was USD 10.87 per liter, an increase of USD 1.58.

Finally, in Canada, fuel margins continue to post an impressive CAD 15.82 per liter, reflecting an increase of $2.28.

As we discussed during our business strategy update, fuel margins across our network remain healthy and continue to reflect the strength of our supply chain capabilities and in-store execution. Our scale, disciplined pricing approach and ongoing optimization of the supply chain allow us to consistently perform at the high end of the industry, and we remain well positioned in a challenging retail environment.

Turning to SG&A. Normalized expenses for the third quarter of fiscal 2026 increased by 4% year-over-year, primarily reflecting inflationary pressures and targeted investments, supporting our strategic initiatives, as well as investment to support the acceleration of our food service program and ensure our stores remain customer ready. The increase also includes some preopening costs -- pre-operating costs associated with the opening of new distribution centers as we continue to strengthen our supply chain infrastructure. We continue to see measurable gains in workforce efficiency. In the U.S., regular labor hours were slightly down year-over-year, while over time hours declined at a high single-digit rate. As a result, over time as a percentage of regular hours improved 50 basis points versus prior year, reflecting continued progress in labor scheduling and store level tools that are helping our teams operate more effectively.

More importantly, on a year-to-date basis, normalized expenses growth of 3.3% remains broadly aligned with inflation, reflecting our continued focus on efficiency while supporting key investments in the business. This builds on the strong track record we have established in managing costs across the organization.

Following the more than $800 million in savings delivered under our Fit-to-Serve program, our Core + More plan has identified an additional $850 million in opportunities at the EBITDA level across store operations, merchandise cost of goods, general and administrative, goods not for resale and other controllable expenses.

Lastly, we are also continuing to advance the rollout of our RELEX platform. Early results from the pilot phase show encouraging improvement in product availability and the insights gathered are being incorporated as we prepare for broader deployment. As the platform scales, RELEX is expected to help further reduce spoilage and hence, inventory efficiency, support margin resilience and strengthen collaboration with our vendor partners, while also streamlining in-store operations through simpler ordering and more optimized shelf layout.

For the third quarter of fiscal 2026, our depreciation expense increased by approximately $46 million or 7% year-over-year. The increase was mainly driven by the impact from acquisitions, along with ongoing investments across the network, including equipment upgrades, store remodel program, new store opening, network optimization initiatives, technology enhancements and mobility solutions.

From a TAM -- tax perspective, the income tax rate for the third quarter of fiscal 2026 was 21.8% compared with 21% for the corresponding quarter of fiscal 2025. The increase is mainly stemming from the impact of different mix in our earnings across the various jurisdictions in which we operate. As of February 1, 2026, we recorded a return on equity at 18.3%, and our return on capital employed stood at 12.4%. We are also seeing a positive shift in our return profile, supported by disciplined capital allocation, the recent acquisitions performing as expected, improving overall profitability and continued progress on working capital.

During the fiscal year, our leverage ratio stood at 2.25. We also had a strong balance sheet liquidity with $1.5 billion in cash and an additional $3 billion available through our revolving unsecured operating credit facility. During the quarter, we repurchased 1.9 million shares for an amount of $684.4 million, subsequent to the end of the quarter, 0.4 million shares were repurchased for an amount of $21.6 million.

Turning to the dividend. The Board of Directors declared yesterday a quarterly dividend of CAD 0.215 per share for the third quarter of fiscal 2026 to shareholders on record as of March 2026, and approved payment effective April 9, 2026.

In closing, this quarter represents an important step forward for the business, delivering one of our best quarterly performance in over 2 years, provide encouraging evidence that the initiatives outlined in our business strategy update are gaining traction and producing measurable results. Our continued focus on traffic, customer value and operational execution is strengthening the foundation of our growth algorithm. While we remain mindful of the broader consumer environment, the progress we are seeing across our network reinforces our confidence in our ability to drive sustainable growth and long-term value creation. I thank you all for your attention.

I will turn the call over again to our President and CEO, Alex Miller.

Thank you, Filipe. As we look ahead, we remain focused on executing against Core + More and on delivering for our customers in ways that are meaningful and consistent. We are seeing positive outcomes across the business from customer engagement and category performance to continued gains in share. While the consumer and geopolitical backdrop continues to be dynamic, we remain cautiously optimistic. It's still early, but the trends we are seeing so far in Q4 are encouraging. The work our teams are doing every day across the network and their focus on being fast, friendly and customer-ready while delivering value for our customers, gives me confidence Core + More is driving results. I'm proud of what we have accomplished so far this year and excited about the opportunities ahead.

With that, let's turn it over to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from John Zamparo with Scotiabank.

It's a broader question about the current environment for oil prices and fuel. And I wonder when you look back at the history of the industry, can you give a sense of at what price point on fuel, you tend to see some level of demand destruction, both fund in-store purchases and on fuel volumes?

Yes. Thanks for the question, John. Clear trends always fall through for us as price goes up, unit purchases -- average unit purchase comes down. It doesn't necessarily mean the demand destruction and it actually drives additional trips to our sites. I don't know that we have an exact dollar amount that we say demand destruction occurs. A lot of driving is obviously needed or is something that consumers must do. Clearly, when we get over 4 -- up to $5 a gallon, that puts additional stress on consumers that are already [ stretched ] and have so much money to spend. I don't think we see direct correlation between higher fuel price and in-store traffic or in-store performance. We don't see those correlations in our data. So -- and I can tell you thus far during this event, our in-store and our merch is performing quite well.

Yes. Just to complement what Alex is saying, John, I believe that in this environment, we have demonstrated consistently that we are able to outperform. We have this integrated supply chain on the fuel side that help us to really have different optionality in terms of sourcing, pricing capabilities as well. So yes, we believe that -- there is no doubt that it will put further stretch on the consumer, but we are well positioned to continue to outperform the market.

Yes, I think that's a great point, Filipe. In times of volatility historically have almost always been positive, net positive for us over the cycle, where we capture additional margin over the cycle of that volatile period. I think as Filipe referenced, our capabilities in our fuel supply, trading and logistics teams in Houston and in Geneva, we have a lot of confidence in their capability. They have a dual mandate, first and foremost, to keep our stores wet or supplied with product. Secondly, to use the optionality that we purposely build to capture additional margin and volatility generally leads to that optionality leading to greater margin capture.

Your next question comes from Irene Nattel with RBC Capital Markets.

Just following up on your last comments, Alex. Just around acceleration and performance. So when you talked about the quarter, you started negative in U.S. merch same-store sales. So can you talk about the exit rate? And then more specifically, what you've seen in inside store behavior, both pre February 28 and post February 28. So give us all some comfort around all of that as fuel prices have gone up.

Yes. Thanks for the question, Irene. Yes, I think as we said in Toronto, the first period of the quarter, this past period in the U.S., we were actually negative 0.1%. So that gives you an indication of the strength for the remaining portion of the quarter. I think also just what I'm so pleased about is the breadth of that. One, in our core categories of nicotine, thirst, obviously, this is a very strong performance quarter in fuel. But in nicotine and thirst, just solidly positive. 5% positive impact that I referenced that energy was mid-teens growth, positive in cigarettes, high single digits positive in other nicotine products. So just really executing in the core space. It's also broad-based across our BUs. All of our BUs this past quarter, except for one in the U.S. were positive same-store sales. Texas, Arizona, Florida, our southern states that had experienced some challenge, they were all solidly positive in the quarter. The Midwest continues to perform very strongly with mid-single digits positive. So -- and those trends have continued in this quarter to answer your question, Irene. We're -- we've actually run more than 2 straight periods of positive traffic across the U.S. We haven't done that in a long time, Irene. And the broad base of the strength continues. And food continues to accelerate as well, where we're approaching double-digit growth now. So I am encouraged by the progress that we're seeing. And post February 28, we have not seen a change in those trends.

That's really helpful. And just as a follow-up, you noted in your remarks that in the BUs where you've rolled out Inner Circle, you're seeing, I think you said like double the strike, whatever it is. Can you give us an idea of the time line to roll Inner Circle out across all the BUs in the U.S.?

Inner Circle is rolled out across all of our BUs in the U.S. now, Irene. So they are in every one of our BUs across the entire network. And we continue to refresh the program, add capability that you heard in my remarks, Extra is rolled out across all of our BUs in Europe, except for our new mid-Europe BUs. And we're working on the backbone of technology capability to be able to do that in the future.

What you're maybe referencing also, Irene, it's this -- this pilot that we have launched in Europe about the -- putting in place a reward program based on the visit. So we are very excited by that. The more you come, the more the rewards you get. The first results are promising there. And yes, that's something that we believe that will -- as we'll be rolling out, we'll make a huge difference as well.

Yes. And Irene, let me give you a few facts of kind of how the -- how it's performing, right? So active monthly users on our inner circle is up 46%. Average visits per member is up 7% in Inner Circle. It's up 9% for Extra in Europe. Merchandise visits per member is up 13%. So we continue to be very encouraged by our digital platforms and the engagement from customers and consumers.

Your next question comes from Mark Petrie with CIBC.

I wanted to ask about the U.S. merchandise gross margin rate and just sort of the puts and takes there, the impact of prepared food. I think in general, food is viewed as a tailwind to gross margin. But is that the right way to think about it as you guys are sort of in an investment phase to grow that business?

Yes. Thanks for the question. Yes, there is no doubt that food as we mentioned during our business strategy update on [ the loan ] will be accretive to the category. We are building that today. There's no doubt that we still have some opportunities to improve the spoilage execution at store level but we are improving sequentially our performance there. As a whole, when you look at the gross profit margin performance of U.S. this quarter, actually, this slight decrease compared to last year. It's more actually linked to the mix and the strong results linked to cigarettes. Cigarettes have been posting a positive growth during the quarter. And with a lower margin, so that impacted negatively the overall performance of the GP rate.

The second impact on the quarter is, as I mentioned earlier, linked to the impact of our -- of the opening of the new DCs, okay? We are very excited by this new strategy that we are having to go deeper on the supply chain. But there is no doubt that at the early days, you have some impact, preopening costs maturing the operations there. So that has an impact compared to last year. But again, I reiterate here that on the long run, that supply chain will be accretive to the gross profit as well. So confident when we look at the quarters ahead, we believe that, yes, we'll be able to showcase growth profit with a better profile.

Okay. Could you just help us understand how long do you think those DCs end up as a pressure on gross margin? Like is that something we should expect to sustain for a couple of quarters? Or is it more isolated to Q3 in terms of materiality?

I think it's fair to say that there will be some as you can see on -- when you open a new store, you have a couple of quarters that you are ramping up and just fine-tuning the operations. So yes, I think it's fair to expect that some impact on Q4, potentially Q1.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Chris Li with Desjardins.

Just maybe a -- first, I have a question on fuel margins. And when we look at some of the industry data from OPIS, the margins are a bit softer versus the average. But based on your remarks that in a volatile environment, you do get some outsized outperformance. Is that the case currently right now and -- versus your historical outperformance? Are you getting better results during this volatile period?

Yes. Thanks for the question, Chris. I think we certainly get -- what I said was that over the cycle, we realized higher margins. We're in the -- what we would say is more of the front end of the cycle. With that said, margins are fine so far this quarter. I would say they're in line with what we've delivered year-to-date thus far. So that's the answer I can give you.

Your next question comes from Martin Landry with Stifel.

I was wondering if you can give us a bit of an update on the M&A landscape. Last quarter, you had mentioned that your pipeline was active. So any color on that would be helpful.

Yes. Thank you for the question. We remain very active on multiple opportunities across all 3 of our primary regions. And we are deploying the same capital discipline, the same models that our founders taught us and that we've deployed for the past 4-plus decades. But we remain -- there remains a lot of deal flow, a lot of deal activity, and we are highly engaged in that and our decentralized models enable us manage multiple files at the same time, and that is what we're doing right now.

And you can see in the quarter, we have announced that we have acquired 24 stores during the quarter. Again, we discussed that in Toronto and in our Core + More strategy, the single store operator acquisition. That's something that we are focusing more and more. And you can see the acceleration of that quarter-after-quarter.

Your next question comes from Michael Van Aelst with TD Cowen.

I'd like to turn my attention to Europe for a bit. The -- can you give us an idea of what the growth was excluding cigarettes on a same-store sales basis? And kind of how we should expect that drag from the -- lapping the regulatory change to, I guess, continue over the next few quarters?

Yes. I think growth in Europe would have been 3.2%, excluding cigarettes, Michael, and thank you for the question. I think it's also -- legacy Europe was up 2.7%. And the month of January in Europe was one of the coldest ever in Europe. So it really impacted our 4 new mid-Europe countries, Poland, the Baltics, where we had a week to more than a week of really just people at home. So it drove cost, drove electricity price, and it really impacted sales. So we're delivering 6% growth on food. We're driving strong energy growth. Packed beverage is up 5.8% and 6.5% in mid-Europe. So the same trends of Core + More and executing against food. And we do think the weather impact in January specifically, it really did negatively impact us in the period. So we're -- we feel good about our European business, as you heard us say in Toronto, and we're quite confident that we will continue to deliver merchandise same-store merchandise growth in Europe.

Okay. And just a follow-up on that. So from the cigarette drag, do you expect that to be less in future quarters? Because I know when the regulations change, I know you were very prepared for it. I'm just wondering if you guys got more market share right off the bat and then you saw that ease as the year went on? As others kind of [indiscernible] impact there.

Yes. I mean, cigarettes in mid-Europe were down 2.6% for the -- that drag on Netherlands specifically. And then there's also border traffic into Luxembourg, where there's a lot of things happening around border traffic, specifically from Germany into Luxembourg that's impacting negatively some cigarette sales. We don't know how long that will continue, but -- so that basis stays there. But across Europe as a whole, we continue to take share. And in other nicotine, we believe, as we said in Toronto, we can more than offset the cigarette declines across Europe.

Your next question comes from Bobby Griffin with Raymond James.

Alex, I just wanted to go back to your comments about the self-distribution journey. With 3,200 stores now receiving products, are you starting to see some of those savings flow through the P&L today? Or is this program more where it has to be at scale before you get the unlock? So we're just kind of not yet seeing anything actually move the P&L and that's still to come.

Yes, that's -- thanks for the question. And that's still to come. I think as you heard, our first and foremost, getting these DCs open, getting product into them and making sure that our stores have product is our primary goal right now. We are starting to work on, and we have done a couple of commercial deals for supplies into the DC, and we will continue to do that over the coming quarters. But this is really the long game for us, right? This isn't about a short-term win. This is a fundamental belief that supplying our stores ourselves ultimately will enable us to capture additional margin, lower working capital, provide our stores, products when they need them at the times that best suit them and our customers. So this is the long game for us. And we're very convinced that this is the right strategy for us, but we're not really focused on next quarter of seeing a giant commercial win here.

Your next question comes from Corey Tarlowe with Jefferies.

Great. I was wondering if you could touch on the monthly cadence of comps? And then anything you're seeing quarter-to-date?

And then secondarily, Filipe, could you just comment on what we're expecting for SG&A in Q4? And how we should expect and when we should expect normalized expense growth to converge with what you've steered us toward for the Investor Day, i.e., less than inflation?

I guess I'll take the first part, Filipe, and you can take the second part. Yes, again, as we shared with our strategy, we're focused on Core + More. We're focused on fuel and nicotine and thirst and then our enablers of growing food in our digital products and we believe that's working. So the trends in our business on the back end of this the quarter we're reporting now. And as I shared earlier, with Irene's questions, the trend that we're seeing is quite positive. Traffic is positive. It's broad-based across categories. So we remain optimistic around our delivery on same-store merch. So we're just focused on continuing the trends we're seeing in our business. Filipe, I'll hand it to you on the cost question.

Yes. Thanks, Alex. Corey, so on the OpEx, when you look at Q3 again here, when you look at the underlying performance, we feel good actually about what's happening. Teams are really doing a great thing in terms of for productivity, the procurement, centralized procurement on the GFR is delivering also good results. But at the same time, as we mentioned, in Toronto, there are some investments. So on this quarter, you had the DC, we continue to take care of our food program and making sure that we are helping the store to execute this food ambition. But -- and having said that, so we remain very confident on this ambition that we said that normalized expenses will be growing at inflation. When you look at year-to-date, Corey, we are 3.3%. So we are not that far there. And yes, when we look at the next coming quarters, we'll be there. Q4, you will see a -- very likely a better performance on the normalized expense. That's what we're seeing. Again here, similar to what Alex said on the DC, we're here for the long run, confident in our ability to deliver this ambition of 3% roughly in line with inflation. We have the actions, the Fit-to-Serve program is there to help us to fund this strategic investment.

Your next question comes from Luke Hannan with Canaccord Genuity.

I was just wondering if we could get an update on the partnership with Guy Fieri. And how rolled out is that across your network today? And I imagine that those sales are occurring at higher ASPs when compared to the meal deal assortment that you have in the U.S. And Alex you talked about the distribution of sales there. Does the success of that partnership help give you any thought, I guess, updating the price point architecture for the meal deals?

Yes. Thank you for the question. I think as I've shared with you with food, that the one thing we're going to do is be very deliberate about what we're doing and when we're doing it and making sure that we're fully prepared and that anything we're rolling out or expanding, we have tested and really proof that it's ready. Guy Fieri is still in only Northern Tier at this stage. And that's largely a result of some ongoing supply chain issues regarding these products that we need confidence to build out that we -- if we're going to launch these stores and launch these products in additional business units, that the supply chain is robust and that we will have those products. They are at a higher ASP or sales point. And we've had success selling them in Northern Tier. And our strategy has always been a multitiered approach across price points. We do not envision changing our focus on meal deals as a result or our price points on meal deals as a result of Guy Fieri.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Mark Carden with UBS Financial.

So it sounds like you're continuing to see strength on modern oral nicotine. I understand that September may have been a bit unique, but how has promotional activity compared to what you've seen in the past few quarters? And then with the growth in cigarettes, how are you thinking about mix going forward?

Yes. I think other nicotine just continues to grow. And there's a lot of folks trying to gain that growth. So there continues to be a lot of activity, a lot of promotional activity, and our partners in that space continue to be very active with aggressive promotions across other nicotine and that exists today, most of which we put under Inner Circle. I don't -- the category's growth is very consistent, continues to grow. It's not clear to me on the horizon when that would change or the kind of trends that we have or how that's happening changes.

With cigarettes for us, it's all about capturing our share and continuing to win there. Traditionally, we have been beating market by 100, 150 bps. That expanded pretty dramatically this quarter and continues. And I think that's through the capability of our category teams, our pricing teams and our data analytics around how we're positioning sub-premium, premium value and sub-value brands. And I think we're getting better at that as we get better with data and our promotional activity, and we're going to look to continue to do that. Cigarettes is one of our lowest margin categories. So growing cigarettes will have a mix impact on us, but it is more gross profit dollars to the bank, and that's what we're focused on.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Mathieu for closing remarks.

Thank you, Alex and Filipe. That covers all the questions for today's call. Thank you all for joining us. We wish you a great day and look forward to discussing our fourth quarter 2026 results in June. [Foreign Language]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and now please disconnect your lines.

Good morning, everyone. [Foreign Language] On behalf of Alimentation Couche-Tard, welcome to our strategic update 2026. Thank you for being with us today, whether it's in person here in Toronto or through the webcast.

Now I will continue in English. Welcome to our 2026 business strategy update. Thank you for those joining us in person here in Toronto and to everyone connected via webcast. I'm Mariusz Chojnacki, Director of Investor Relations. Today, our leadership team will share our positioning Couche-Tard for the next phase of profitable growth and long-term value creation. We will begin the event with a fireside chat featuring our President and CEO, Alex Miller, and Mathieu Brunet, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury. This will be followed by presentations and a Q&A session. We'll wrap up before noon with some closing remarks, and for those attending in person, we will be providing a light lunch.

Before we begin, a few housekeeping items. Today's remarks will include forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. We refer to the following forward-looking statements accompanying this presentation as well as the risk and uncertainties outlined in our financial reporting. Therefore, our future results could differ from the information discussed today. Full details are available in our public filings, and a recording of today's event will be available in the presentation -- in the Investor Relations section of our website, along with presentation materials to follow.

With that, Mathieu, over to you.

Hi. Good morning, everyone. I am pleased to kick things off today, and I have the privilege to interview Alex Miller. As we look back at the last 18 months since he was appointed CEO of Couche-Tard. So Alex, when you took over as CEO, I remember you came to me and you said you needed to know a lot more about that Investor Relations stuff and what that actually meant for you. Since then, we've actually spent a lot of time together, working on quarter ends in different projects. So it's been great to know you since then. But now I ensure that many investors will also like to know more about you since you've been with the company for many more years. So why don't you start things off by telling us more about yourself and your career path.

Thank you, Mathieu. Thank all of you for being here, excited you're here today. I grew up in Central Illinois, in a small rural town. I met my wife, Vicki in college. We've been together for over 30 years. I have 3 children, 3 wonderful children, at least most of the time. One is in college now, 2 are in high school. I like to be outdoors. I like to try and stay active. I'd like to golf, I'd like to ski, I'd like to my mountain bike. I'd like to read.

From a work perspective, I started after school after I graduated college working for Amoco Oil Company in St. Louis, Missouri. My first job was running 3 convenience stores. I spent my first 8.5 years with Amoco for about 3 years, they got bought by BP in retail, different jobs in retail, category management, pricing, fuel pricing, I wrote a new labor model, I remember, moved kind of all over the United States or several times in the United States. And then I moved to London to BP's headquarters to work in finance, planning, worked on M&A, then moved into what we called alternative energy. So I worked in solar, wind, natural gas liquids, combined cycle gas turbines. And then I moved back to Chicago for my final 4 years working in BP's fuel value chain and their supply and trading teams. Brian Hannasch, our former CEO, and I met in my second job in Amoco. So I've known Brian for more than 30 years, and I worked for him twice in BP and Amoco. We obviously kept up through the years and Brian brought me over to Couche-Tard to -- he had the idea that we had gotten large enough at that time to kind of consolidate our supply and logistics fuel trading in North America. So I started doing that for Couche-Tard. We decided to then do that globally. I then took on a senior operating role. I ran real estate for a while, and then I became COO and here I am.

That's quite the experience in retail actually. It started about 5 years ago for me, working for Couche-Tard, and it's been quite impressive to see how retail is fascinating initially. So if we're reflecting now just on the last 18 months in your career and you in your role, can you give me the top 3 most important things that you have learned since becoming the CEO?

Yes. Mathieu, I think, first of all, just the scale and resiliency of our global platform. I've visited all of our business units every year. And I'm just amazed by quality of our assets, the quality of our teams, the diversification of our teams, how local our teams are, it is just a pretty profound network and platform that we've built. The free cash flow that comes off of that platform is impressive. We're very blessed by that.

I think secondly, just the power of being in stores and being with our people, I think it's pretty easy to get chain to a desk chain to PowerPoint slides, really resist that. Our business is alive in our stores. I learn more being in our stores than I do sitting in front of my computer or looking at a PowerPoint deck. I learned from talking to our people, hearing what's really happening, what's working, what's not working, what projects we didn't get quite right and where our focus needs to be.

And then I think the third thing I would say is just the pace of change with consumers. It's -- I've never seen just the ramp at change and what's happening across retail, how consumers are behaving. So it's just imperative to stay close to the customer right now, really stay on top of that of what's happening and adapt and adapt quickly.

Yes. And you're totally right. It's been such a changing environment, whether it was customer-driven, the outside environment, the interest rates, inflation, so it's been a wild couple of years actually for us as a company. Now I'm sure there's a question that is on everyone's mind today, but what has not gone to plan that impacted the execution of the 10 for the Win strategy that we presented 2.5 years ago?

Yes. I think I'll touch on 3 things. I think first, we didn't anticipate the consumer softness. The environment, obviously, COVID never been through COVID coming out of COVID, the inflation. We hadn't experienced inflation like that in decades. Many of our people and many of us had never experienced inflation like that and just the pressure that it put on consumers, their consolidation of trips, their pursuit of value. We didn't anticipate that in what we built intend for the win.

I think secondly, just category headwinds or category changes. I guess it kind of gets to the changing consumer. I've been in this business for a long time. And usually, categories would move 1% or 2% year-on-year, up or down, seeing categories move up or down 10%, see it happening very quickly. That continues today. Again, I don't think we anticipated that. I don't think we'd necessarily change quick enough. I think we've learned from that.

I guess third, I would say, just our food execution. I think as we reflect when we first rolled out our food program, it was too complex. It had too many SKUs. The processes weren't tight enough, we need thousands of people to execute anything we give them. It has to be tight, kind of has to be bulletproof. It was too complex when we initially rolled it out.

I mean those are quite good learnings, I think, from what we've seen over the last 2.5 years. But if we -- let's continue to expand on the same topic for a moment. There's also been a few successes as well as part of 10 for the Win. So why don't you tell us what you're the most proud of from the strategy that came out?

I think there's a lot of successes and there's a lot of things I'm proud of, Mathieu. I think let me first just start with our people and our operating metrics. We're a retailer. We focus on execution coming out of COVID. It was very difficult during that time. We have just improved our core people metrics and our core operating metrics, just quarter-over-quarter really ratably, and we're back to being Couche-Tard and our people metrics are better than they've ever been.

I think secondly, just our network growth and discipline. You saw in the video there, 100 new stores. We have a machine, real estate and development team that is a machine. We are building sites. We are doing it with our normal discipline. And just Total. It's a big transaction for us, complex transaction, and we're integrating it. We're ahead of our model plan. We put on the business when we acquired them. I'm really proud of the progress we've made there.

Thirdly would be digital transformation. Candidly, 18 months ago, we were waffling a bit. I think we were behind in 18 months, I think we've leapfrogged and we're ahead. And you're going to hear Erica and Ed talk about that later today.

I guess fourth would be a food reset. We have learned from our mistakes. We've gone back, we've reduced SKUs. We've tightened our process, and we're in action now, and Louise and Hans-Olav will talk about that later today.

Fifth, our cost discipline and reinvesting. We delivered on our agenda. We've saved hundreds of millions of dollars. We've performed pretty consistently at CPI, absorb this inflation, while investing materially in systems and platforms. And just last is culture as a performance engine for us. Our culture is so important to who we are as a company. I think our culture is as strong as ever right now.

Yes. It's -- I think those achievements really make my life easier in Investor Relations, that's for sure. It's certainly been great the last couple of quarters to be able to showcase the successes that we've had and also the momentum that we've been building. So you kind of finished on culture. So I want you to kind of keep that thought and talk to us about the culture. I know you've told me a few times, one of the reasons you were appointed CEO is because you were the one that was going to protect that culture. So talk to me about what makes the culture of this company so special and unique?

I think first is humility, being humble. We are a team of 150,000 people. We are all together. We are out in stores. We are talking to each other, humility in everything we do. I think second is our values. I'll talk about those a little bit later, but we live by those values every day, and we all share them. I guess third bit of our culture is just absolutely being customer obsessed, focusing on the customer and everything we do, listening to them, adapting to them, that's our culture, Mathieu.

I'd say the second thing is our decentralized operating model as a structural moat. That model, our founders put in place has served us so well. We have 30 business units around the world. They are local. The people that work in those businesses come from those geographies grew up in those geographies. They are close to the business. They own the business. I recall maybe 6 months after Filipe joined and he and I were just sitting around talking and he said, he goes, the thing that just amazes me about this company is the ownership of their P&L and the ownership of their business. That is our decentralized model. That's pretty unique.

I would definitely echo everything that you said. And I think a personal example for me is how everyone came together as one team as we were preparing for this Investor Day, right? I mean it was -- I mean everyone was very happy to chip in. So that was great. But other than preserving the culture, are any other points -- any other points of emphasis that you have focused on?

Yes. I think a few things, Mathieu. I guess, first, I'm sure the team is pretty sick of me saying now less is more, less is more, less is more, something I've lived by. I've managed by I fundamentally believe in. What does that mean? It means focus. And I think with the company of our size and our scale and the complexity that's happening around us, it's even more important. Less is more focused on what is priorities and get after it. We know when we focus this organization, they can deliver amazing things.

I think secondly would be customer-ready operations, just we are an operating company. We have to be ready for those customers. It is the most differentiating thing we do. I'll talk on that a little bit later. Digital and supply chain enablement, that is our scale. That is deploying our scale. That is things smaller, single-site operators. They don't -- they can't do that. Those are advantages for us. Those are how we utilize the scale, and we are working on that.

I guess last, just retention and engagement back to our people, Mathieu, our people are who get it done. When we're turning over people, we have to retrain people, and that customer ready suffers, really getting after and continuing to improve on intention and engagement is always going to be a priority for me.

Great. Thank you, Alex, for the amazing opportunity to have this interview with you and for providing us with a better understanding of your achievements at Couche-Tard and also what your priorities have been as the CEO of this great company.

Now I know that investors and analysts are eager to learn more about where you're taking Couche-Tard into the future. So before we start the presentation, why don't we just take a quick moment and you tell us why it was important to bring everyone here today and present the company's outlook and the strategy for the future?

Yes. I think I'm just incredibly proud of what's been built and what we're continuing to build. We are going to grow this business. We have great people that are highly motivated, Telling all the time. You asked me about people all the time. And I always tell him I said we need more great people, but I fundamentally believe we have stronger people than we've ever had. We have phenomenal leaders up and down in this company. And I'm excited for the future. I'm excited for you to get to be with some of our leaders and to hear about where our focus is.

Great. Alex, thank you so much. The mic is all yours.

Thank you, Mathieu. I'm excited. I hope you can sense to share with you our strategic update. I'm going to take you through just a bit of our history because our history is important to us. I'm then going to pivot to kind of our vision of the future and the things we're paying attention to. And then we'll bring it back to the strategy. I'll introduce the strategy and then several of our leadership team will go into greater detail around that strategy.

This is a condensed time line of our history. As the video said, our founder started this company with one store in Laval in 1980. They grew in Quebec, they grew into Ontario, and they continued to grow West into Canada. Our founders would tell you a lot of people told them not to go into the United States. A lot of foreign companies failed. A lot of Canadian companies failed going into the United States. If you know our founders, they believed in their model. They believed in themselves, and they entered the United States in 2001 when they bought big foot oil. They doubled down on that bet when they bought Circle K was a huge transaction for us at that time, a couple of years later.

Then they entered Europe. They were -- I remember they had been talking about entering Europe and they found the right opportunity. They bought Statoil in 2012. I think maybe it will help if I tell you a little story to try and underpin who our founders are and we're up really is our culture. I joined Couche-Tard in January of 2012. Brian hired me to do the fuel role. I lived in Chicago, Illinois at the time. My kids were in school. I was supposed to move to Phoenix to do my fuel job. But I couldn't move until the summer because my kids were in school. So Brian said, I want you to go work in one of our stores before you move to Phoenix. So I went to work for out of store in Oakland, that's in South Chicago. And Brian told me, he said, get in there, learn what we do. He goes, if something comes up that is relevant of why I hired you, he goes, "I might reach out and ask you to do something". I don't think it's been 2 weeks and he sent me an end. He called me, said, I'm going to send you an NDA, go sign it and I'll call you. So he sent me the NDA, I signed it. It was Statoil. They were working on acquiring Statoil. So I spent months working in our store in South Chicago. And at night, I was in the data room reviewing fuel contracts, working on a model. I ultimately wrote a paper for our Board suggesting that the fuel margins were sustainable in Scandinavia, turned out I was mostly right, luckily.

I then went to -- in the early summer, Brian invited me to go with Elaine himself and Ray Pare, who at the time was our CFO, to go ride sites in Benelux on another file and -- and that was really cool for me because I got to know Elaine and then and Brian a little more. And all we were riding the sites, they were pleased with the assets we were buying. They were holding on price and pleased with what we were paying on price. But what they talked about the most of why they were doing this transaction was the leadership team they were acquiring.

They fundamentally help that for them to enter Europe, they had to get a great leadership team because they knew we weren't going to bring Canadians or Americans over to run our European business. I sit here 13.5 years later. And Hans-Olav sitting right there. He is one of our senior leaders. Ina Strand, who is our Chief People Officer; came in that transaction. Jorn Matson who is another one of our senior leaders over in Europe. They all 3 came in that transaction and 13.5 years later, they are still here with us. I think they like our culture. You can ask Hans-Olav later. That's our culture. That is our culture.

I think we entered Asia in 2020 and when we brought out our franchisee in Hong Kong, but we've kept adding with additional transactions. So in Canada, multiple transactions in the United States, Topaz in Europe, then Total in Europe. So we just keep building on those platforms that our founders have built.

Now this is our network. This is what we built. 29 countries, 30 business units, 17,000 sites, as you heard in the video. We don't chase site count. We don't have an aspiration to have 20,000 sites or 30,000 sites. That's not who we are. We take a very focused view on our network. And we're actually very active with our network, and it is an incredibly differentiated in our channel, and in retail in general and provides the foundation for our strength and our ability to grow and to grow earnings. And Aaron, who runs our network will talk about that in quite a bit more detail later today.

We pursue NA for 4 reasons. We want attractive long-term assets. We want robust return on capital. We have to believe that we can deliver meaningful synergies, and we better have a plan, and we follow that plan to do it. Lane just challenged us this week on something we were talking about Filipe, right? What's your plan? Can you need a better plan, but we follow that plan. We developed those plans, we execute those. Everything we do, we have a model, that's what goes into our budgets. We know with every transaction we've done, whether we've achieved those models. I can tell you with a couple of exceptions, we have.

And we -- the final reason is, can we acquire distinct capabilities or platforms, programs or people, as I mentioned, with Statoil. This is our operating model or the flywheel that our founders developed they gave us and that we follow today. We invest in the business, strategic growth. We invest in our business. We ratably invest in our business. We do that with financial discipline. We invest in our existing assets. How does that show up? That shows up through ideas then the piloting of those ideas, proving those ideas and then scaling those ideas. We do that over and over again, and we ratably invest in our business.

I mentioned our decentralized business unit operating model, global local. We will not change that. It is unique. It is differentiated. We fundamentally believe it's one of the things that makes us so strong and has delivered the returns that we have over many decades. We only add regional enterprise or global headcount or where we feel we can deliver scale and unique capabilities. We're pretty aggressive about restricting, monitoring where are we doing and how are those interfaces working with our business units.

And then finally, it's a cliche, right? Retail is detail, it is a cliche, but it's right. retail is detail. We focus on operational excellence. We monitor a lot of KPIs. We talk to our business units every period about their performance, the things that are working, the things that aren't working, and we are focused on our stores and our operational execution.

25 years of EBITDA, EPS and net earnings. And some of the many transactions, sizable transactions on the bottom of this slide. I think it's a pretty good performance under any lens. You've owned Couche-Tard for these 25 years, you've done pretty well. It's quite an amazing story. It's one all of us. I've been CEO for 18 months. It's a responsibility to take over for Elaine and Brian in this trend and what's been built. I take that extremely seriously as does this team. I know what's on your mind. Hey, it's a great chart, Alex, but what about those last 2 years? What about that orange bar and that pink -- or the orange line and the pink line, those went down the last 2 years.

I could sit here and I could talk to you about COVID and margin -- pretty extreme margin expansion. I could talk to you about the Ukraine Russia war and the dislocations that drove an oil gasoline and diesel markets and increased margins and our capability to capture a pretty substantial share of that, but those are excuses. I know what you want to know, are those bars going to be going back up in this trajectory. I can tell you, the answer is yes. We're going to talk to you about our vision of how that happens.

I'm pleased with the last 2 quarters we've talked with you about. We've gotten some momentum, that momentum has continued in this latest quarter. And as we talk with you about our strategy today, the answer is yes. So that's a little bit about our history. It's hard to talk 45 years' worth of history in 3 or 4 slides, but it means a lot to us. It is where we come from. It is kind of what grounds us as leaders of this company.

I now want to pivot to our vision. Our vision has changed. This is a new vision for us as part of the strategy refresh, to become the world's favorite stop for people on the go. Why did we decide to change it? Again, I mentioned earlier that the environment is changing, right? It's changing rapidly. Consumers are changing. I referenced, I have 3 children. They're a lot different than I am. They live differently, they interact, they consume differently. The world is changing. We need to adapt. What does that mean for Couche-Tard? It means channel blurring. It means digital. It means where -- we need to beat the C-store industry, right? And we are by increasingly widening gaps candidly. But we need to win in retail because channels are blurring. Consumers are making choices. Consumers have more choice, more visibility through these digital channels than they've ever had.

Consumers are starved for time. They're looking for efficiency. They're looking to be talk to where they live and where it's relevant for them. And they are on the go. We love on the go. In bricks and mortar retail, I would -- there is no other space I would rather be than where we're at. We have incredibly great assets. We are incredibly convenient. People get into our stores and they get out of our stores very quickly. Most of the things that are purchased from us are consumed immediately or within 90 minutes. We believe there's broader things we can sell in those stores that fit these criteria. You guys are very intelligent people and you read like I do. Blue collar jobs are growing. Trade schools are growing. These are our customers. They're on the go. We can serve them. So people on the go is our sweet spot. And it's not just in the C-store channel, it's in retail as a whole.

Our mission hasn't changed. You heard it in the video to make people's lives a little easier every day. It's kind of simple. Maybe you think it doesn't matter. We think it does. I'll just tell you a story, right? You hear us -- you hear me saying I'm in our stores all the time and I visit all of our stores. I think one of the things that just amazes me when I'm on those rides and I'm with these guys and people kind of see us standing around. We're usually wearing protective orange or yellow jackets because we're out on our parking lots. And they're kind of like who are you guys? Are you the big wigs, but the number of times that people come up to us and thank us and want to recognize one of our employees, you wouldn't believe how many times that happens. It happens all the time. It tells us a story about somebody and how great they are, how -- what they do for them, how they've come through for them. That's real. I think that we're all consumers. We're all time pressured. And I'm 53, but for me, the experience is getting worse. I get disappointed a lot, I wait in line. People don't have some people are rude to me. People don't seem to care that I'm there to transact with them, this matters, right? This really matters. So making people's lives a little easier is what we do.

This is our customer promise. Again, it's a pretty simple slide. One of the things when I took over as CEO, I thought we had the opportunity to -- we hadn't lost focus on the customer, but I thought we had the opportunity to focus even harder. So we did a ton of consumer research to go out, ask our customers what they were -- what they wanted from us, what were the most important things they said they wanted. This is it by a long ways, not even [indiscernible]. That's why we use our cameras in our stores to monitor wait time. And I can tell you our wait times in almost every business unit is getting faster. They want us to be fast. They want us to be friendly. As per my story previously, they want to have a positive experience. They want employees that are engaged and happy to be there.

Customer ready. What does that mean? It means that they want our stores to be clean and they want us to have the products that we are supposed to have that they came to purchase. They want us ready for that. We are investing in platforms and technology that you'll hear about later today. It is going to be a game changer. It's in Europe for us today. It is going to be a game changer for us to improve on our customer readiness. And I think the thing we added -- so those 3 have been in focus for us for quite a while. We added a fourth, it's called compelling value. That is the change in the consumer. It's not like value wasn't there. Clearly, you've had the Walmarts of the world for a long time with low price. But value with these constrained consumers is even more important. You might be sitting there saying, Alex, you guys are on a convenience store. You're not really known for value. So let me be clear. We're not planning on complete -- competing with Walmart for everyday low price. But the places we participate in our core and the things we're developing, we absolutely can compete in value. We have tremendous scale. We have tremendous vendor partnerships. So -- and we can run real compelling deals, so we are running fewer promotions but more compelling promotions. And when we get this right, our consumers respond, and this is something we're going to double down on as we look to the future.

I talked about our values a little earlier. One of the questions I get, I saw it was on a the IR group always gives me a Q&A. But I get asked this all the time. One of the questions on the tough Q&A was, Alex, is it hard to lead and manage in this polarized political environment? The answer I always give is no, it is not. The reason it is not is because this is how we lead this company. These haven't -- these aren't values we created this year or last year or 10 years ago, these are the values for the 14 years I've been here. And if our founders and Brian were here, they would tell you these were our values before then.

Let me give you a little color about -- so what is one team. You heard it on the video. I was glad to hear it. One team is we don't do politics. We don't do silos. We don't do skip coating. We are all in this together. We are all attacking the customer, servicing the customer, this is what we do. We do it every day. We work together. We support each other. We welcome people for who they are, what skills they bring to us and provide an environment for them to grow and achieve.

We do the right thing. Again, sounds simple. We do the right thing in everything we do. We support our communities. It is at the core of our decentralized model. We just went through a pretty nasty snowstorm in the Southeast United States. We always have 2 priorities. Louise and I talked about this just recently, keeping our people safe. First and foremost, we will do anything to keep our people safe, make sure they have housing, make sure they have food, make sure that if they're stranded at work, we can get them home from work. And then we look to keep our stores open because we need to service our communities. And our communities really rely on us in times of disaster. It's really important for them. And having water and fuel. Basic food is really important, and we deal with them a lot. But it's even more than that. We -- you won't see -- I don't have a big corporate marketing budget. I don't think you'll see Couche-Tard or Circle K on the Bell center, if anybody is going to make that decision, it's Steve who's sitting in the back, we go to our business units. Our business units carry those budgets. And we encourage them to participate with local charities and support their communities for the things that they value.

My favorite value is play to win. One thing I'd love since the day I joined this company is we get after it, right? We get after it. We work hard. We want people to make decisions. We want to push down decision-making. We want them to own their business. That is my job. I view my job as success. The fewer amount of decisions I need to make the better. I want our people on the ground empowered to make decisions and owning their business.

So now it's time to balance our strategy refresh. Core plus more. We are focused on long-term profitable growth, consistent organic growth, the customer is at the center of everything you will hear about, leveraging our scale, that's in our network, our platforms and our systems. And the thing I'll tell you, everything you're going to hear about today, we are in action on today. It's not on a slide, it's not -- it's -- you're not going to hear about a lot of bright shiny objects or some massive change for Couche-Tard. You're going to hear about us focused on our core and the things we think we can do more of and leveraging our scale. Financials that Filipe will share with you at the end of this don't include any M&A. They are all organic. We are going to grow organically. And what we are talking about, and you see the word on this slide is we want and need to grow traffic. We want more people visiting our sites and shopping in our stores.

And I referenced that I was proud of the last 2 quarters, been improving. That trend has really continued into this quarter, and we are seeing positive traffic in a number of business units and I really feel great about that. So we're going to amplify the core. This is our core business, fuel, nicotine and thirst. It is the predominant reasons today that people come and visit us. We like this space. Two of these 3 things are growing from a macro sense. We are taking share in all 3, an increasing amount of shares. Trey has sent me Nielsen, all of us Nielsen data in the last 2 periods where we outperformed market by 500 to 600 basis points we have never achieved that -- those type of gaps. We can't do that without executing in the core.

Then we're going to do more. You're going to hear more about the food reset. Our numbers, we've grown nicely in the first 2 quarters of this year. That has continued and again, progressed further in this latest quarter. Offer -- what is offer. It's assortment. We need to evolve our assortment, change our assortment. We think we can. We're going to underpin that with our investments in supply chain, and you're going to see a video later from Trey on that.

Network. I've talked already a lot about it. Aaron is going to talk about it later. Mobility solutions, that might surprise you. I think if you live in the U.S. or you live here in Canada, it looks like EV, Wow, I just watch all these automakers take these huge ride-offs and the subsidies aren't there and things, but I can tell you in Europe, EV is very real. It is growing and we have built just a fantastic platform under Hans-Olav's leadership, and he's going to talk to you more about it later today.

And our enablers, and I'm really excited that Ed and Erica are here to talk with you today because -- it's always -- I know for me, it's a black box. What are we doing in tech in these systems. This is our scale, right? This is our scale, data, digital platforms. This is where AI comes in. They're here to talk you about it. We're going to continue to drive efficiency into our business so we can keep our costs controlled and make the right investments.

I've heard Elaine say once, I've heard him say it 50 times. Alex put people around you that are smarter than you. You're going to meet 6 of them or hear from 6 of them later today. I think maybe we're -- I've added to Elaine's guidance to me is these 6 people have very different backgrounds, different experiences in life. And probably most importantly, different skill sets. We are good at different things, and we complement each other, and I'm really excited for you to hear them later today.

I guess last, I'm going to finish with people. Anyone that knows me knows that I fundamentally believe the most important thing in a business is people. We have incredible assets in this company. But our people are blood. Our people are how we execute, how we get things done, nothing is more important to me. I created operations first when I became COO. That was a focus on our people and our customers. I referenced our people metrics. We are hitting levels we -- this doesn't sound humble. We are crushing industry on turnover levels. We are beating them by 20%, 30% and then we continue to get better at it. We're increasingly being recognized by various entities for being a wonderful employer. That is really important to me. It is really, really important to me. And great people enable this strategy.

So with that, I'm going to finish. I'm going to hand it over to Louise, who is going to take you into the core.

Hi, everyone. I'm Louise Warner, and I'm the EVP of North American operations. And I have the privilege of presenting the core on behalf of all of our teams across the world. You heard from Alex about the importance of the people in our stores and in our teams across the world. And you'll hear later from Aaron that location is the #1 reason why people build a convenience store. Erica and Ed will tell you about all the amazing things we're doing in tech and digital and the personalized offers we're bringing to our customers, which they love. But in the end, we need to have the products that people need and want when they visit on a convenience occasion. And as Alex said, those things today and into the future, things that are pretty simple, fuel, nicotine and thirst.

For fuel and nicotine, these are mature products. They've been around for a while. And many of you will think that these are declining products. We don't see it that way. Firstly, we believe and can and evidence that we take market share. And second, the underlying consumer is actually growing in both of those areas. For mobility, we see fuel and e-mobility growing in totality. And in nicotine, the underlying use is actually growing as well.

And hopefully, I don't need to convince you about first. First is a category that is growing overall and broadening the diversity of the occasions, the diversity of the products that are offered. It's amazing how many different things can be in those occasion. And I'll tell you a little bit about why we're so excited about this.

You can also see the financial significance of these products to our business. On this slide, you can see the significance to revenue and gross profit. And so for us, to continue to grow organically, as Alex referenced, we believe and can continue to outperform in these categories. In the coming slides, you'll also see me talk about U.S. statistics quite a bit. Why do I talk about the U.S.? It's our biggest market. So obviously, that's a good reason to talk about it, but it's also the most transparent market. So it's where we're able to get lots of good data to share with you transparently and tell you the story of why we're winning.

So let's start with fuel. We're incredibly proud of the business were bill and fuel. Alex told us his journey as the first dedicated fuel employee of the company. And today, we employ thousands of people working in this business with an integrated business all the way from customer to supply. These customers are pretty diverse. Their individual guests like you and I pick up our cars, but there are also businesses large and small visiting our sites. The majority of our stores globally are now under the Circle K bands. So Circle K, Couche-Tard, INGO, the controlled banners, our brands that we control. And you'll hear from Aaron and Erica also why that is really important as part of the unlocks in the network and our digital solutions.

But it's more than that. Having our own brand isn't about some marketing presentation that someone came up in a dark room. The red canopy allows our customers to recognize us to see Circle K as they come down the road. It allows us control and cost advantages in our supply chain. And it also simplifies our tech platforms, allows us to own it and then tailor our solutions to our customers. And with this formula that we've built with fuel, we're on the same path with nicotine first and the more categories to emulate a success.

So one of your favorite topics and also fortunately, one of mine, fuel margins. We presented a view very similar to this a couple of years ago, and our conviction continues to grow in this year. On the left-hand side, you'll see the cost of doing business continuing to grow. Alex mentioned inflation. We see ourselves with a strong cost discipline, continuing to be out of beat that inflationary pressure that we see across the industry.

Secondly, we also see industry margins continuing to rise, people acting rationally saying, "Hey, my cost of doing business is rising. I need to find a way to pass this cost on". So we see fuel margins continuing to rise in line with CPI, taking also into effect the volume demand destruction in some of our markets. And we see this trend in all of our geographies. This is not something new. This is not something that you will see period-to-period, quarter-to-quarter and maybe even year-to-year, but it's a continuous trend that we see and we believe in.

The other thing on this chart is our outperformance. So you see the gap between the industry and our performance continuing to rise. We believe not only is this sustainable, but we have more opportunities to outperform, and it's from all of the things that we've been working on over the years. This is not one thing. These are the hundreds of things your team are doing every day. So what are some of those things?

Well, lets us more. So we'll tell you them all, but it's thinking about our customers, thinking about keeping our focus fast, keeping them clean online the whole time. How do we approach our customers? How do we build personalized loyalty offers that they love with fuel at the core? How do I think about my supply chain, my sourcing, my logistics, the efficiency every little piece goes to the bottom line and also making sure that we're dynamic with our fuel pricing strategies.

So let's move on to nicotine. We see rapid shifts in the products that are available to our customers in the nicotine category. We see our customers choosing to either broaden or substitute the products that live traditionally used into the small products. So let's use a couple of examples of what this looks like. In some cases, traditional cigarette user will add another product. So this might be one of our white nicotine products. Or maybe I'll -- for my friend, Trey, on the example, he would have traditionally used snuff and now he's fully transitioned to white nicotine product.

So what that means, overall, we see across the industry, a decline in the traditional cigarette products, but an increase in the consumption of the more modern alternatives like vaping and white nicotine. And in the later part of the decade, we believe that these new products will have more significance in cigarettes in our overall business. And like fuel, we are outperforming the market in this category. And we're doing that by working closely with manufacturers, watching these trends and making sure that we have the products available to our customers as and when they need them.

It goes without saying that the regulatory environment is a significant influence on this category and how and when we introduce products is dependent on that regulatory environment. Our commitment to our communities, as Alex talked about in this space is to be a responsible retailer and to only introduce products that are legally allowed in the communities that we operate in. And our customers then have confidence also that they can trust us to be that responsible retailer.

As you can see a few statistics on this slide, we are outperforming the markets we operate in, in all of these categories, both the traditional cigarette categories but, in particular, these new modern products. So let's give a couple of examples. The traditional cigarettes in the U.S., we sell twice the number of volume of the average industry location. For modern oral in the markets we trade more than 1 in every 5 cans that are sold in those markets go through our register. And that means that our manufacturers come to us when they want to help us bringing an offer to our customers.

Some of you will be aware of the amazing information we ran last fall. In the space of 4 weeks, with the support of our manufacturer, every time someone bought a nicotine product of any type, we were able to offer a free caners in to our customers. And in the space of those 4 weeks, we gave over away millions of cans of ZYN, and that's maintained momentum of those customers coming back.

Compelling value to our customers through deals like the ZYN promotion I talked to and the digital solutions we're bringing together. This is also frontline pricing and personalized offers, so we can attract all types of customers. And later, you'll hear from Trey in our video about how supply chain is going to help us continue to grow in this space.

Okay. But let's move on to first. I think you heard the excitement from Alex. We're all so excited about this across our business. We see demand from drinks growing, and it's an all-day occasion. You can see on this slide, we talk about some. Sometimes it's hot or cold. Sometimes it's a big drink or a small drink. Sometimes it might be dispensed or packaged. It may be nonalcoholic or it might be beer and wine or it might be ready to consume something on the go or someone wants to take home. For all of those things, we've invested over many decades to serve all of those needs. And so we're outperforming in this category.

Our customers know that we're the destination for thirst. You see on this slide, we talk about globally 7 out of 10 customers when they come into our stores, they buy a beverage. In terms of value SKUs, this is over 8 out of 10 customers. And these are often now private label controlled brands. So in the U.S., that's -- we're known for polar pulp. In Europe, it's Circle K coffee. And in Canada, the most popular as Froster, which [indiscernible] at this time of year is incredibly popular.

And our customers are evolving. You may have seen in some of our publicly listed suppliers reports, but they have headwinds on some of these categories. But that's not the whole story. We see thirst evolving and in particular, energy and functional drinks being the growth category. This, as Alex referenced, is not a small change. We see double-digit percentage growth in all of our markets on energy, showing that the customer is just embracing these drinks and wanting to buy them on the go and every day of the week. And we're winning.

We saw this trend coming through analysis, through our data, through our market research, and we invested and partnered with manufacturers to make sure that we were ahead of the curve, first to market. On a store-by-store basis, ours per cell 2x our convenience store peers. And in fact, when we look across all channels, we also sell 2x the industry average of all channels.

What are we doing to make this a success? First, the investment in our stores. Alex talked about upgrading, investing ratably in our stores over time. This is our cooler capacity. These are our beer caves, and we're able to fit extra capacity into the stores in all shapes and sizes. So our people are creative. They find some more space. We're investing in physical plant.

We also are investing in data. So looking at market trends, seeing which products we're selling, making sure we stay ahead of these curves. And our strong relationships with suppliers allow us to bring product exclusive all amazing deals to the market to win that customer. And unlike some of the channels that we're competing with, we have some extra opportunities for ourselves to use our digital platforms to help us.

Two examples. Actually, you can see it on the picture here. Because we sell both thirst and fuel, we're able to use our loyalty platforms and personalize offers to our customers. So if they buy 3 energy drinks, they can get a discount. Customers love it. All we're partnering with a company called [indiscernible] who allows our customers to get an instant rebates through our digital platforms, sometimes $5 or $10 off a pack of beer.

So it's a way of us driving both thirst and other sales in our core and winning that customer to keep returning to Circle K. So hopefully, you've heard from Alex and I this morning about the passion for our business, our strategy, our history and how that flows into our core. We're winning in fuel, nicotine and thirst. And we not only currently outperformed the industry, we believe we have more growth to contribute more earnings from these categories. This is through our scale. This is through our brand, and we have more opportunities, as you'll hear later, particularly in the emerge categories to build on that success through our supply chain. But none of this is possible without the people in our stores. They are the ones that bring these products to life, that encourage our customers to come back every day with their friendly service.

So it's time for a bit of a break. Hopefully, you get a chance to go outside and have a chance to have some of our Circle K coffee. And then after the break, I'll join by my colleagues, Hans-Olav and Aaron, and we will get into the next part of the strategy, which is invest in more. Thanks for your time.

[Break]

Okay. Welcome back, and thank you to Alex and Louise talking about the culture, the values in the company and how we drive our core of the business. And Alex, yes, I can confirm. I love the culture of this company, and I love the value. And actually, that's what I also see when we acquire new companies.

So now we have talked a lot about the core. Now together with Louise and Aaron, I will talk about the more. More is the 1, 2, 3, 4 more reasons to get the customers into our stores. In retail, it's all about get them in. If we get them to our food court, that's the best place to attract them into our stores. When we get them into our stores, it's all about trading them up and trading them even up more, and is meeting a well merchandise store, in stock, a friendly face, easy access, and then if they have this good experience, we get them back even more. That's what we're going to talk about with the more.

It's not about any shining new objects. It's about the things we already have done. We have piloted everything we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about food. We're going to talk about our merchandising or supply chain or super good new store program. M&A, we're going to talk about EV, and we're going to talk about car wash. All of this we already have, and we have great experiences and it's all about scaling it up and getting more out to it.

So let me start about the food journey that we have been on in Europe. We have fantastic food offering in Europe. About 23% of our stores or sale of all merchandise sales in our store in Europe and is growing is food, and it's a fantastic food offer. When I go and want a hamburger, and I'm 100% nonbiased, I'll go to Circle K and I buy my hamburger there. It doesn't go to a QSR. In the morning, when I go and I go too often to take a plane, I always stop at the same store. It has 28 EV chargers, is completely filled up at 7:00 in the morning with 4 transit EVs with the EVs, all the plumbers, all the electricians, they go into the store, they charge the car, before they start their working day. They buy a coffee, and they get a breakfast offer. And that breakfast offer is so good that I myself before I go on the plane, go and buy that breakfast offer to eat it on the plane.

We have developed this offer over the last 20 years. And we see that it's super important. It's not only about offer, but it's also about the profitability. And we have great operating profitability on our food offer. We have a great skill set. We have the toolbox, and when the customer start to food from us, they also be more emotional connected to our brand. It's a destination and it's not the commodities, not the sneakers is actually a difference on the taste, the quality and the freshness of the product. And we have succeeded on this journey in Europe. So let's take a look at the movie, and then Louise will talk more about the food in North America.

[Presentation]

That was a pretty cool video, right? And pretty yummy-looking food. And I personally was like, maybe I could do with one of those burgers. So that will showcase what we're doing in food in Europe and why we're being so successful as HO talked about. Food is a critical priority for us in more and where we see opportunity to grow.

As Alex mentioned, when we step back from what went well in temp for the win and what we needed to improve on, food was a big topic for us. We asked ourselves what -- why are we successful in food in Europe, but we hadn't met our goals in North America. We looked into our own North American operations, and we found some bright spots. In particular, we had a couple of business units in North America, who came to us through mergers and acquisitions, our Northern Tier business unit, our GetGo business unit, who had really strong food-centric cultures and practices. We also thought about our winning formula in Core, what has made us successful in the other products and how are we outperforming?

We also know from our experience in retail across many decades that this is not something that is exactly the same in all of our geographies. We know that we need to tailor our offers and our operations to our local markets. So -- for us, as we went through this reset, it wasn't a lift and shift of what you saw in the video, but instead taking a step back and finding the right ingredients, yes, good food for our business in North America.

So this reflection has guided where we've been working in the last 18 months and some of the success that you're seeing come through in our numbers. Firstly, as Alex said, we took the opportunity to think about our customers.

As HO mentioned, we have potential food customers all the way around us. But we wanted to make sure that we were successful in the customer groups that were easiest or the best -- most likely food customers for us. Firstly, we looked at the first circle in this chart. The people that are already buying food from us, how could we sell more food to these same customers. We also have a number of people already in our stores that we heard from their feedback that we're willing to try our food products. So we've really centered our attention on these 2 groups. We also know later that we can go and find more opportunity in our forecourt customers, any new customers to our channel, the food available opportunity is so huge across our industry and across other channels. But today, we're focused on those first 2 circles.

And as part of our reflection, we said to ourselves, we needed to focus on 4 things. I'm going to talk about 3 of these and you're going to hear the role of the controlled supply chain for food and all our other products in a video later from Trey. We also look to industry data and saw what we were achieving today and what is possible for us. And so we set ourselves this goal to grow food revenues at 4x the pace of merch revenues are ahead of us.

So let's start with these -- the 3 priorities I'm going to talk about. As Alex mentioned, operational execution is core to who we are as a Couche-Tard and Circle K. And when we looked at what we were doing in food, we hadn't applied our retail excellence to this particular area. So we've been doing a lot of things in the operational excellence area to make sure that we do what we do best when we're winning. That's looking at operational metrics, that's changing our processes, simplifying them, changing the tools we use, making sure we're measuring ourselves and setting ourselves goals. And most importantly, using our decentralized model and setting up some healthy competition between our business units to go after and chase the targets that we need to, make sure that we have food available when our customers want to buy it at the right times.

And one, a lot of the improvements that you've seen so far -- that we have seen so far is being driven by this operational execution. We still have gaps, but we know what they are, and we're now on track to continually improve.

We also looked at what we were selling. And we realized that we were trying to sell products to our customers that they didn't actually want to buy. So we've taken a step back from our menu and reduce the number of products that we sell, we call it SKU rationalization. We also took the decision to make it clear to our business units what their hero products were. These are hero products are different in our different geographies, catering to the local customers' needs. And there are things like in where I live in Charlotte, North Carolina. There are things like a hot dog, a freshly baked cookie or my personal favorite, our spicy chicken sandwich, which is amazing.

So we looked at our heroes and made sure that these were the focus of all menu and the focus of what we were selling and make sure we get those heroes available at the times of day that our customers wanted to buy. We've also centered on meal deals around these heroes. So we -- Alex talked about what we heard from our customers, "Hey, we want compelling value" and with the partnerships that we have with our merchandise suppliers, we knew we had a unique opportunity to provide eye-catching value to our customers. So we've gone all in across all of our geographies on meal deals, and hopefully, you can see some of the results we've got. Customers love it.

And for us, by partnering with some of the -- our best vendors on our first categories, we're able to bring value to the table without impacting profitability. Then when we look to what this allows us to do, we have operational control, and we simplified our menu, targeting our customers to what they really want to buy. This now allows us to innovate, to pilot different things that we're doing. And this is where our decentralized model really comes to life. This allows us to do different pilots in different parts of the country or the globe and try things in a particular geography. These -- each of these things may not be a product offer or there maybe an experience like a digital menu board or how we talk to our customers. And not all of these pilots will be successful. The benefit we have of having multiple BUs trying different things is we can try things and decide they're not going to be successful and choose not to scale.

And some of these things may be scalable all the way across the globe or they may be scalable into only certain business units based on customer tastes. We're taking learnings from some of our acquisitions GetGo being a really key one in the United States. And so we really believe that this is going to fuel our next wave of growth.

So wrapping up, you'll hear from Trey on the supply chain. But through this reset, we believe that we have the winning formula that were transferred from core that we've taken the learnings from Europe to drive food sales in the U.S. and Canada, taking the learnings from our own experience and be able to hit that 4x goal that we've set ourselves.

So in a similar way, we're thinking about the rest of our stores. So we've talked about first fuel, nicotine, food and we sell some other stuff in our store. So we believe that we have opportunity in this space as well. Firstly, we talk about private brand. Actually, we sell a lot of private brand. We probably don't talk about it in this way, but our private brand is our fuel, our Polar Pop, our Froster, our Circle K Coffee, our private label water and many products in our store. So -- and even food, we made the choice as we brought our food products to North America, that these would be Circle K food products. So today, actually, our whole strategy, our whole operation is underpinned by private label or controlled brand products. However, we also know that we have more opportunity in this space for the rest of the store.

And so we have taken a different approach similar to our reset on food. We realized that the private label products that we're putting into the rest of the store weren't very purposeful. So just like we have with food, we've taken a step back and reset our strategy. We've set ourselves this flywheel on category management to say what role does private brand play in our portfolio. And we are working through this cycle to identify the right private brands. And this may be nuanced. It may be a Circle K brand. It may be a controlled brand or it may be something like a co-brand.

So let me bring this to life with the key example you see on this slide. So when we first brought some tea products into our store, we decided, okay, we can save our customers some money, we'll put some Circle K on again. We're just slap it into our stores and how we go. Unfortunately, our customers didn't really want this product. They didn't know what it was. They didn't know what it tastes like. They didn't understand the flavors, it didn't really appeal to them. And it wasn't very successful. So instead as part of what we thought about with private brand, we said, okay, what role do we want private brand or a controlled brand or a co-brand to play in our portfolio.

We decided that our customers one of the confidence of a known brand, and we had the opportunity to co-brand with Arizona Tea, and to bring product exclusives into our store. And you can see from the results on the slide that this has been a really successful and purposeful approach in this category. So this is the approach that we're going to take going forward in private brand. And we believe that it's -- it will be straightforward for us to meet this goal of 10% private brand in any of the categories that we think private brand plays an important role.

So when we think about this more broadly, private brand is just one of the opportunities we have in expanding our offer. Alex talked about his kids and how they are very different to Alex and how we see evolution of customer choices as we move through different generations. You'll hear from Erica and Ed later, how we're supporting that with different digital offers personalized rewards and all of these things. But we also have the opportunity to follow some of the customer trends, what people are looking for differently.

We also talked about channel blurring and -- the younger customer doesn't have a fixed view of what they buy and what sort of format or store, they're happy to shop wherever, for whatever. And so for us, we see this as an upside opportunity for us to say what products do people want on the go and to bring those offers to the store. This is not a story of are though. We're not saying, hey, throw out the old and bring in the new. We have a loyal set of customers that come to Circle K every day for a set of products that they love and know. We want to continue to have those customers come to our stores and have the products that they want. But we also want to bring new customers to our stores, and we see these 3 themes of global flavors and wellness and functional as important things that younger people want in our stores.

So let me give you an example of global flavors to bring that to life. Our Southwest -- in our Southwest U.S., some of our business units identified that their customers wanted to buy Hispanic candies. So they went out, got a local supplier for the Hispanic candies and put them in the stores. These products are selling like crazy. And so the other business units adjacent to that business unit, Stolt Pride, one of the things that we talk about with our business units and put those same products into their range.

Out in Florida, they realized that they had a similar opportunity, but maybe with slightly different regional profiles for that same set of Hispanic candies, to pick the ones that worked in Florida and brought in some different types. Then halfway around the world, we're following the same theme. In Hong Kong, they're embracing global flavors, but in Hong Kong, this is products from Japan or Korea, which people in their stores are just grabbing and wanting to buy every day. So same theme applied totally differently in a different set of stores.

And like food, we don't see the evolution of our offer as a one-off exercise. We see this as an ongoing change for us as our customers evolve, being first to market, tracking trends, using data of what works and deciding what doesn't evolving our offer as we go. As I've mentioned a number of times, a key enabler for our skill journey has been our supply chain. The ability to control the products that we source and the cost advantages that come from supply chain control have been critical to underpin the success in fuel.

We are on a journey to expand our ambitions in merchandising and food in the same way. This will benefit all of the categories that I've talked about today in the store, whether that's thirst, nicotine, food or any of the offers that we're talking about, being able to bring the range of the products into the store that we want and have the cost advantages of controlling our own supply chain. This is a multiyear journey. So this won't happen overnight. And so it's really important for us to have the right patience and discipline to bring this to life. But there's no one better than anyone Trey Powell's made us a nice video to show you our merchant supply chain and food supply chain today and to tell you a bit about our ambitions in this area. So let's play the video.

[Presentation]

All right. Thank you, Trey. It's exciting to see how our merch supply chain is coming to life, and is going to deliver value to our network. I'm Aaron Brooks, Senior Vice President of Real Estate and Fuel customer. I've been with the company about 11 years now. I came over in the Pantry acquisition in 2015. I'm here to talk to you today about our existing network, how we're growing that network and M&A, 3 things you heard Alex get excited about today. So I'm going to tell you why you should be excited well.

Let's start with our network. In our industry, location isn't just a factor. It is the #1 reason for customer choice. And we have a network of locations that is not easily replicated. The thousands of locations that we control and operate are in some of the best metro areas, suburbs and small towns across the world. But scale is only part of the story. It's the quality and the way that we manage our network, which sets us apart from other retailers.

If you look at where our industry is heading, customers are telling us through their behavior, their real estate and asset quality matter more now than ever before. You've heard Louise talk about traditional categories such as fuel and nicotine changing. And there's a lot of operators that also have cost pressure as well. So what this means is that the gap is widening between the best performers in our industry and those operators that have underqualified or poor asset quality or potentially have high leases or high debt levels that they're dealing with. This is where our scale, our balance sheet and our disciplined approach to our network helps set us apart from the industry. We have a very structured and data-driven process to manage the full life cycle of our assets from site identification to remodel and eventually to divest.

Over the past 10 years, we have divested more than $1.5 billion of noncore assets, and we've recycled that capital into higher returning such for us. So while you may see total store count staying relatively flat, in actuality, we have been on a multiyear journey to improve our network for the future. You can see this on the slide where we are selling tail end and underperforming assets and investing that capital into sites that not only bring our brand promise to life, but are substantially outperforming the legacy network as well.

So given the promise we see with sites we're adding to our network, let's talk about our growth engine, where the U.S. is our primary target. We are continuing to take advantage of scale in this fragmented industry. Nearly 65% of convenience stores in the U.S. are owned by operators who have 10 or less locations. I'm going to get to M&A, and I'm going to get to development here in just a minute, but let me talk to you about 2 levers that we have to attack this fragmentation. The first is franchise. So we have a full franchise program. What that means to us is that the Circle K banner is both on the store, but it's also on the food court. This is a capital-light approach for us to grow our brand, but it's also a very attractive offer for our franchise partners to tie into our scale, through our fuel supply chain and our merchandise capabilities. With this attractive offer, we will add more full franchise sites to our network this year than ever before, and the pipeline is robust with franchisee applications.

The second is what we call single-site acquisitions. So that's us targeting operators who have 10 stores or less and looking to acquire. When we go into our growth markets, we are making conscious build versus buy decisions. And as we go through, if there is a quality asset that we can buy at an advantaged multiple and plug it into our scaled economies at a faster rate in which we can build it, we are buying. If we're in a small town and there is an independent who has the best corner in that town, we're going to look to pursue to buy that versus buy -- versus build on a secondary corner.

So just like what you've heard with full franchise, just like what you're about to hear with development, we will add more stores to our network this year through single-site acquisitions than ever before, and we feel very strongly about the pipeline that we have.

So let me get to the headline. And I'm going to reference our single-site acquisitions and our development with this. We are confident and delivering 750 new high-quality company-owned, company-operated sites to our network over the next 5 years. We have the capabilities and we have the capacity to outperform on that 750, but we will remain disciplined. The commitment that you shareholders have from us is that we will not chase volumes at the expense of returns.

So speaking of returns, let's dive into our development program, where you'll notice that we have increased the performance and ramp of our new stores. Many of you saw our new store layout a few years ago, and you saw how they're engineers to bring to life what Louise has been talking about, about food, thirst, nicotine and fuel. The customer feedback has been phenomenal. And we have shown in the numbers that these categories outperformed the legacy network substantially in our new builds.

And as we told you as well, we have an industry-leading return hurdle rate on our development program of 15%. And we are proud that we are in our second consecutive year of historical new growth while outpacing those return thresholds. So you may be asking, how do we do it? And what's the opportunity for more?

First, we have always had a disciplined site selection process. It's anchored in finding a location with strong traffic, great visibility, easy access. That's not unique to Circle K, and that's what one in the industry is doing. What is unique to us is that we will never compromise on paying more than fair market value for our assets. If you think about our pipeline, we're screening about 1,000 stores every single year. And the first question from every level of our development and our operations team is the same question that Elaine and the founders were asking back in 1980. What's the cost? And what's the return profile?

And I'm proud of the team and the culture that Alex is referencing that we're passing on throughout the organization. I actually took Elaine on the trip a couple of weeks ago. We went to 4 different states. We saw somewhere between 40 to 50 sites. And what made me proud is while we were out there kicking the dirt, not once did Elaine or myself have to ask about cost of returns because each development manager led with that information. I tell you this because really what our discipline is doing is it's making sure that we have the right cost basis to effectively operate our sites for decades to come. So cost disciplines remain the same.

What has evolved is our intentionality behind building asset resilience. We are doing this through ancillary offers, high-speed diesel, food, car wash. But we're also doing it through geographical diversification as well. We have more than 1,400 rural locations today that outperformed the rest of our network, where we know our brand, and our offer resonate with those consumers. And actually, the picture you've been looking at all day. This is our new, what we call our rural core building. When we talk about fit to serve, when we talk about bringing all of our strategies together, this building was designed, value engineered specifically for a lower cost profile that we could roll out faster to some of these rural markets.

So you've heard about food, and Hans-Olav will be discussing car wash here in a minute, but let me highlight the high-speed diesel network that we have, which consists today of more than 500 accessible sites for the professional drivers. We are not trying to be a travel center with capital-heavy projects tailored to the overnight driver. Instead, we are catering our offer to the local professional drivers who need a convenient place to stop and fill their tank and tummy.

So when you heard Louise talk about B2B, this is another good example of our strategies coming together. We've built the capabilities. We've built the sales team to go out there and win the professional gallons. We're also building the assets so that folks can come in. And because of this combination, I'm proud to say that today, in the United States, we sell more than 1 billion gallons of diesel.

So to wrap up on development, our goal isn't just to be bigger. It's to be more profitable. We've managed to accelerate our build rate to historic levels without compromising on our returns, a feat that distinguishes us in this high-cost environment. As we refine our data and focus on high-growth markets, we're interest adding [indiscernible]. We are building destinations that create a network and give us a sustainable competitive advantage for years to come.

So speaking of competitive advantage, let's get to M&A, where we are experts. We don't just buy. We integrate and we realize accretive synergies. We are committed to M&A in our channel, and we are executing on our playbook, which is to be disciplined, be strategic, but also to be ambitious. First, our bread and butter over the years has been consolidating regional chains in the United States, and we continue to see upside here to strengthen our network where our scale drives immediate margin expansion.

Second, we see a similar story in Europe, where we have room to grow in our existing geographies but also we can expand into new territories and fill regional gaps. Third, we see accretive return potential in Latin America and Southeast Asia. While Europe and North America continue to evolve, markets like Latin America and Southeast Asia offer long runways for traditional fuel growth and rising GDP as well. So the main message is we will continue to focus on what we know and what we have done well throughout the decades. With the acquisition runway we see today, there is no need for us to move into other adjacencies. So when I started, I was talking about the importance of location to our customers. This is critical for our on-the-go customers. It's critical for our mobility customers, and now Hans-Olav is going to give us an update as we deliver more to these customers as the markets evolve.

Thank you, Aaron. It's fantastic to see how we can grow the company and leverage scale with all the opportunities we are working on.

So now I'm going to talk a bit about the EV journey. Just to start with this journey. We had our first EV charger in the market in Norway in 2011. That was done in a partnership with a utility company. And we continue to evolve the rollout of EV chargers with the Teslas and with the utility companies until 2018. Then we decided that the market in Norway was so mature that it was the right time to start to invest ourselves. And I think this is important because we, as a company, we doesn't have a big technical depth on EV chargers at our forecourts. We are only a modern charges above 150 kilowatts and all the investments over the last years have been 300 to 400 kilowatts.

But for a move in to talking about what we do, let's take us a short look at the global growth. Europe, definitively market where EVs is growing. I live in Norway, 30% of all the cars in Norway today is pure EV. More than 95% of all new cars sold in Norway is pure EV. And if you look to Scandinavia, it's similar. It's today, 30% is EV. And as you see, [ 61% ] of new cars sold in Scandinavia is EV. If you look to European markets, it's also growing. Our biggest market is Germany. And there has been some uncertainty also in Germany due to the big carmakers. The growth in Germany had a slowdown in 2024 with 17% sales but it increased in 2025 to 22% sales. And now in January, we saw 24% of new cars in Germany was pure EV.

If you look at U.S. The uncertainty in Canada is bigger, both the political and the regulatory environment is changing, and we have seen a decline in the forecast for U.S. of 50% if you look at the expectations in 2035. So our focus on investment on EVs is in Europe alone, and in North America is primarily to do it in a partnership until we see that the market is right and then they probably will go in and invest ourselves. But the growth is big.

So if you look at the global EV sales, 3 million cars in 2020. Now we are at 15 million cars yearly. It's just going up and up and it's more low-cost cars also. So it's more customers that can adopt to this journey. And if you look at that again and you look at the kilowatt, which is really matters, the growth is 11x between 2025 to 2035, and we want to take our fair share of this growth.

So if you look at how we're doing it, we have more and more proof point that we can be and we will be a winner in this space. If you look at the customer, we have the best locations. We have built this company over 100 years. We have the locations on the corner on the highway where the customers need to charge their cars. And when they go to our stores, we have the amenities. We have the restrooms. We have the seating. We have free WiFi. We have the food, we have the coffee. We have everything you need when you spend 20 minutes to charge your car. And that's what we see also.

If we ask the customers in Norway and Sweden, where do you prefer to charge a car, we get the #1 position in Sweden, and we get the #2 position in Norway. And if you take Norway, we are #5 in regard to number of chargers. And in Sweden, we are #2. So the customer wants to go to our stores to charge the car.

When the customer come to our stores, we see that the EV customers in Norway come 50% more often than a fuel customer. And then they come to our stores. They actually go more frequently into the store than the fuel customer and they have a bigger basket.

And if you look at the pure EV charging station compared to a fuel station, it's 30% more profitable with a pure EV charge station based on the gross profit we have today on the charging station. So everything is going in the right direction.

And you also see, if you look at Norway, the forecourt traffic the last year have declined with 3% to 4%. While the in-store traffic in Norway, has increased with 6%. And we know that this is due to the EV chargers and a good, valuable food offer.

So the conclusion is clear. The customers have told us that they prefer our brand, and they prefer the uptime. They prefer the good digital solution we have with them. I prefer to go to our stores and buy the amenities and the products we have in our stores.

If you look at the digital solution, is if we want to win in the EV customer journey, you need to have the best digital solution in the market. And our digital app is rated as the top 3 in the whole Europe. So we also have developed a fantastic digital solution and more than 40% of the customers are paying through the app or through -- another 30% are paying through a tap and pay solution with our cards. So we have to have that interaction. And then a lot of the customer is also paying through auto charge solution, where you only plug the charger and you walk into the store and you buy all the good stuff that we have in there.

We also know that we are doing much better than the competitors. If you look at the number of charges we have in the market, we have 10% market share in both Sweden and Norway. But if you look at the charge stations or the kilowatts sold or our chargers is 20% market share. I just saw a statistics from a Norwegian interest organization, average kilowatt hours on the market was 43,000 kilowatt hours per charge point, and we had 70,000, so significantly higher than the average in the market.

We also see that in Norway, we have or in Scandinavia over the last 3 years, our combined fuel gross profit and EV gross profit have increased 7% yearly, that's a fantastic number, and we are agnostic. We are not only focusing on EV. We also want to sell the last droplet of fuel, and we actually take market share on the fuel game also in the Norwegian market. So we are a winner. And I think that is important. We have proven that we have the right to win. We have proven that we have the best network. We have proven because we have the best amenities, but we also have 3.7 million loyalty customers in Europe. We have 2.2 million customers with the company card that we can communicate with and that we can lead the journey from normal fuel into EV opposite to what most of the competitors can do.

We have the capability. We have a top-notch EV team and we have a great digital team that support us on developing our digital solution. And then last but not least, we have the best uptime in the market, 97% to 98% of the time the chargers up working is as good or better than the fuel pumps. And we mostly have 300 to 400-kilowatt chargers that we lost and will be relevant for the next 8 to 10 years.

What we focus on is to fortify Scandinavia. We want to be the #1 top player in Scandinavia is to conquer mid-Europe, with Germany and Benelux going to invest more and more in this market as we see the growth coming in. And last but not least, in North America, will focus more on partnership and look at what the development is. And when the market comes, then we are ready to invest if it comes.

So that was all about the EV. We are winning there, and we're going to continue to invest and it's good for the business. This customer or something that we will win together with.

Then I'm going to talk a bit about car wash. We are one of the biggest car wash players in the world. With the True Blue acquisition and with the acquisition of Total, we have more than 3,500 car washes in our business. We have the opportunity to scale this business, the opportunity to take out certain regard to procurement of chemicals of carwashes; we have the opportunity to learn from best practices. I take an example, and we acquired Total in Germany. We have more than 800 carwashes. They closed their car wash when it was under 3 degrees.

When I who is living in Norway, I wash my car at minus 8. It's all about keeping them open. You need to eat them, but you get much more customer when you can start opening more of the car washes. We have great locations that Aaron is building and through the True Blue learnings, we know that we can expand this into the new to industry stores that we are investing in. We can scale it up and it's something that the customer wants to have. We also see on the EV journey that those customers are washing the car more often than other customers.

So here again, it's all about doing more of what we have and investing more in this and being one of the big winners in the car wash journey. So I think to sum up the more, Aaron and I talk about it, more better stores, more acquisitions. Louise have talked about more food being as good as we are in Europe on food, doing more private label, improving the supply chain. All of this is doing more of what we already have proven that this company are good in giving the customers 2, 3, 4 more reasons to go into the core, giving the customers more reasons to come to the store, we'll trade them up and we will get them back. We think we will be successful with this as we move forward.

So that's all for me. Now we're going to take a break and Ed and Erica will come back and talk to you about how the digital journey will support to win in the market going forward.

[Break]

All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome back from the break. I'm Erica and I'm joined here today by my partner and friend, Ed, we are going to discuss how digital, data and technology enable the core plus more strategy. I'm a new face in the room. I joined the company 18 months ago. But I am not new to Circle K. I've been a loyal customer since the Dairy Mart acquisition in my small town of West Lafayette, Ohio over 15 years ago. And my family and I frequent the station every single weekend. It's very common to see us there, fueling up our truck, filling up our coolers and grabbing snacks before we head to the ball fields.

I had the privilege of interviewing with both Alex and Brian before I took this position. And I'll tell you the one thing that came through very strongly in the interview process was the importance of culture here at Circle K. That became very evident the day that I visited stores with Alex for the first time. We walked into the store just any other customer who walked through the door. And instantly, he was greeting every single team member by name. They were excited to see him. They were excited to see me and show me the store and how passionate they were about serving our customers.

We then grab his go-to meal. I think it was a spicy chicken sandwich and an unsweetened ice tea and sat down and conversed with the team members about all the great things and being part of the Circle K family. So it's definitely been an exciting journey for me so far. And I know you are a familiar face to many in the room. Could you take a moment and introduce yourself.

Yes. Hi, everyone. I've been at Circle K for 8 years. I've seen some of you before in Phoenix for an Investor Day. How we say I was a customer before I was an employee. I love this channel. It's a morning energy drink for me, an afternoon chicken sandwich or Cherry Coke on the way home, but I promise you when I'm home, I'm in a store every single day, my friends, Rich and John know me very well. They know when I'm in town and they know what I'm not in town because I'm not in the store. And they know I'm here with you in Toronto and they're going to be asking me questions when I get back about how the meeting went. So looking forward to seeing them and giving them a recap of the week. This culture is real, and it's authentic, and it's what keeps me going. You see this come to life on our pride tours. When our leadership teams are out in the stores, interacting with people, Erica mentioned, Alex, knowing people by name, Rich and John, my friend is back in the store. You see that across the leadership team.

And for me, I love combining this culture with a passion for solutions that make a difference for our employees and customers, making it easy, and we're doing that with mobile applications. We're doing that with handheld devices for our employees and customer-facing technologies like our smart checkout and digital applications. We are enabling tech to try to keep things simple, we make sure it's reliable, and we're doing it at a scale that nobody else can do.

Over the last few years, we've leaned harder into back to basics, and staying close to our stores with a focus on removing pain points or friction, a renewed focus on our core. And today, digital and tech move together, no handoffs, no silos, one team. And I hope you've seen that theme come through as we have conversations today. We like to think that we power nearly every part of the store experience. And that's how Erica and I'd like to think of ourselves as e-squared.

Erica and Ed, e-squared.

Erica, when you joined and you first looked under the hood, what were some of your early observations? And where did you focus first?

Yes. So my title on my position were new but there were foundational building blocks already in place here at Circle K. We had been making investments across data, digital and technology far before I joined. But there were 2 key areas that we really needed to dive into to deliver a better experience for our customers and for our business. Number one, internally, we needed to make sure that we were breaking down those silos that we were connecting the road maps we were positioning the resources to move together to provide a connected experience for the customer. And that alignment needed to go back to our merchandising strategies, to our fuel strategies to ensure that digital data and tech were integrated as part of the business solution, not developing one-off solutions for just the sake of doing digital.

Number two, we needed to make sure that the customer experience felt seamless. We didn't want our customer to be shopping by our org chart, right? They wanted a connected experience that both easy, fast and friendly. So those were the 2 focus areas when I came in. We also built out exceptional teams. I'm so proud of the talent that we've been able to bring into the organization and find within the organization to optimize and grow across data, digital and tech. So we're going to show you a little view to see what we've been up to in the last 18 months.

[Presentation]

All right. I love that video. It makes me very proud. And J, J is not unique. Jay is every customer for us. We are able to personalize offers, rewards and content at a national level at a local level and at a personal level. And that didn't happen by after spot. We've made tremendous progress the last 18 months. And the investments that we've made across digital, tech and data are showing up in our P&L.

If you look at our app engagement, as you saw, it's a key component of our digital journey. We are meeting consumers where they are, and we know that is on their mobile devices, and we want to ensure that our digital capabilities are able to deliver real-time value. Our app utilization is up 31% year-over-year. And that's good news for our consumers. That's where they can unlock the greatest value from Circle K. And as Hans-Olav mentioned, highly rated, both our EV app and our mobile app across the globe. Our consumers are also visiting us more often. They came in 6.5 additional visits this year versus last year. And when our rewards customers are coming in, they are buying the product that shouts value to them. Our Polar Pop sales are up 26% for our rewards customers. That $0.79 is resonating with them, and they are fueling more often.

Our rewards customers in North America purchased 121 more gallons this year than they did last year. They're also utilizing our digital channels for nicotine offers, which we can now personalize and customize specifically for those rewards customers in their preferred brands through our channels. One of the things that I'm most excited about, as you saw in the video, was Jay was able to be recognized at the pump to drive traffic to and through from our forecourt to our stores. we're seeing a 21% conversion rate by that real-time offer that's focused on food and thirst to get customers and traffic into our stores. It's pretty exciting.

And how are you making all this happen so fast? I know I'm pushing you daily, but we're getting a lot done.

Yes. It hasn't been easy. I can tell you the biggest unlock has been really about simplification and standardization that allows us to move with speed and scale. I've been here a little bit longer than you. It's been a hard road. We used to have this saying that I'm happy it's retired called #44IsTooMany. Four different combinations of our retail systems, tech sac across our stores, different hardware types, payment types, fuel brand partners, back office systems. Think about designing deploying, integrating testing on that many -- it really kept us slow. So we kind of -- we've consolidated those platforms, and we built our own middleware layer.

Behind the scenes, we call it Information Super Highway. And we think this is our secret sauce. This is a thing that allows us to connect disparate technologies and an ecosystem of things you wouldn't see bolted together in other places. So a smart checkout. Next to a traditional POS that is a competitor of that device. You saw it in the video, if you look closely, that doesn't happen anywhere else. It doesn't happen in our competitors. So today, it's not down to 1 million but is far fewer than 44, which enables speed and duration without sacrificing reliability. And speaking of reliability, laser focus on operational resilience.

Our systems have to work. Period. And we've had a ton of focus. This is how we tie into that fast, friendly customer proposition. Customer already means our payments up, our network is up. Our technology works and point of sale, our digital applications or working for our customers. And for us, that translates into -- and we've made improvements in network and payment uptime, and we've shortened the time to resolve tech issues when they come up. So this means less lost sales. and more time for our associates to focus on what's most important, and that's the customer. So today, I'm proud to say our tech foundation is solid. And this enables digital data and tech to move together and not in silos. This is how we scale experiences without breaking infusion.

Yes. And I think where this is most evident in our recent results and experiences is in our loyalty program. across the globe, both Extra and InnerCircle have had transformational years. Members are up 8% in Europe, and I'm proud to say we will be fully rolled across all company-owned stores in the U.S. by the end of this year. which is amazing for our consumers as we know that they want to shop our brand across state lines. We've also evolved. We've evolved from an e-mail program into meeting customers where they are, whether that's through push or tech or personalized offers directly through their mobile app. We are meeting consumers, and we are connecting with them in meaningful ways at a time that is convenient for them.

One of the things I'm also excited about is we are moving towards a program that rewards customers, every visit every time, whether you come to us to fuel, whether you come to us to charge, grab your favorite hot dog or wash your car, at Circle K, every visit counts, and we are going to allow you to choose the rewards that are most meaningful to you and deliver those through our digital channels. That is a real differentiator and we're making it even easier to enroll in the program. We have simplified the program, removed the steps so that a customer only has to reply with three letters. Yes. whether they're in the forecourt or in our store, being introduced to our program by our team members, we can instantly detect to enroll, they respond, yes, and they are getting instant savings that day.

I also want to mention, actually, we just had a field day in North America, in our U.S. stores. And in a single day, we were able to add 70,000 new customers into our program. This is strength in numbers. We are so excited to have the ability for our consumers to enroll in multiple ways, and they are seeing the value attached to fuel, attached to food, attached to first by getting into our program. So outside of me monopolizing your time and making improvements across data and digital, what else has the tech team been up to.

We've got a lot going on. I want to talk about the 70,000 customers signing up in 1 day. There's nothing short of a shuttle launch to make that happen. Like the days before we scale up all of our back-end systems. We've got a mission commander on that day. And it's a networks go, payments go, mobile app go, loyalty, starch your engine. And it is super impressive. This effort that we have built on these platforms and the outstanding collaboration across our teams to pull something up like that off in a flawless and seamless way. We're investing in platforms that enable this that allow us to scale at the speed our business. And quite honestly, you all expect from us. We run a journey of data platform modernization with streamlined data flows and advanced security with a foundation to tap in emerging AI with great partners like Snowflake, and data bricks.

As you can imagine, growing through M&A like we have, you pick up a lot of disparate data sets. So consolidation is underway to tap into the full potential of the data-driven decision-making that you heard Louis referenced earlier. We're building productivity, embedded decision tools like Realex, which is improving forecasting, inventory accuracy, store execution. You might have seen this reference in the earlier video, you might have heard Filipe talked about it on previous earnings calls. And certainly, all the underlying components driving our digital ambition, loyalty engines, promotion engines, mobile app, customer data platforms that enable personalization in a connected customer experience.

This is coming to life for our customers in very meaningful, very profitable ways. And we have an initiative that is redefining the retail systems tech stack. It's about simplifying the back-end systems, so capabilities scale across markets. This is the one that the tech guys get excited about. This is the stuff that happens behind the scenes, but we're building a point of sale for the future. asked this question, when did your phone south being a phone? Talking on it is the thing that you do a lease. When does the cash registers not being a cash register. For us, it will be an application or a micro service that can run on any screen side by side with other business applications with a supporting tech stack of payment gateways, back-office applications, edge compute and more. Actually testing this concept in Sweden with ambitions to scale rapidly here in the year ahead.

By the way, if you've seen our point of sale in Europe, I call it the Flip Phone of POS. It's got an old school keyboard. And it served us really well. It's over 20 years old, but it is time to modernize and we're building a solution to do that. We're bringing this to life in a way that's going to support all the great M&A activity and integration that Aaron talked to you about a little bit earlier, and it's going to allow us to retire some legacy technology. Final note here. As you see on the slide, we nearly doubled our investment in tech over the last 5 years. And what I can assure you is these investments are disciplined. They have business cases, they have KPIs associated with them, and they have returns targeted in line with other company initiatives. And I can tell you, Filipe and team challenge us on this every step of the way.

We'll continue to test, learn and scale what works and we'll adjust quickly when it doesn't. Speaking about investments, Erica, would you like to tell us about an exciting new opportunity?

Yes. I am excited. As we talked about, we had a foundation in place. We needed to connect the foundation across our 4 core off-site and in-store. We needed to make sure that we had high data quality and we were able to measure results. And bringing that all together, I now have great confidence that we are able to introduce to you full circle media. Retail media is a huge opportunity. It's a $150 billion business across the globe. And we believe Circle K has the right to win in this space, and we plan to.

We are unique in the fact that we see both convenience and fuel transactions. We know the mobility patterns of our drivers. We also have habitual shoppers. We know that they come and visit us multiple times a week. That allows us to connect with them in real time when we know they're on the road or on the go. Our consumers also come to our stations ready to buy, right? They're impulsive buying. They're not browsing. They're coming in and they're ready to put their dollars to work, right, and purchasing hopefully, our food, our fuel and our thirst products. In our vendor community, they're ready to go. They are very excited about this program. They are excited about the investments that we've made across data, tech and digital whether that be our forecourt opportunity, whether that be the ad walls in our stores or our proprietary lift screens at our point of sale.

We are now in a position to monetize all of those assets and provide consumers with products and promotions that are relevant to them in real time. So as we bring all of this together, and we've talked about core plus more, hopefully, you have a better understanding of how digital data and technology come together to enable this. We are able to deliver end-to-end experiences here at Circle K. It's powered by technology. It's informed by data, and it's delivered through our digital products. This is a differentiator for us in a position we've not been in before, and we are very proud to be in now.

Our scale, our speed and our One Team approach really has positioned us to enable core plus more and win for the business and for our customers. Thank you for your time. We really appreciate it. I'm now going to hand it off to Filipe to talk us through our financial guidance. Thank you.

Thank you, Erica, and Ed. Let me start by sharing a secret I really think that I have the easiest job in this company. When I'm hearing that -- listening at Erica and Ed, each of my colleagues this morning, I'm sure that you have noticed how much they care about returns. How much they care about profitability. Speaks a lot about the culture. And Alex has been mentioning this morning, the ownership that this company has and all our leaders across the organization about how they care about investment, how they care about the SG&A. It's really a stronger asset and make my life easier. And it's true. When we look at our numbers the last 2 years, it doesn't been up to expectations.

Let's look -- let's step back and look, and let's look at our numbers. We are still a strong cash engine. We have 1 of the best-in-class returns in the industry. And that speaks a lot about the strength and the foundation that this company has. So now let's move and let's talk about, I'm sure that you are all waiting for about the financial framework. But maybe let me step back and provide a bit more context about how we have been thinking about this guidance. And I will start mentioning Alex and his opening remarks, when he was mentioning that this company has been built through acquisition. And that has built actually the company that we have today to scale the footprint. That's been very successful. But the focus is now to prove that we are able and can grow the profitability of this baseline consistently and organically.

The -- for that, we are -- and during all these days, you have seen and you have heard the team talking about everything that we have in plan and already in motion to deliver a long-term sustainable growth. And we believe here that we have the right plan, the right CP to achieve that. and give us the right level of confidence to get there. And this guidance that I will share with you in a while, it's really about providing you greater transparency and how we expect actually this baseline business to create value. So let me be clear. We continue to play offense in M&A. And Aaron mentioned that earlier, we'll continue to grow footprint, our footprint in the geography we are present and we'll selectively expand into new geography.

But really, this framework is about how we can deliver additional value from the base line. So with that in mind, let's move to our growth algorithm. So first, let me incur ourselves in this page before moving to the details. What you see here is basically our 5-year long-term guidance. And here, it reflects actually, how we are seeing our business and the strength of our core, but also the acceleration that we are already seeing in the more. And at the same time, the benefits that are coming through our cost discipline and our operational execution. This guidance also have three main characteristics. And let me share each of them with you.

First, we strongly believe that this guidance is balanced and realistic. We are laying out in front of you a plan that really is building on what we are able to achieve with our core. And also with all the plans that the team has showed you this morning, explained to you this morning, how we believe that we can increasingly see the new growth engine contributing to the bottom line. The second characteristic of this guidance is that we -- this outlook is really designed to be resilient. We have learned and Alex was mentioning what was one of the opportunity of the 10 for the win strategy.

Here, we believe that we are taking into account a steady macroeconomic backdrop. And we are actually taking into account here a similar macro that we have seen in the last 3, 4 quarters. And we are also including the evolving dynamics in fuel, in merchandise and in mobility. That make us believe that actually, this plan here is, again, realistic and can be achievable. The last piece that I would like to say about this guidance is that each of these into that you see in this page are connected back to a strategic lever that we control. Whether we are talking about the same-store sales the operating expenses, the total fuel gross profit, there is a concrete plan behind that, and there is a set of actions that we are already executing.

Again, this guidance also is really about the baseline. There is no material M&A embedded into it. The [indiscernible] M&A sit outside this framework. It's not a different seat. So now let me spend the next coming slide to explain to you each of these indicators one by one. And I will start with the top line guidance. So as you can see in this slide, we are expecting our same-store sales growth to grow by 2% to 3%. And how we'll be doing that? First, relying and on our core. As we highlighted this morning, we are leading the nicotine transition. We are -- we have a very strong customer value proposition on the first.

And so with that, we really believe that the core will continue to grow. Half of this same-store sales growth will come from the more. And again, Luis shared this morning, we have a plan to grow meaningfully our food offer and food category. But we are also putting in place new levers through price brand, for an enhanced offer that will help us actually to drive further growth in our same-store sales growth. On top of that, you can see that we are adding 1% to 2% through the NPI programs, our new store plan. And Ironshore with you. We are aiming to open 50 new stores over the next 5 years.

And Aaron, again, share with you these stores are consistently outperforming in basket, in traffic, in profitability as they mature over time. So give us a high level of confidence that looking at this guidance, we will be able to grow the total merchandise revenue by 4% to 5%. Now let's move to fuel. And here, Luis already put a bit of context there. We know that this category is inherently very volatile. So it makes forecasting volume or margin in isolation, forecasting that in isolation is not necessarily very, very helpful. But the fundamentals of this category remains very solid. We are in each of the regions that we are today present. This is a very disciplined market. We have rational players competing with us. And so it shows that demonstrate that the economics are quite predictable over time.

And Luis also shared with you that we see a strong correlation between total gross profit fuel gross profit and inflation. And we see that actually to continue to persist over time. That is the reason why we have incurred our guidance on the total fuel gross profit. And we believe that we can grow this indicator around inflation. And again, here, we know how to do that. We have a strong momentum on the B2B business, particularly in the U.S. We have seen in the last quarter, we are growing volume there. B2C and it's really connecting with our loyalty capabilities. We believe that there is room for growth there as well. And of course, our supply chain capabilities. We continue to increase sourcing optionality, increase our supply chain, their capabilities to help us to drive additional total gross profit. Now let's move to expenses.

And here, the core discipline has been and remain the core strength of this company. I've been mentioning, and you have heard the teams today, we care about any investment, any dollar that we're putting into this business. And the goal here is very simple for us. We want to see our comparable expenses to grow below inflation point. But that -- and for that, we are balancing strong cost discipline and strong cost initiatives savings with balanced and targeted investment. I will talk in the next slide about our cost-saving initiatives. So here, I would like to spend a bit more time about the investment. First, those investments that we'll be doing are really targeted and clearly linked to the core plus more strategy.

You have heard the team this morning. We are talking about investing in food, investing in digital and technology and also in supply chain. Those investments are important for us. We need them to build a company that will be here for the long term. But let's be clear, at the same time, we are making those short-term investment with an expectation of returns. And here, I will take it as an example, we are very clear and very meaningful on that. And I have some examples to show you. We have been talking the last few years about the investment that we have done in data, for example. And that's true. We have invested in people. We have invested in tools.

And that has impacted our G&A. But the reality also is that now we are starting to see the benefits of it. you are hearing what we can do with this data in terms of enhancing our and personalizing our offer, how we can negotiate better with suppliers. So really here, it's starting to come to tuition. And the same with other investments that we'll be doing, supply chain, for example, supply chain, you have heard trade this morning. We are investing. We have opened three DCs this year. And of course, again, that's an impact in our P&L in the short term. But let's look at the long term. We will gain control in our supply chain. We'll be able to negotiate tighter conditions with suppliers and will improve working capital as well. So there is clearly, intentions and financial expertise behind any of this investment. And let's also be very clear to get to this guidance that we are putting in front of you, we will offset actually this investment.

And that's why here, we have a strong cost initiative program. And it's what you can see in this page here. We have done that in the past. So yes, there's nothing -- nothing new. You know this company and some of you even better than me, I think -- we have been delivering consistently on the savings and on G&A. And the last few years, and Alex was mentioning about one of the positive things that happened during [indiscernible] is clearly our G&A. We have been delivering more than $800 million sustainable savings over the last few years. And that helped us actually to absorb inflation to protect margin and again, to invest in some of the growth initiatives. And we have some of all investments is running through the team. So when we look at those four pillars, there is nothing new here.

We are already working on it, executing and actually delivering it. So of course, the procurement, we will continue to work on the store operating efficiencies. That's who we are. We are looking at how we can operate better and leaner in our stores. We are also looking at reviewing the process and putting automation there. And of course, we'll continue to leverage where it makes sense, our global capabilities. Let me bring to life some of this and what's happening today. On the procurement side, you have heard me talking about how we scale our procurement from a GNFR point of view, from an expense and CapEx point of view. We are ramping up this centralized and global team. We are today in reducing optimizing category, reducing number of SKU, and we are being smarter and using analytics to analyze our spend. and good things are already happening. So was sharing with you our intention to accelerate on the EV program.

And the last few months, we have been delivering meaningful savings on negotiating globally the chargers. We have got 30% to 40% unit cost savings just on leveraging our scale. And that's an example among others. On the process redesign, we have -- you have heard the team here to talk a lot about merchandise supply chain. We are reviewing actually the end-to-end process on that and very significant value to unlock there, not only on the G&A side, but also on the COGS side, we are now -- we will be in a position to negotiate much better with suppliers will be able actually to also lower the cost to serve our stores.

And of course, it's -- we are to say that we'll be able actually to manage much better our working capital. So there's a lot happening there and give us a high level of confidence that we can achieve these cost initiatives. And let me share with you the numbers here. What you can see in this page first is that we are not leaving nothing in the table. Each -- it's a company-wide program. We are touching every line of the P&L. And in summary, what we are expecting over the next 5 years is to deliver around $500 million in SG&A, $350 million in COGS for a total positive impact of EUR 850 million at EBITDA level. But actually, our feet-out program goes even beyond the EBITDA. We see meaningful upside on the working capital. And here, Trey and his team has a big and important role to play. We, again, are going deeper in the supply chain integration. We expect meaningful savings and improvement in our management of the inventory.

So all in all, our fit-to-soft program is expected to deliver around 1.5 billion of value unlock over the next 5 years. And again, part of that will be intentionally invested into our business to continue to sustain the growth of this company. Now let's move to, I think, the most important element of our 5-year guidance. And here, we're talking about our adjusted EBITDA and adjusted diluted EPS ambition. We -- when we look at that, it clearly shows the power and that this core plus more strategy brings to the table. Focusing on these core areas will really pull in motion and maintaining, of course, the discipline on costs will bring actually a flywheel and a positive in terms of profitability.

At EBITDA level, we are expecting to grow between 6% to 8%, again, excluding M&A. We see really M&A as an incremental to this baseline trajectory. From EPS point of view, we are showing here a growth of above 10% for the next 5 years. How will be doing that? Of course, through the operational improvement, but also using we've proposed our share buyback program. And that will be a program that we'll be using if we are not deploying our excess cash to M&A. Again, here, CPS is really about the baseline and exclude any additional M&A. Let's talk a bit about the capital allocation. And again, here, you know this company, we will continue to be very disciplined in our CapEx allocation. That's something for us that is key in how we want to continue to create value on the long term.

And first, let me talk about free cash flow. Just in FY '25, we have generated $1.8 billion cash flow in this company. And we are expecting to generate in excess of 2.5 billion this year. So we are, again, a strong cash generation engine. And that gives us a lot of flexibility and strength to reinvest in our business to support our growth and actually to return value to our shareholders on a responsible and a consistent way. When we look at our CapEx allocation, we want to reinvest into the business up to 35% of our EBITDA.

And again, here, we will be very intentional in how we deploy this CapEx. 70% of this CapEx actually will be allocated to growth initiatives and 30% to stay in business. And here, we are being very careful on how we are prioritizing. Of course, prioritizing first, the high returns initiatives. But also the initiative that will help us to transform the core and to enhance the customer value proposition. On the CapEx, specifically, we'll be allocating roughly 40% of that to NTI. And again, [indiscernible] mentioned that earlier. That's our highest returns in our portfolio initiative portfolio. And we'll be investing 15% in EV. Again, here, EV, we are accelerating why? Because the returns are there. On the balance sheet, we keep maintaining -- we want to keep maintaining a strong investment grade credit rating currently standing at A+. Our goal is to keep a leverage between 2 and 12x.

And without M&A, we will be continuing to use our share buyback program. That actually will help us remain in this target leverage framework. But again, if there is an M&A opportunity, the files that can -- with the right profile of returns, we will be in position to act because we have the balance sheet to make it happen. So let me conclude this financial guidance just to tell you that we are very confident in achieving this outlook. We have the right momentum. Alex mentioned that earlier and my colleagues as well, we have shown a sequential improvement between Q2 and Q1. And we are seeing a strong momentum in Q3, particularly in U.S. we are very excited by that.

We are really focusing on the things that make us stronger. And that's why also we believe that we have the right plan the core plus more. It's really about leveraging our strength and the core, and we are winning there. I believe that there is still a lot of value to unlock. But we are accelerating in those new growth engines. Again, food, mobility, price label, those will help us actually to accelerate the growth. And of course, we'll keep maintaining our cost discipline. And finally, we have the balance sheet. It's in our DNA.

We all remember this 4 decades history of [ Couche-Tard ]. We will do M&A, and we have the balance sheet for that. So we believe that we are well positioned to deliver meaningful profitability and share value return. So thank you, and let's take, I think, a 10-minute break before I think back to Alex for his closing remarks.

[Break]

Welcome back. I'll look to be brief in the closing because I know less is more, and I know you're keen to get to Q&A. The business model that our founders have given us is as strong as ever. It is ingrained in us. That culture that focus on detail, that focus on basics. Our values remain extraordinarily strong. One of the things Brian used to say is we don't want to be like anybody else. We want to be Couche-Tard. And we are very focused on those models. Our founders have given us, and we absolutely believe that will carry us into the future. and continue this great trajectory this company has been on for more than 45 years.

We see significant consumer change. We see the heightened pace of that happening. I think the message I would leave you and you heard some of it today is we have the data capability to really stay on top of that change and increasingly adapt at pace. We talked about our network. I think you know us for our capital discipline, our M&A discipline. I don't know if you knew our network discipline. And I thought Aaron did a great job today of walking you through that. It's another core piece that our founders have given us. It is a platform that is increasingly advantaged versus what others in our channel and retailers are doing. It really gives us that base to deliver on the organic growth that we signaled today.

Invest, amplify the core. The core is the primary drivers of our traffic today. And again, we like this space. If you haven't heard, we are bullish on nicotine. I know here in Canada, we need some things to work through for us. But for us, across our footprint, nicotine is growing, and it's growing in spaces at much higher margin profiles than traditional cigarettes. And we are a destination. It is a place we are massively outperforming the market today. We are bullish on nicotine. As Louise pointed out, first is just growing the innovation it's just fantastic for us. What's happened in energy, functional drinks was just with Pepsi and Coke last week, just the new products, the things that are happening. That is our space. We are adding coal capacity. We really feel good about our journey on first. And then in fuel, right? We've been -- hey, liquid fuel demand in our core markets is going to slowly decline. I think you heard from HO today about what happens with EV. And you saw in Norway and Sweden, we are going -- the combination of liquid fuel. We are taking share in liquid fuel. We throw EV on top of that. We're actually growing that mobility CAGR at a nice rate. And the great thing about these EV customers is they like our stores and they like the other things that we do, and it is driving increased trips to our sites.

Investing more. You got some exposure to our European food today. We're pretty good at food. I know you're skeptical about our journey on food. I know you are. I'm looking forward to announce in 3Q. We've had -- we've had some nice growth in the first 2 quarters. And I can tell you that growth has accelerated. We've got the playbook down. We've got it now. We've got it in 2,800 stores. We're putting it in another 900 stores. we've got it. And we are going to stay focused on food. It is a natural place for us. We are under-indexed against industry. We have the capability to do this, and we are going to execute against that.

Our offer assortment, again, the consumer is changing. You heard -- you watch the video and saw the investments in the supply chain. Our ability to adjust offer is informed by our data sets. Our investments in the supply chain give us access to broader assortment advantaged cost of goods. That is a primary focus for us over this 5-year period. And then the enablers, right? Our job is to deploy against our scale. We are large. We have capacity. We have great leaders, great people. Now we have great platforms, processes. And I'm glad you got to hear from Erica and Ed. Again, it's usually -- it can be a black box, as I said earlier. They were here today, they talked about what they're doing. They talked about what they're enabling in our business. and we are ramping at scale, and we have real momentum right now.

Our commitment to you is to grow organically. That is our focus. We are focused on our core. We are focused on the model our founders have given us. We have momentum in our business right now. And that is what we want to do. And that is what we will do. So I'll stop. I said I'd be brief. I know -- I assume you're eager for Q&A, and I've got the whole team up here with me, and we'll take your questions.

Thank you. Thanks for everything today. Nice seeing all of you. I had a question on your new long-term targets as it relates to your new robust store expansion goals. So first, hoping to hear how confident you are in hitting the new store build targets in terms of I'm thinking about it like identifying and acquiring site locations, construction time lines, et cetera. And then second, how dependent are your new long-term growth targets on you hitting those NTI targets? I guess I'm wondering if you maybe fall short on the new store builds are there other levers to pull to kind of offset that and still hit your targets?

Thanks, Bonnie. Thanks for being here. Thanks for the question. And Aaron, I'll come over to you to talk about it. I'm highly confident. Why am I highly confident? We delivered and exceeded our target last year. we will exceed our target this year. Why do I know that? Because those stores are under construction as we speak, and we have good visibility to their progress. You heard Aaron reference 1,000 stores. So we have a really strong team in this space, Bonnie, and all of this is kind of mapped out because it takes a long time to do it. Aaron?

Yes. No, I think, Alex, building on some of your points. So on our foundations in place. The team is there, the foundations are there, the processes are there. Just like anybody coming out of COVID, we face challenges in terms of time to build cost inflation, and I'm excited by the fact that this year, we've actually decreased our number of days of construction. We've actually seen costs come out of our build. So that gives us really good foundation. But then when you look at the pipeline, we've spent the last couple of years with our D&A team really outlining where our key growth markets and what do we think those opportunities are. We are confident based on that data, but also on the activity that we see and the projects that we see coming through Alex has mentioned a few times to you in the past, we have a pipeline of over 1,000 sites. And they're in different phases of our development program, where we are focused on building those and bringing them to life faster. And again, as Alex said, we have a lot of confidence, but we're going to keep to our discipline and make sure that, that is our foundation.

Aaron, do you want to talk about SSAs as part of delivering that target?

Yes. And as I mentioned in the presentation, we have a team specializing in our single-site acquisitions. And as we go, again, it's a build versus buy decision as we see these operators facing additional cost profiles we think we are uniquely positioned to go take advantage of that, our balance sheet, our ability to act quickly helps in those conversations. So again, as we go, it's focused on asset quality and building our network in the right shape.

Yes. And Bonnie, we didn't answer your question. So you saw a 2% to 3% same-store sales, 4% to 5% total network grows. So that's this right? That is what that is.

Yes Martin Landry from Stifel A lot of good discussion on organic growth. I'd like to maybe switch to M&A. Valuations of public equities have risen a lot in the last couple of years. Has that translated into private valuations? And is that impairing your ability to transact right now?

Thanks for being here, Martin, and for the question. Asset prices remain kind of high. I think it's fair to say, Philippe. We're active on a number of things. So there's plenty of activity in our geography. And for us, it's the discipline will remain intact. I mean, the model that our founders have given us, we follow it to the letter. And that's all about returns and synergy delivery and what are we going to pay. And so I don't -- I think you heard Philippe say and Philippe, you can comment in a sec that I think we're confident we will do M&A over this 5-year period. Are we not getting several files? Yes. Is that new? No. Philippe?

Yes. I think what gives us confidence that M&A, we tip and will be part of our growth in the future that we have been very good at delivering synergies. And I don't think that there are so many players that can do that in the industry. So that gives us much confidence that we'll be able to position in the right files, we will be there. We'll be able, and that means that we'll be able to deliver this level of synergies and to pay, of course, always the right price. But there is no doubt for us that M&A will remain part of our growth.

The framework that you've articulated on the EPS side, it's more tempered than Couche-Tard's longer-term history of growth. So if you look at it even in 10 and 15 years. So wondering if this -- so wondering if this reflects heightened conservatism and certainly, the lack of M&A and/or a recognition of the law of large numbers and Couche-Tard is bigger than it was, and it's just more difficult to grow as you get larger. And maybe you could give us -- because I ask in the context because Street estimates are a bit higher than the framework, at least at the low end. So you can give us some sort of context of what would characterize at the low end and what would be a reasonable kind of middle end target of that 10 plus, which could range so widely.

And Philippe, I'll quickly come to you. This plan is based on organic growth. We want to put a plan in front of you and a strategy that we're going to deliver on. Delivering against our commitments is also part of our core fundamental foundation in our culture. This plan is pretty tightly tied to the way we budget and how we set targets internally each year. And I think the other thing I would say is that, what we've put in this plan, we are very close to or at delivering currently in this current environment. Philippe, I'll come over to you.

Yes. I would say that one of the them, main components between the EBITDA and the EPS and where we can act it's a share buyback program. And the reality here is that this buyback program for us is -- it's a kind of a plug in the model. And here, to your question, are we being conservative? SP-5 Maybe, but why? Because we want to make sure that, again, here, Vishal, we give us enough flexibility if we need to act on the M&A side, okay? So if you ask me, are we or guidance being in the lower range, we think so. But we have learned in the past. We prefer to underpromised and overdelivered, and that's what we'll be working on in the future.

Irene Nattel, RBC.

Irene Nattel, RBC. One of the newer elements here that I'm hearing from you is around loyalty, data, personalized offers, a lot of which is the holy grail in retail. Can you talk about where you are on that trajectory? And what role that might play in, let's say, delivering 3% instead of 2% or even something higher than 3% on the same-store sales number.

Erica, I will be coming to you. You saw some of our capabilities today, and it's real. We're all members and we get text in. We have personalization capabilities, and we've got some cool stuff in the future that Erica all talk to. I think I referenced earlier this kind of gap that we just see widening in the U.S. to market to 500 to 600 basis points, Irene. And those are new levels for us. It's -- we're not possible to link that directly back to our just kind of advancements in digital, but we sure think they're helping. And when Erica says, we see it in the P&L, that's what she's referencing. Erica?

Yes. I would say -- thank you for the question. We're excited about where we are because we're here. We are here now. Millions and millions of our consumers are receiving communication from us on a daily basis. in the moments that matter to them at the time that matters to them on the categories that matter to them. And the ways of working is really what's a differentiator from where we were to where we are now. we are embedded in strategies with merchandising. We're attending and understand our nicotine goals, our third schools, our private label goals. And digital data and technology, we are enabling those. We're not off developing separate strategies. We know our ambitions and energy drinks. And we're going to develop customer journeys that facilitate that growth along the way.

The channels are in place, the technology is in place. And underlying all of that is the data that's so powerful to connect to our consumers that our vendors really value as well.

Irene, I'd add one last piece that I'm really excited about, and that's partnership. I and Erica have now developed our ability to plug in partners. We're pretty big. So I think the notion to partner, obviously, partner loyalty programs here in Canada are pretty powerful, I believe. So we have the ability to partner both kind of nationally or country-wise, but also very locally. That's something I'm pretty excited about as we think about the future of this program.

Mike Van Aelst, TD. So I wanted to touch on the same-store sales number that you provided 2% to 3%. It's been a challenge the last number of years, tough consumer drag from cigarettes. Can you talk to us about what's so going to enable you to get to that 2% to 3% when you break it down, say, between maybe can change in the consumer health, if you're seeing that, the drag from cigarettes within the nicotine category seems to be diminishing quite a bit just because the other nicotine products are becoming much greater in size. And then also the new program. So if you kind of break it down into the less dragon cigarettes or nicotine in general, the consumer health and then these other programs, like what's how you get into?

Okay. And Philippe, I'll come to you. I believe you had a kind of a chart in your presentation. So we are planning, as Philippe said, really at a consumer environment that we've experienced the last, call it, the last past year. So there is not a plan in a massive consumer upward trend from a macro perspective. We are delivering at that level now. And I think the build is -- it's probably best Philippe, I'll just let you speak to the build because it was in your deck.

Yes. Again, when you look at this 2%, 3%, what we're saying is that we do -- we believe, Mike, that half of this growth will come from nicotine and first because -- the slide we shared about nicotine, we do see this category actually growing. We know -- we are taking into account that the cigarette is declining. But the reality is that other nicotine products are really with a strong trend there. So that's the piece.

First, you have seen the number again here. There is a huge and significant trend, and we see that to continue actually to happen across our geographies and Louise and Trey can talk even more about the strong partnership that we have bid with the major vendors of this category. And we believe that here, we are really well positioned to build growth there. So that is on the core. So half of the 2%, 3% guidance.

The other half is about the new offer. And here, again, Louise has mentioned, we are expecting food to grow 4x faster than the overall box. So here, there is a significant upside that we are expecting by food. And this number is not coming from anywhere. That's happening today. And we're confident that we can build up on this momentum. And of course, here, there is also the upside.

We already have a lot of pride brand, as you know Louise mentioned, but there is still a significant room there. So all these components give us very good confidence that we'll be between this 2%, 3%. And when we look at dynamics between the regions, there is no doubt that for us that U.S. will be a key driver of this growth, following by Europe. And yes, there was maybe some question about nicotine in Canada. We are taking into account that. And for sure, Canada will not get this potential tailwind because we know that the environment is not the same. But overall, yes, we are very confident about this 2%, 3%.

But just to be clear, the nicotine in the past few years, was that a drag? And now you see it -- now you see it turning to growth?

Oh, yes. Yes. Yes, yes. And for us, because we -- it's true that maybe is a misconception. And again, with you can comment further there. But we talk a lot about cigarettes. But again, when we look at the overall category and including now the opportunities, the vaping and so on, this category actually is growing.

Yes. And I think we still see a strong base in traditional cigarettes, right? There's some people that are just wedded to that product. That's the product that they know and love and they're staying cigarette buyers. And when we think about sales, the manufacturers know that, that product is declining, and so they've gone to look for these other products. We talked a bit about like nicotine as we went through, but each geography has a set of products.

Vaping is bigger in some of the European markets than it is in, say, the U.S. where white nicotine is the one that's growing but the breadth of the products is really an important part of the story. And we were talking in one of the breaks that -- some of these products are now socially acceptable again as well, which I think is helping drive some of this change, especially with the younger consumer.

Chris Li from Desjardins. I have a 2-part question on margins. First on fuel and then one on merchandise. On fuel first, you guys were obviously bang on 2.5 years ago in predicting industry margins will be low $0.40 per gallon and you guys are outperforming it. However, as I look back the last 2 or 3 years, your reported few margins have been largely stable. So my question is, what are you seeing that gives you confidence that it will continue to grow in line with inflation. And then the second part is there is a slide around supply chain optimization that Philippe has. Does that mean that you expect to -- your outperformance versus OpEx, you expect that to continue to widen? $0.04 to $0.05, do we expect that delta to grow because of some of the initiatives that you're putting on?

So, Louise, I'll come over to you quickly. Yes, I think the cost increases in our space are very real. They are tied to regulatory, environmental, cost of labor, increased regulation. And our breakeven point is one of the lowest in the industry, right? We have great merch sales. We have a strong cost discipline. So all of those things are supporting those margins needing to go up. And I'll let Louise talk to our ability to continue to widen our gap.

Yes. No, thanks for the call out to our outlook a few years ago. And I think it's really hard -- we're not in the business of predicting fuel margins. Hopefully, you got the sense of that. But we do believe in the fundamentals that Alex just talked to. I think a lot of our competitors are more dependent on fuel than they are -- than our business. So we have much stronger store sales to help offset some of that cost inflation. And so that's one of the things that we think underpins that the fundamentals, the macroeconomic principles behind that growth.

We also see it in all markets, right? And by markets, we share with you very aggregated statistics, but we have the opportunity to look very granularly across different countries, different states and provinces in Canada. And so we see a very consistent trend as well. So that's one of the other things that gives us confidence. And then your question on the supply chain side, I think we have this big scale. And increasingly, that scale is within our control. So often when we did transactions in the past, it came with a fuel supply contract. In some cases, we still maintain long-term relationships with fuel suppliers. But in many cases, we have full freedom to source however and whenever and whatever we want in the fuel supply chain.

And because of the scale, things that are a little bit boring mightn't sound like very much can add a tremendous amount of value very quickly. But this is a commodity. And we also know that we need to keep on adding that value every day because other people are out there trying to do the same things. So we believe in our ability to outperform, but we know we need to continuously reinvent ourselves in that fuel supply chain in that commodity market to keep that sustained performance and also exceed it.

Supply chain is just one of those things as well. Hopefully, you've got a sense that we just look at -- we're not a company-owned departments on fuel. Many companies are. We look at it through the full integrated value chain all the way from the board pricing, the rebates we give right to the source, and that's why we're being able to drive that performance.

Just to add a final that, rightfully so we're really focusing on the U.S. But obviously, in some of our countries in Europe, we've seen some pretty significant volume decline. We have seen -- up to this point, we have seen margins largely adjust for that decline really in almost every instance, right?

Luke Hannan, Canaccord. I wanted to follow up on the same-store sales growth CAGR that you guys have outlined. And maybe more specifically, in the past, you've talked about there being challenges with the consumer that's showing up in those BUs where there's more exposure to those border states. I'm curious to know and also trying to reconcile that with your comments about Q3 momentum to date being somewhat stronger as well. So are you seeing a rebound specifically in that consumer that's showing up in those BUs? And if so, can you share anything on that front as far as what you're seeing as far as basket traffic, et cetera?

Yes. We are seeing our gaps to market widen to levels we have not experienced previously. We are seeing that pretty broad-based across all of our business units with maybe 1 or 2 examples. So we don't -- we think maybe the underlying has improved just a touch. I don't know, 7/11 announced today. I didn't read it yet. But we really believe the driver is us outperforming market further, and that is pretty broad-based across the United States.

And Alex, I'd just add this topic of channel blurring. I think, particularly in these markets where we see this change in customer behavior, different people shopping at different occasions. We've taken a step back and said, hey, what's happening in these other channels around us. And some of that outperformance is that reflection to say, where are our customers shopping? And how can we help them? Whether it's a time of economic prosperity or a time that they are uncertain. How can we help them across the board? And I think that reflection in some of these challenged locations is actually helping us really get targeted on how we help the consumer in the state that they are at the given time.

Yes the final piece I'd add is this digital component because that helps us with the channel blurring and we, I think, is helping us here because I'll just speak to myself I shop at Circle K a lot.

He does.

We know what I bought. So this isn't -- we all have separate e-mails or the e-mail companies have gotten good at filtering out this load of just mess we all get from people, right? What I get from Circle K is directly targeted to me. It knows what I buy. And now it knows when I'm on one of our sites. That's pretty powerful, and that's pretty useful to me, candidly. So we think that's part of it as well.

John Zamparo, Scotiabank. I want to come back to capital allocation. I wonder if there's an EPS or a buyback number that's implied in the guide. And then you're guiding to organic growth in a lot of component of organic plus M&A. And I wonder how we should interpret that. Is it that M&A is less likely extension part of the history of this company, but I think a lot of that's one of the products that Booster success is that it's harder to move the needle in that trend. So I wonder if we are considering doing something different M&A that you're paying more for higher quality assets? Or is it just that the opportunities are not there right now you'd rather focus on internal capital allocation?

So I'll come back to you, Philippe, on the buybacks. We want need and believe we can grow this company organically. That -- we are focused on that. We thought it was the right thing to do to provide that guidance and to share with you why we have confidence in doing that. That does not mean that we are not confident in M&A. We are as active on M&A. I've been here 14 years. I've worked on almost any sizable M&A we've done over those 14 years. there is a lot going on right now. So there's plenty of M&A. We are as active as ever.

As we said we are focused on rolling up our channel. Will we pay more? So we are focused on high-quality assets. We will pay when the returns are there inside of our financial playbook. That's -- Philippe?

Yes, yes. And just to build on what Alex said, I think you like certainty, guys. And here what we're saying, okay, that's the baseline. That's what we are saying that we can control. And the M&A will be just pure upside. And we'll be achieved there. We don't want to send a message that we'll do M&A at any cost. That's what we are. We won't do that. But yes, to Alex point, we are active as ever. And there is a strong likelihood that over the next 5 years of this plan, that yes, we will be announcing M&A. I have no doubt about that.

And coming back to your question on the share buyback. I mentioned that earlier. It's kind of the plug. What we are saying to you guys is that -- the share buyback is for us to remain between the 2 and 2.5x target leverage. So that's what we have embedded in this plan, and that's how we'll continue to use the share buyback program.

Bonnie Griffin from Raymond James. I guess I want to go back to one of the slides about the supply chain, but on the merchandise side, it seems you're pushing more into own kind of your own supply chain. So just curious if you can unpack that more maybe in terms of where ultimately you see can go in terms of the merchandise you have in your stores, the speed of that? And then ultimately, for us, what could the potential unlock be from a cost saving standpoint when you get to the end goal, whatever that might be 3, 5, 6 years from now?

Louise, I'll come over to you. We are pushing into the merch supply chain. Why are we doing that? When I joined 14 years ago, we bought every molecule fuel rack forward. We bought contracts. We had a bunch of fuel brands. Now we haul half of our own product. We have storage, we have traders. We have realized significant value by going into that fuel supply chain, as Louise talked about earlier. We also believe we have the capability to go do it on the merch side. We believe that the merch side unlocks a number of things, and I'll come to Louise for that. But at the critical point is channel blurring and assortment and the ability to procure what we want to procure bring those products and at a cost of goods, we like. Louise?

Yes. And I think you heard in the video, Trey talk to these advantages. So we have existing facilities today. And we see some advantages of operating them in the way that we operate them. So we do know that just with a fairly simple setup, we can already create value. And then as Alex talked about, as we go and extend our capabilities into the merch supply chain, we think we can deliver more value from 3 things.

One, the customer, so bringing different types of products to them that they want. Maybe it's fresher maybe is quicker, all of that stuff, but making sure that we have those products that they actually want. And they, in many cases, may be private label, but there may also be an assortment that we struggled to get cost competitively in another way. We have the benefit of the efficiencies in the supply chain, the cost advantages of doing it ourselves. We know that when we have a supply chain solely focused on our stores, they're more reliable and they're more cost effective. So we see that as well.

And then it's the commercial leverage it gives us. So the ability to go to different suppliers, manufacturers that we don't talk to today and say, "Hey, what can you do for me today? And then to use that commercially back with our existing supplier base and negotiate either with the new one or the old one or a combination of those to deliver that incremental value. and then it kind of feeds on itself, right? You're bringing new products to market, cost competitive, better sourcing arrangements. The suppliers then want to work with you and so on and so on. So we see it in the same way as fuel less commodity focused, more offer focused.

Yes. Thanks, and I'll echo my -- thanks for putting this day together. Very helpful. Mark Petrie with CIBC. So I wanted to ask about the merchandise growth beyond same-store sales growth. So I think we talked about the NTIs but that's essentially half of your top line growth for merchandise is nonsame-store sales, and that's much bigger than what we've seen historically. So could you just expand on that? Like NTI we talked about, but then some of those other pieces? And what is it that puts you at an inflection point to be able to accelerate the growth from those different areas?

Aaron, I'll come over to you. This -- we've been ramping this up for several years. And as I said, we've been delivering against our targets. You heard Aaron say these sites outperform our average sites materially. They sell a ton of food, they sell a ton of merch. They do strong volume. So it is predominantly that. I mean we will build more than 100 this year. That -- it's significant. Aaron?

Yes. Yes, I think as Alex has mentioned, we've really gained confidence by what we've seen over the last couple of years with the stores to life. And what we're seeing in the numbers, as Alex has mentioned, across our key core categories. We are very happy with the sales volume, but also the returns that we're seeing out of these assets. So tying it back to the question that Bonnie first started with, at the end of the day, we have a lot of confidence in our pipeline. We could go out there, could we build 1,000 stores. But I say that because -- we bring it back to our discipline. We bring it back to what the market gives us. We're not going to do things that we see some of our competitors doing. We're going to keep to that discipline. But the 750 number we feel good about.

And maybe just to complement the -- your question about what's in there between same-store sales and total merchant revenue. There are to a business that have been talking about that will be growing meaningfully.

EV. EV that we are investing 15% of our CapEx, we are expecting actually EV to drive growth and the second one is a carwash. Carwash is already a big business for us. We believe that there is also a meaningful growth to unlock there.

Corey Tarlowe with Jefferies.

This is our last question. Sorry, I should... Thanks for coming in.

I'll try to make it a good one. I think, Alex, you had mentioned that promos were down. Curious what's driving that? And then secondarily, how do you think about pricing and promotions going forward? Given, I assume some of your large suppliers, namely one of them, I think, last week, Pepsi announced up to 15% reductions in price. And other retailers have also talked about disinflation and even deflation in certain categories within food. So how do you think about how that informs getting to that 2% to 3% and what that means for the business?

Yes. Thanks for the question. Louise, I'll come over to you. Yes, the promos are down. They're down because we're a lot better with our data. And we are analyzing our promotions. We have boundaries and frameworks for what's a successful promotion and what's not a successful promotion. I think you heard me say we're more focused on just impactful promotions on impactful products in spaces that we know we -- these are products that people really want. We know that they're looking to us to have them and we can offer very attractive price points. So that journey for us will just continue.

You heard about the investments in data platform 2.0. It will just continue and the data is going to drive that. We do not view that as a negative. We view it as a positive. You've seen the last 2 quarters, we've had some gains and that's part of it. Deflation, I think Pepsi lasers get killed. And they're not the only CPG company, right? I mean these are -- the price points between private brand and some of the CPG companies, and they're losing market share. And I think some of them believe they've gone too far. I think we'll make decisions on where we price and how we do things. But I guess we're not at a point where we see that as a significant risk at this stage. Louise?

Yes, just said, we're trying to drive sales through selling more products to our customers. That's our ultimate objective, right? And so we know we need to have them priced and promoted in the right way to make money for ourselves and for our customers to get a good deal for things that they really want a good deal on. So being more purposeful with promotions is a key part of that. We'd rather have something that people get really excited about rather than the whole store on sale. Our data and analytics capabilities are getting better, but we still have more room to go in that journey as we collect the data using the identified customer data that we have through loyalty, that helps us drive that even more. So I think it's all of the things Alex talked about, price promotion deals, rewards, personalization will play a big role, and we'll continue to evolve that. But to address your question on deflation, I think our objective is to drive sales through more customer visits, people wanting to buy more products from us. That's where we start that conversation or traffic.

Just want to sincerely thank you all for being here and engaging with us today. We're excited about our future. We're focused on our culture and who we are in our core -- we see other areas to grow. So thank you very much for being here and spending the morning with us. We have some lunch out there. If you're able to stay, please grab some lunch and get home safe. Thank you very much.

Good morning. My name is Joelle, and I will be your conference operator today. [Foreign Language]

I will now introduce Mr. Mathieu Brunet, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury of Alimentation Couche-Tard. [Foreign Language]

English will follow. [Foreign Language]

Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to this web conference presenting Alimentation Couche-Tard's financial results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2026. All lines will be kept on mute to prevent any background noise. After the presentation, we will answer questions from analysts during the web conference. We would like to remind everyone that this webcast presentation will be available on our website for a 90-day period. Also, please remember that some of the issues discussed during this webcast may be forward-looking statements, which are provided by the corporation with its usual caveats. These caveats or risks and uncertainties are outlined in our financial reporting. Therefore, our future results could differ from the information discussed today.

Our financial results will be presented by Mr. Alex Miller, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Filipe Da Silva, Chief Financial Officer. Alex, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Mathieu, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for being with us today. Before we dive into the results, I'd like to flag something for your calendars. On February 11, 2026, we'll host a business strategy update where we'll walk you through the next phase of our growth journey and our vision for the future of convenience and mobility. We'll share a clear and thoughtful view of where we're headed and what it means for our customers, our network and the opportunities ahead. You'll receive a formal save the date and additional details in early December. Today's focus is very much on the solid progress we've made this quarter. It's been a little over a year since I stepped into the CEO role, and I'm genuinely proud of the way the business is performing and of the relentless focus our team is putting on winning the customer.

Since the start of the fiscal year and for the second consecutive quarter, we've delivered positive same-store sales in every geography, along with steady, reliable performance in fuel. In an environment that remains challenging for many of our customers, they continue to respond to the value and convenience we're working hard to deliver, both inside our stores and on our forecourts. Our customer-focused initiatives are gaining traction, and we're seeing clear proof of that in this quarter's results, which are outperforming the industry. As we strengthen our value proposition and continue enhancing the customer experience across our network, we're also expanding our reach through disciplined organic growth. Together, these efforts are creating meaningful opportunities to welcome new customers and deepen the relationship with those we already serve.

We are well on our way to reaching our goal of 500 new stores in 5 years with 29 new stores opened since May, and we are on track for more than 100 new locations in North America this fiscal year with many offering high-speed diesel to serve our B2B customers, and we continue to seize opportunities in rural communities, along with our traditional metro area sites. As of today, we have another 73 stores currently under construction, and our real estate team has 1,000 sites in the pipeline for potential future development. In Europe, our rebranding of TotalEnergies retail assets is progressing across our 4 new business units with the Circle K brand and programs now at 80 sites as of the first half of the year, and half of those sites feature the Circle K car wash offer.

Our rebrand of the EV offer in mid-Europe is now complete. In my recent visits to these stores, I've been very pleased to see our team members energized, embracing our programs, executing them with excellence and engaging with our customers who are responding enthusiastically. Along with our efforts to grow and optimize our network, we are also investing in capabilities to support our stores through best-in-class inventory management solutions and supply chain optimization, which Filipe will address later.

This past week, in Otsego, Minnesota, we cut the ribbon on the first of 3 new distribution centers in the U.S. that will open in the third quarter. These 3 facilities will support approximately 1,600 stores across 14 states. With these openings, combined with our existing facilities in Texas, Arizona and Quebec, approximately 3,200 stores across North America will be supported by self-distribution. It is an important milestone in our efforts to strengthen and better align our North American supply chain, enhancing speed, accuracy and product availability while enabling the broadening of product assortment.

Now let's turn to our convenience business. As I mentioned earlier, we're continuing positive trends in same-store sales across our geographies for the second straight quarter, with the U.S. up 1.2%, Canada up 5.4% and Europe and other regions up 0.5%. U.S. revenues increased on solid performance in food, packaged beverage and other nicotine products. Canada's growth benefited primarily from alcohol and food. Food also contributed to the positive sales results in Europe and other regions segment.

Given the challenging consumer environment, these results are especially meaningful, and we're seeing clear gains in customer traffic and share, which speaks to the strength of our offering and the compelling value and ease of our experience. We believe the disciplined focus on the customer is helping us distance ourselves from broader industry trends and continue delivering quality, sustainable growth. Looking at our food category, as consumers look for ways to stretch their dollars, our meal deals are meeting their needs with the choices and options they want at an attractive price point. Meal deals are winning with customers, thanks to effective communication across our in-store and digital platforms, along with a focus on simplicity and execution. Food penetration continues to rise, and the strong adoption of meal deals across markets further highlights the increasing contribution of food to our overall growth trajectory. In North America, same-store food growth had its best performance in well over a year, fueled by disciplined execution and the ongoing strength of our meal deals platform.

This quarter, we sold over 10 million bundles up from 8.6 million in Q1, averaging over 850,000 bundles per week. I'm even more excited to share that at the very start of Q3, we surpassed the 1 million meal deals mark sold per week in North America. This milestone underscores the growing relevance of our food offering and the value we are bringing to our customers, and we're just getting started. In the months ahead, we'll continue expanding the meal deals platform, introducing greater variety and innovation, strengthening vendor partnerships and offering customers unmatched optionality.

We are also seeing meaningful customer excitement and incremental sales growth from our exclusive partnership with Guy Fieri, which we announced in September. The Flavortown inspired menu rollout across the Northern Tier business unit is contributing to an increase in overall hot food weekly units alongside meaningful margin dollar contribution. We are encouraged by the customer response to this differentiated offer as we prepare for a broader North American expansion. In addition, our SKU reduction initiative launched in FY '25 continues to drive margin improvement in our U.S. business units, enabling us to focus on execution excellence and maintain reliable in-stock performance while also reducing spoilage.

In Europe, food continues to be a bright spot driven by increased in sales per store. Sweden, Norway, Ireland and the Baltics were key markets with substantial growth in hot dogs, burgers, sandwiches and bakery items. Building on our success in North America, we accelerated the European rollout of meal deals last quarter with 3 well-defined offers at tiered price points to capture a broader range of customer occasions, from smaller impulse buys to full meal solutions. The early results are promising.

Turning to our efforts to own thirst. U.S. packaged beverage category delivered solid performance with basket size and pricing offsetting category-wide declines in trip frequency. Energy drinks continue to lead the category with same-store sales growth in the mid-teens, supported by ongoing innovation, meal deal inclusion and exclusive vendor partnerships that are driving consumer engagement. Dispensed beverages are also seeing strong growth in the cold and frozen segments, lifted by our loyalty pricing strategies.

Meanwhile, we're launching new programs to drive excitement into the hot dispensed category. Earlier this month in the U.S., we kicked off our win free Coffee for a Year Sweepstakes in partnership with International Delight creamers, inviting customers to enter for a chance to win 1 of 14 prices. We are also piloting an aggressive Inner Circle price on hot coffee to complement our highly popular any size Polar Pop offer for loyalty members. In adult beverages, we continue to see healthy beer and wine growth in Canada. While we expect growth trends in this category to normalize, these results more than offset the declines in nicotine in Canada resulting from the illicit tobacco trade and government restrictions on pouches in the convenience channel.

In the U.S., our performance in nicotine is strong with mid-single-digit same-store sales growth. We've outpaced the convenience channel in cigarette sales and trips driven by market-centric pricing and affordability across premium and discount segments. Our September ZYN promotion sparked double-digit unit growth for ZYN as we distributed close to 8 million free cans. Not only did this offer increased total nicotine trips year-over-year and versus the pre-promotion period, but it also boosted the overall modern oral segment and sustained increased nicotine trips post-promotion. These results highlight our successful vendor collaboration and customer engagement as well as our ability to deliver value and maintain momentum in a complex regulatory landscape.

In Europe, amidst a challenging regulatory and market environment, our nicotine business continues to outperform the broader market with other tobacco products driving year-over-year category growth while we still see some volume gains versus last year from the supermarket bans on tobacco in the Netherlands and Belgium. Looking at our loyalty programs with our launch of Inner Circle in Texas in September, we added more than 1 million new customers in Inner Circle, surpassing 12.5 million members across the U.S. as of the end of the second quarter. With the completion of our rollout in the West Coast business unit earlier this month, Inner Circle is now available at more than 5,000 sites across the U.S., and we expect enrollments to continue to accelerate in the coming months.

As we bring Inner Circle to new customers across the U.S., our retention rates are sustained and healthy. More than 85% of members are active in fuel, 65% are active inside the store. We are leveraging some of our recent investments in our customer data platform and personalization capabilities to help drive repeat visits from Inner Circle members, and we are seeing existing members visit more frequently. Elsewhere in Europe, we've taken a major step forward with the rollout of our enhanced extra loyalty program, a unified visit-based model that rewards customers for every interaction, whether they fuel, charge, shop or wash their cars, the new platform delivers a more seamless personalized experience that strengthens engagement and customer loyalty across our network. Following a successful pilot in Sweden, we have now completed the expansion to Poland and the Baltics this quarter with other markets to follow.

Turning to our fuel business. Same-store road transportation fuel volumes were down 0.6% in the U.S. and 1.8% in Europe, but up 1.1% in Canada. Despite these declines, overall volumes remain healthy and are outperforming industry peers, and margins are holding steady compared to previous quarters. We remain focused on unlocking additional value from our fuel supply chain across our global operations with our supply, trading and logistics teams working to expand lower-cost supply options and execute programs that deliver meaningful value to our customers, such as our seasonal Fuel Day events.

Our October Fuel Day in Canada drove traffic and excitement to more than 1,100 sites across the country with savings of $0.10 per liter. In the U.S., we have tied recent Fuel Day events to Inner Circle not only providing great savings for our customers, but also driving sign-ups to the membership program and deepening customer engagement. In B2B, our European business continues to navigate a dynamic environment with mixed volume trends. Card volumes came in just below last year's levels, but this was offset by robust margin gains. Non-fuel income continues to be a strategic growth area as steady increases in B2B transit charging volumes helped counteract accelerated declines in traditional fuel and bulk fuel volumes remain healthy.

While slightly lower this quarter due to price competition among resellers and a volatile biofuels market, they were offset by improved margins. We are seeing sustained growth in mobile payment adoption, up 30% versus last year, with the Baltics leading in customer onboarding and transaction volume with rollout of new digital platforms and functionalities such as self-service enrollment and instant virtual card issuance, we are gaining market share and operational savings for our customers.

In the U.S., our B2B fuel share continues to grow as we build strong customer relationships, leverage the national scale and reach of our network and work to provide a reliable, seamless fueling and payment experience for drivers, focusing on direct partnerships, commercial diesel growth and strategic collaborations that have set us apart. We are seeing higher retention and increased usage among fleets of all sizes. We are also increasing Inner Circle penetration with B2B members as customers enjoy personal rewards for commercial fueling, enabling both acquisition and retention.

Shifting over to e-mobility. We are building on our market leadership in Europe adding more than 230 DC ultrafast Circle K branded charge points and 33 new sites added across our European network during the second quarter. Overall, we now have close to 630 locations with Circle K branded chargers up nearly 30% versus a year ago. And our fast-charging network now consists of just under 3,900 charge points. In addition, we saw nearly 2 million charging transactions on Circle K branded chargers in Europe, an increase of 55% versus same quarter last year. As we expand the network with an emphasis on Scandinavia, we are also increasing our focus on new markets in our mid-European business, where our sites contributed more than 300,000 charging transactions.

With that, I'll now turn the discussion over to Filipe, who will provide further details on our financial performance this quarter.

Good morning, everyone. We closed the second quarter with growing optimism, reflecting steady progress supported by consistent execution and effective cost management across our operations. Core operating expense growth remained under control, while we continue to advance our multiyear investment journey to unlock new capabilities that strengthen our network and create greater value for customers. As Alex outlined, this quarter extends the positive momentum we began in Q1, with U.S. same-store sales growing for the second consecutive quarter, reinforcing that our self-help initiatives are delivering steady measurable progress.

Food remained a bright spot, continuing its upward trajectory, supported by strong in-store execution. Shrink improved further, now at its lowest level in about 9 quarters, while food service gross margin expanded by more than 400 basis points year-over-year, providing an important lever in managing inflation and supporting margin resilience. This also marked the first full quarter from GetGo, which further broadens our food and convenience offering in the U.S. and unlocks new opportunities for customer engagement. For example, just this month, we're testing a small pilot in Ohio that lets myPerks members from Giant Eagle redeem point at Circle K. It gives customers more flexibility and helps connect directly with fuel shoppers. It's still very early days, and we'll watch how it performs before looking at next steps.

In Canada, performance remained robust, supported by the ongoing benefit from the alcohol legislation changes in Ontario. As we move closer to cycling last year's favorable impacts and face a more tempered retail environment, we are approaching the coming quarters with a prudent outlook with continued focus on execution and compelling food offerings. In Europe, all regions posted healthy results with broad-based category growth driven by compelling food offers and attractive meal deals, helping us to capture additional market share.

In Asia, operations were temporarily disrupted by the typhoon. However, the overall financial impact was minimal and did not materially affect EPS. Turning to our TotalEnergies assets, synergy delivery remains ahead of plan. That said, we did see a modest acceleration in the Netherlands, where the prior year benefit from the supermarket tobacco ban is not fully cycled. Overall, merchandise and service gross margin expanded by approximately 140 basis points year-over-year, and fuel margin also improved by nearly 600 basis points. These results demonstrated meaningful progress in both performance and integration. I will now go over some key figures for the quarter. For more details, please refer to our MD&A available on our website.

After nearly a year, net earnings attributable to shareholders of the corporation returned to positive territory in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, which stood at $741 million or $0.79 per share on a diluted basis. Excluding certain items described in more details in our MD&A, adjusted net earnings were approximately $734 million or $0.78 per share on an adjusted diluted basis, representing an increase of 5.4% compared to the corresponding quarter of last year.

Now let's review in detail each of our business segments on an FX-adjusted basis. The adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of fiscal 2026 increased by approximately $94 million or 6.2% compared with the corresponding quarter of fiscal 2025, mainly due to the contribution from acquisitions, which amounted to approximately $75 million, improved merchandise and service and road transportation fuel gross margin as well as organic growth in our convenience activities, partly offset by the impact of the regulatory divestiture related to the GetGo acquisition, which amounted to approximately $8 million. During the second quarter, merchandise and service revenues increased by approximately $254 million or 5.8%, primarily attributable to the contribution from acquisitions which amounted to approximately $163 million in organic growth, partly offset by the impact of regulatory divestiture related to the GetGo acquisition, which amounted to approximately $20 million.

Merchandise and service gross profit increased by approximately $126 million or 8.3%. This is primarily attributable to the contribution from acquisition, which amounted to approximately $56 million by organic growth as well as by improved merchandise and service gross margin in the United States partly offset by the impact of regulatory divestiture related to the GetGo acquisition, which amounted to approximately $7 million.

In a context where we are delivering increasing value to our customers across all regions, I am happy to report that our gross margin expanded this quarter. In the United States, our merchandise and service gross margin increased by 0.9% to 34.7%, favorably impacted by the Zyntember promotion as well as by strong food execution. On the food side, the margin lift also reflect a significant reduction in shrink of more than 400 basis points alongside our 2025 rationalization efforts, ensuring that our promotions and assortment are relevant to our customers. In Europe and other regions, our merchandise and gross margin increased by 0.7% to 38.9%, mostly driven by a favorable mix -- product mix from lower tobacco revenues and e-mobility continued momentum in Scandinavia. In Canada, our merchandise and service gross margin increased by 0.6% to 34.2%, driven by a favorable change in product mix from cigarette revenues.

Moving on to the fuel side of our business. Our road transportation fuel gas margin was $0.4586 per gallon in the United States, a modest decline of $0.0024, but overall consistent with previous quarters. In Canada, margin averaged an impressive CAD 0.1507 per liter, an increase of CAD 0.0172. Fuel margins remained healthy across the network, supported by ongoing supply chain optimization and strong in-store effectiveness. We're also advancing our data-driven approach to pricing and promotions, helping us stay agile and competitive in a dynamic retail environment. In Europe and other regions, our road transportation fuel gross profit was USD 0.1151 per liter, an increase of USD 0.01, driven by favorable foreign exchange translation and effective supply chain management, partly offset by the impact of lapping a onetime gain from a prior year fuel supply agreement adjustment.

Turning to SG&A. Normalized expenses increased by 3.4% year-over-year in the second quarter of fiscal 2026 driven by disciplined core operating costs and targeted investments. Roughly 2/3 of the increase came from our core operating expenses, which continue to be managed effectively and remain on pace with average inflation across our regions, supported by our fit-to-serve. This also reflects targeted effort to scale our food service offering with resources directed towards enhancing capabilities at the store level. The remaining 1/3 reflects planned investment in technology and operational capabilities to support long-term growth and enhance the customer experience.

I would like to emphasize that year-to-date, our normalized expense growth remains in line with inflation, aligned with our focus on cost discipline and maximizing operational leverage. I'm pleased to report that we exceeded our fit-to-serve target of $800 million ahead of schedule. This achievement reflects the collective commitment of our teams to deliver real measurable improvement. It's an important milestone that strengthens our ability to reinvest with purpose while maintaining disciplined expense control.

Moving on, we continue to see gains in more workforce productivity. In the U.S., overtime wages remain below 3% for the 23rd straight month and below 2.5% for the 12th consecutive month, landing at 2.1% in Q2 versus 2.7% last year. These results speak to the effectiveness of handheld devices, smarter labor scheduling and automation tools that are translating into more impactful customer-facing hours. We are also capturing incremental savings through our centralized procurement efforts for goods not for resale, further leveraging our global scale to reduce cost and drive efficiency.

Turning to strategic investment. We continue to advance our digital capabilities and operational tools to position the company for long-term growth. A key focus this quarter has been the North American pilot of our RELEX ordering and space planning platform now underway across 6 locations in 4 business units. Fuel scale deployment remains on track for the first half of calendar 2026. Early results are promising, with notable gain in product availability and inventory accuracy. As we scale, RELEX is expected to further reduce spoilage and also inventory efficiency, support margin resilience and strengthen vendor collaboration, all while streamlining in-store operation by simplifying ordering and optimizing shelf layouts.

Beyond RELEX, we are making solid progress on other elements of our digital road map. Our upgraded handheld devices and labor scheduler are now embedded in more locations, continuing to streamline operations and improve team productivity. We're also seeing early promise from our AI task management pilot, helping store manager quickly translate data into clear, actionable insights. These investments are sharpening execution at the store level and helping deliver a more seamless and personalized customer experience.

Turning over to depreciation and amortization expenses increased by approximately $59 million or 12.6% year-over-year, including the GetGo assets, which amounted to approximately $23 million, along with equipment upgrades, store remodel program, new store openings, technology enhancement and EV charger deployment. This initiative represents significant strategic investment made in recent quarters. From a tax perspective, the income tax rate for the second quarter of fiscal 2026 was 22.8% compared with 23.4% for the corresponding quarter of fiscal 2025. The decrease is mainly stemming from the impact of a different mix in our earnings across the various jurisdictions in which we operate.

As of October 12, 2025, we recorded a return on equity at 17.7%, and our return on capital employed stood at 11.9%. During the fiscal year, our leverage ratio stood at 2.21. We also had strong balance sheet ability with $2 billion in cash and an additional $3 billion available through our revolving unsecured operating credit facility. During the quarter, we issued Canadian dollar denominated and U.S. dollar denominated senior unsecured notes totaling CAD 500 million and USD 1.2 billion, respectively. The $1.6 billion net proceeds from the issuance were used to repay indebtedness under our United States commercial paper program. Additionally, we repurchased 16.6 million shares for an amount of nearly $900 million through the buyback program, while for the first half of the year, we invested close to $900 million in capital expenditure, reinforcing our balanced approach to capital allocation. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, 6.1 million shares were repurchased for an amount of approximately $306 million.

Turning to the dividend. The Board of Directors declared yesterday a quarterly dividend of CAD 0.215 per share, an increase of 10.3% for the second quarter of fiscal 2026 to shareholders on record as at December 3, 2025, and approved its payment effective December 17, 2025. In closing, our second quarter results reinforced the resilience of our business model and the operational excellence of our teams. We are encouraged by the continued top line momentum across key categories, particularly in food, packed beverage and fuel as well as by our progress in loyalty, underscoring the advancement of our customer initiatives.

Looking ahead, we remain committed to delivering earnings growth over the course of the year by maintaining our cost discipline, thanks to fit-to-serve initiatives and by enhancing our gross margin profile through continued progress on shrink and spoilage food growth and vendor-funded promotions. We are also deploying capital with purpose, investing in tools that optimize execution and elevate the customer experience to support long-term value creation and deliver best-in-class returns. I thank you all for your attention.

I will turn the call over again to our President and CEO, Alex Miller.

Thank you, Filipe. As we move forward, our priority remains clear, delivering meaningful value for our customers and making every visit to our stores and forecourts easy and enjoyable. We're strengthening our execution, making better use of our scale and sharpening our operations, so our sites consistently have what customers need. We're also elevating the loyalty experience in ways that make it more personal and more engaging, helping customers come back more often. I'm proud of the work our teams are doing across the network and the progress we're making together. As we move into the back half of the year, we're well positioned to keep serving customers reliably and to be the stop they trust most when they're on the go.

On that note, let's turn it over to the operator to answer analyst questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Martin Landry with Stifel.

I want to touch on your U.S. merchandise margins. They have expanded nicely on a year-over-year basis in the last 2 quarters. And they've reached levels that are near the highest in the last 10 years. And you seem to have good margin drivers. You've talked about white nicotine. You've talked about food, energy drink, vertical integration of your distribution and then even SKU reduction. But -- so I'm trying to understand a little bit where are we in that journey for your merchandise margin in the U.S. How much more upside do you see there? And if you can talk a little bit about what is left in terms of drivers to get these levels higher?

Yes. Thank you for the question. I'm pleased with the 90 bps improvement year-on-year for the quarter. I think the -- for this quarter specifically, about 38 of the bps came from white nic and our ZYN promotion. We continue to improve shrink, as Filipe talked about, that's contributing nice to our ongoing margin improvement. I think I've talked in past quarters about our improvements around promotions and our ability to analyze promotions and our data capability, doing less promotions but doing promotions that really add value to consumers and drive traffic and present real value to them.

We talked about the ongoing new distribution centers. We just opened one. I was -- last week, I was in Minnesota and saw our new facility. These facilities are going to improve our COGS as we go forward. They're going to help us service our stores better when our stores really want and need to be serviced for the less lease disruption. So we -- and then lastly is food, right? I mean we continue to grow food. Our food, we grow in the U.S., we improved food by 480 bps quarter on -- versus last year in the same quarter, and we believe we will continue to do these things. So we're executing quite well against the items we're very focused and feel good about the direction of our margin gains, really not just in the U.S., in all 3 of our big geographies.

Yes. And just to complement, Alex. So I think also, Martin, as we are integrating more the supply chain, we'll have the possibility also to get more control on the negotiation with suppliers. And we believe that there is also a nice potential upside there. Of course, we need to continue to reinvest in value, as mentioned by Alex, many times this morning. But yes, overall, the profile of the gross profit, we feel good about the prospect and what we can continue to build in this aspect.

Your next question comes from Irene Nattel with RBC Capital Markets.

Can you talk about the cadence of same-store sales improvements as you went through Q2 and where you're tracking Q3 to date, please?

Yes. Thanks, Irene. The quarter was pretty consistent. We continue to see pretty big variations across the United States. So an example would be our Midwest business unit, which is Iowa, Illinois and Indiana for the quarter. Same-store sales were up 5.3%. Same-store volume was up 2.3%. And we can send -- and that's offset by challenge along our Southern states. And the Midwest BU at 7% of our merch sales. Texas and Arizona specifically remain challenged. They were slightly negative in the quarter. And those 2 areas are 23% of our merch sales. So we continue to see those kind of large differences across the United States.

With that said, our teams in Texas and Arizona are performing very well from a market context and taking considerable share, and so then as we look forward, we did see a slight softening due to the government shutdown. And specifically, we believe the SNAP or EBT benefits, just slight softening for a couple, 3 weeks. Since the government has reopened and those programs are back, we've kind of pivoted back to really consistently where we've been this past quarter, Irene.

So then do you think this sort of 1% to 1.5% level, Alex, should be sustainable through the balance of the year? And then, I guess, how do you accelerate it from there?

We're going to -- we're feeling good. We've had several weeks and periods of success and seeing our business strengthening. And again, it's -- I'm never going to try and predict the future, Irene, but I feel really good about the activities of the team, the focus of the team. Our operating metrics are just extremely sound. Our food numbers continue to grow, and we're continuing to see that as we're into P3, our execution against those programs, our production availability. Our zero, zero for heroes, the products we sell the most, we have them in stock on the shelves, the proliferation of our meal deals really in all 3 of our geographies, consumers continue to really respond to those programs. And as I mentioned, we passed 1 million for a couple of weeks ago, which was a huge benchmark for all of us here, and we're celebrating that.

Our digital platforms continue to grow. We added 1 million members in the quarter. Our visits were 6.6 versus 6.1. we grew traffic by 7%. So the areas we're focused on, Irene, we're gaining momentum, and they're working. And other nic and energy -- other nicotine, specifically white nicotine and energy, our execution, our vendor relationships and partnerships, we feel like we're clearly winning in those spaces, and we will continue to lay into those spaces. So I remain -- I'm cautiously and positively optimistic as we go forward, Irene.

Your next question comes from Chris Li with [ Desjardins. ]

Sorry, can I just -- maybe a quick follow-up to Irene's question. So for Q3 to date in U.S. merchandise comps, Alex, is it trending more or less in line with what you achieved in Q2?

Yes. P7, we softened just a bit. And again, we're pretty sure that was the government shutdown and EBT and SNAP, not a lot. We softened a bit. But as we've gone into P8, the last 2 weeks and the government reopened in those programs, we've converted right back to the trends we were seeing and really see acceleration in those programs that we saw before.

Okay. That's helpful. And then, sorry, my main question is just maybe on the SG&A growth rate. It did sort of accelerate in Q2. And I wanted to ask, for the second half of the year, how should we think about the normalized growth rate?

Thanks, Chris, for the question. I think we feel good about the SG&A. Year-to-date, we are in line with the inflation, and I think we need to realize how much transformation we are doing in this company and investing for the long term. We have been talking a lot about supply chain, digital capabilities, RELEX. All these [ we mentioned ] that are really there to make us a better company. And we are doing all that, again, being able to match inflation. So it means that there is a lot going, and I have to recognize the hard work done by the team there, just to find ways to be more productive.

So just on the quarter, we have been very disciplined in terms of labor hours being down in hours by 0.8% compared to last year across the regions, a lot going on from the procurement side. So Chris, I think we are -- yes, we are very confident by the plan. As I mentioned earlier in the call, we already reached the ambition that we had on the 5-year plan regarding fit-to-serve. There is more there. So when you look at the full year, yes, that's -- our ambition is to continue to be kind of in line with inflation. And at the same time, making sure that we do the right thing for the business and investing for the future. We have a lot to do there. But again, confident that we'll keep our discipline in cost. That's what we have been in the past and we will continue to be, Chris.

Your next question comes from Michael Van Aelst with TD Cowen.

So in your OpEx discussion, it did pop up in terms of your normalized operating growth from Q1 to Q2. And I think you mentioned for the first time you segregate a comment about investments to accelerate growth in food service. So can you explain to us what these investments are? And should this drive -- is this something you expect to drive same-store sales in the U.S. north of 2% eventually?

I can take maybe on the expense side. So yes, we are investing, for example, in U.S. We are investing on the digital capabilities, helping to get a better forecasting. So we are investing on that. We are partnering there to get a tool. And that really makes a big difference, making sure that we have the food at the right time when the customer needs it and the employee knows when to put that in the shelf. So there has been a lot of investment there. And also, we are investing in -- on additional shifts from a labor standpoint to make sure that food is there when it's needed.

So again, here, when you look at the overall labor hours, we have reduced the number of hours versus last year, reducing from an administrative point of view, the hours used in stores, but redirecting that to customer-facing activities and part of it is food. So we'll continue to do that because that's the right thing to do for the business. So feeling confident that, again, looking at the overall expense profile, we will continue to invest in food for sure. But having in mind that we want to be in line with inflation as a whole in expense. So looking for productivity in other parts of the business. Alex, do you like to take the...

Yes. I can just build -- yes, build on that a little bit. I think that some onetime investments in food around production availability and the rollout of a specific program, I view those as onetime investments. We absolutely see food growing, and you see it in our results. And food, like anything, it's driving increased transactions and increased transactions are good. We continue to grow that percentage. And I think as I've shared with you previously, our goal is to get to 20% penetration in North America, and we believe we can do that, and we have a long runway to do that. I think from a cost perspective at the operating level, the last year has been absolutely focused on operations and back to our core, and our operating metrics are as good as I have ever seen them.

Our turnover levels, our retention levels are -- just continue to improve. We referenced our overtime percentage, our labor hour compliance, our scheduling compliance, our shrink continues to go down. So the focus on our core -- at our core, we are operators, we are focused on operations, providing the tools at our stores and to our customers to be successful, and it's resonating. And part of that core culture of ours is controlling cost. We are doing that at the operating level and offsetting these strategic investments. And we will very much aim to continue to do that.

Okay. And just to clarify, the meal deals, is that available throughout the U.S. network now?

Absolutely, it is. It's not just the U.S. network, it is available across our entire footprint now. We are growing them in Canada. We've launched them in Europe and feel pretty strongly. We're already hitting levels close to our U.S. levels in Europe, where our food penetration is higher. It's really one of the most exciting things when I'm out with our teams in stores, just hearing it resonate with customers and hearing our store teams talk about how customers relate to the value that we can provide. So we will continue to lay into meal deals. We think we've really found something here that is really resonating with consumers and consumers that are strapped for cash.

Your next question comes from Mark Petrie with CIBC.

Hoping to just go deeper on some of your comments with regards to U.S. same-store sales, specifically the regional performance. Could you talk more about the drivers there? Is that just a matter of traffic? Or are there other factors like loyalty penetration, category mix, food, et cetera? And then if you could also just expand on the market share comment. Are you taking more share in those slower-growth regions? Or would you say it's more generally consistent across regions?

Yes. I don't think -- I think our execution level continues really to improve across the company. I think it's more of a macro dynamic that's happening in the United States. The Texas and Arizona traditionally have been big growth states and big growth areas. We are very happy with our positions in these southern geographies. We absolutely believe this to be transitory. But we are seeing fairly significant differences in the Southern states versus our Midwest states currently. We think that will ultimately normalize as we go forward. And again, we're very happy to have those positions.

It's not -- our loyalty penetration, it differs by business unit, but they're -- it's growing everywhere. Our execution on food differ slightly, but it's growing everywhere. And again, I'm just really proud of the teams. We've been very focused. We're executing against programs, and we're taking market share not in every business unit. But clearly, in total, we are. And in most business units, we are taking share in merch and in fuel.

Okay. And sorry, just to clarify, when you talk about the slower growth in Arizona and Texas, for instance, is that mostly in traffic? Or does that show up in basket size as well?

Sorry, I didn't catch the last bit of your question there?

When you talk about the slower same-store sales growth in some of your regions like Arizona and Texas, is that mostly just in slower traffic versus like the Midwest? Or is it also in basket? Or how does that show up?

Yes. I think traffic is a little more challenged in those geographies. We're growing basket in pretty much every business unit. So it generally is traffic driven, yes.

Your next question comes from Bobby Griffin with Raymond James.

Congrats on the performance. Alex, I just -- I want to double-click into the food category as a whole, given some of the success here with the sales as well as the margin improvement? Ultimately, where is that category as we stand today from its full margin potential? Is there still hundreds of basis points left? Or is it getting close to something you would say is running from a margin side of things, best-in-class or up to where you would like it to be at?

So where we sit today, we are laser-focused on growing sales and continuing to grow sales. Our spoilage rates in our food category is about where we want them now. And obviously, we've improved 400 to 500 basis points versus previous year. So our spoilage rates are about where they want them. We are really focused on growing sales. As we go forward and as we grow sales and as we continue to improve our supply chain, we absolutely believe there is future margin expansion as we continue on this journey.

Your next question comes from Vishal Shreedhar with National Bank.

Alex, as it relates to food, Couche-Tard has been on a journey for food for, call it, more than a decade and sometimes the initiatives didn't necessarily come through as investors might have anticipated. So as you look at the -- your food programs right now and you've expressed confidence, what gives you more certainty that this confidence will be realized in actual performance and hitting your targets at this time?

Yes. Thanks for the question. I do have a great deal of confidence, and I think we've talked to you about it, we needed to reset. So we rationalized our SKUs. We really focused on the underlying processes and programs on the products, the taste of the products, what was resonating with consumers, and we've largely finished that reset. And you're seeing it in our results. You're seeing the growth in both traffic and sales and margin improvement, and we are now poised for significant growth.

Our production availability, our operating execution continues to improve, and we are reaching levels that we believe are very solid going forward. We've talked about our meal deals and the unique nature of us to be able to really offer value and to bundle products that are unique to QSRs. And candidly, we see a lot of people perhaps copying us or taking that. So we think we might be on to something there. But I've never had this much confidence in our journey in food. This organization, we are operators, when we get focused on things, we execute pretty well. I hope that doesn't sound arrogant. But our teams are focused on food. We are executing every period, every quarter at an improved level, and I think we're in for some really strong growth as we look at the quarters ahead across our footprint.

Okay. And could you just update us on the acquisition backdrop, maybe what you're seeing?

Yes. Thank you. Very active. We are active with files in all 3 of our large geographies in Canada and Europe and in the United States, both smaller and larger files out there today. We're engaged, and we continue to see quite a bit of deal flow. And I think we'll be able, as we have done historically, to continue to execute on M&A inside of our financial framework and at multiples and return levels that we have consistently delivered on, I think, in our 46-year history. So it remains very active. And hopefully, we'll be able to announce to you in the coming quarters that we've gotten some stuff done.

Your next question comes from Luke Hannan with Canaccord.

I wanted to go back to the discussion on meal deals. Alex, you talked about expanding that platform in the coming months. And I'm curious to know, what does that look like? Is that more availability of certain deals, let's say, within the existing price points? Do you anticipate there being an expansion of the price points available? And then maybe also sort of as a follow-up to that, introducing more complexity and SKUs naturally might also get to a point where similar in the past Couche-Tard has run into issues when it comes to spoilage, how do you make sure that you put the guardrails in place to ensure that you don't introduce too much complexity as part of expanding the meal deals platform?

Yes. I think when we think about meal deals, first and foremost, it's about value. So the value element is resonating with consumers who are increasingly stretched. And through our vendor partnerships, our procurement capabilities, we're able to offer these meal deals at margin profiles that work for us and that work for our partners. So as we look to the future, we will continue to offer value. We will continue to keep it simple and straightforward in what we are offering, and we will leverage down even harder with our vendor partners to give the products that our consumers want. The energy sector is growing rapidly, continues to grow rapidly across all 3 of our geographies. We have great relationships. Consumers look to us for those products. So continuing to make those various drink products with our best-selling food items at value will be our focus as we look to the future.

Your next question comes from John Zamparo with Scotiabank.

I'm wondering if you could add a bit more color on the Flavortown initiative? I know it's quite early, but can you say what level of growth you're seeing at those stores? And is there anything you can say to give a sense of how incremental this is and what impact it has on margins? And then lastly, can you remind us on the pace of that rollout, you've said national within a year, but I'm wondering when this will hit most of the U.S.?

Yes. Thanks for the question. This is a great example of making sure we stay disciplined on SKUs. So we added 11 Flavortown items in our Northern Tier business unit. We stopped selling 12 other items as part of that. We've reached about 65% to 70% of our goal of unit growth from those items. And I think more importantly, it is serving to grow hot food in Northern Tier, and we are growing hot food in Northern Tier as a result of Flavortown.

We're still working through some supply chain elements for the 10 states we're serving. We're still working with the Flavortown team around the various products and what -- how consumers are responding to those. But we feel good about where we're at this far into the journey, and we continue to see a strong likelihood that we will expand across the U.S. We've got a little bit more work to do. And probably we'll be able to update you more next quarter, I think, on where we're at on that and what the expansion plan will be.

Your next question comes from Bonnie Herzog with Goldman Sachs.

Alex, I wanted to ask a high level strategic question. You talked through a lot of your key initiatives this morning to accelerate growth and expand margins. So hoping you could give us a sense of the top maybe 1 or 2 initiatives that you believe will have the greatest positive impact on your business in the next, I don't know, 2-plus quarters. And then maybe drill down a little further on how impactful you expect these initiatives to be on your top and bottom lines? And then also, where do you see the biggest risk to your business in the next couple of plus quarters?

Thanks for the question, Bonnie. Our focus remains right where it's been. First and foremost, operations, execution, operating metrics, serving our customers, the equipment in our stores work friendly, customer ready. So that has been our focus the last year, and I'm really proud of the improvement. I have talked with you at length about food and the journey and meal deals, it remains right there. Growing our digital platforms is absolutely and increasingly personalizing our platforms. We are seeing just uptake in our programs, increased visits, increased basket. We're going to layer down into these programs and feel really good about those.

We have some tailwinds, right? The energy sector is great. We have some mix tailwinds. We've talked a lot about other nicotine and white nicotine specifically. Nicotine was positive in both Europe and the U.S. for this quarter. And we continue to see that transition, and our relationship with the vendors in these spaces and just how we work with them strategically, we feel really good about. So Bonnie, it's going to be more of the same. We're going to lay into those things. I guess the greatest risk, I feel strongly about our teams and our culture and how we're executing and the momentum we have. I continue to see us widen our gaps versus our data that we see from various markets.

It's the underlying environment and how the consumer is doing and just -- that is obviously impossible for me to predict. And that's -- I don't spend a ton of time worrying about that because it's not something I can control. We're focused on the things we can control. And we feel good about the momentum we have.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Mark Carden with UBS.

So you guys talked about opening the 3 new DCs to bring in some more self-distribution. How long would you expect the ramp to take at those locations? And then to what degree could you see yourself ultimately using self-distribution across even more of your footprint?

Yes. Thanks for the question. Our focus will -- we opened our one in Minnesota. It was great to go visit, and then we'll open our one in St. Louis and Columbus in the coming couple of months. And our focus for the first couple of 3 months is really just servicing our stores, making sure that we're getting the products to our stores in a timely way when we're supposed to. I think after those first couple of 3 months, we will then start to optimize around when we deliver to stores. We're obviously starting conversations and different things with vendors and our partners around products. We will continue to look to expand assortment and enable additional local assortment through these DCs.

And for us, I think I've spoken previously, we will go into our food supply chain as well. We believe the path of going into our supply chain on the merchant food side, we see a lot of incremental value both in the assortment we can carry, our underlying cost of goods, simplifying how we serve our stores and serving them when it makes sense for them and for our customers. So this is not a near-term thing for us. This is -- we've been planning this for a long time. It's great to get this first one open, and this will be a journey for us over the coming years.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to management for closing remarks.

Thank you, Alex and Filipe. That covers all the questions for today's call. Thank you all for joining us, and we wish you a great day and look forward to discussing our third quarter 2026 results in March. [Foreign Language]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.