Caseys General Stores, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q1 fiscal year 2024 Casey's General Store's earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during that session, you will need to press star 11 on your phone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded and we'll now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Brian Johnson. Sir, please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you for joining us to discuss the results for our first quarter ended July 31, 2023. I am Brian Johnson, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Business Development. With me today are Darren Rivelas, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, as well as Steve Bramlage, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'll remind you that certain statements made by us during this investor call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include any statements relating to expectations for future periods, possible or assumed future results of operations, financial conditions, liquidity, and related sources or needs, the company's supply chain, and business and integration strategies, plans and synergies, growth opportunities, and performance under stores. There are a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by those forward-looking statements, including but not limited to the integration of the recent acquisitions, our ability to execute on our strategic plan, or to realize benefits from the strategic plan. the impact and duration of the conflict in Ukraine and related governmental actions, as well as other risks, uncertainties, and factors which are described in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q as filed with the SEC and available on our website. Any forward-looking statements made during this call reflect our current views as of today with respect to future events. and Casey's disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. A reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures referenced in this call, as well as detailed breakdown of the operating expense increase for the quarter, can be found on our website at www.casey.com under the Investor Relations link. With that said, I would now like to turn the call over to Darren to discuss our first quarter results. Darren? Darren?

Thanks, Brian, and good morning, everyone. We'll get to the excellent first quarter results in a moment. First, I want to thank our team for their dedication and to getting the fiscal year off to a great start. As our guests and community shifted into back-to-school season, Casey held its annual Cash for Classrooms giving campaign in August. Thanks to our generous guests and passionate team members, we raised over $700,000. These funds will support needs and projects for schools, students, and teachers in our local communities. The grant application process opens in October, and we encourage schools, teachers, and parent-led organizations to apply. Now let's discuss the results from the quarter. Eluded EPS finished at $4.52 per share, an 11% increase from the prior year. Inside sales remained strong, driving inside gross profit dollars up over 10% to $556 million. The company generated $169 million in net income, an increase of 11%, and $316 million in EBITDA, an increase of 8% from the prior year. As you may have seen in our investor day presentation, we launched a thin crust pizza offering in the first quarter. This addition to the lineup has been a great success and demonstrates the blueprint for innovation at Casey's. Our guest insights team identified a gap in our menu. Our culinary team created a delicious product. Our marketing team worked with our advertising partner to create a great marketing campaign. And ultimately our operations team brought to life in our stores and communities across our footprint. And I think the results speak for themselves. This type of strategic innovation and teamwork is something that will help us achieve our goals for the three-year strategic plan. On the fuel side of the business, we continue to strike an appropriate balance between volume and margin. However, one notable difference with this course performance is there were no significant macro events that influenced margin. It was a relatively benign quarter from a wholesale cost perspective, and we believe this is a strong indicator that higher industry fuel margins are here to stay. Overall, I think this quarter truly illustrates the strength of the unique Casey's business model, particularly in a more normal times, and shows our three-year strategic plan objectives are very achievable. The team continues to do an excellent job operating the business efficiently and effectively, both inside and outside the store. I would now like to go over our results and share some of the details in each of the categories. Inside same-store sales were up 5.4% for the first quarter, or 12.1% on a two-year stack basis, with an average margin of 40.6%. We saw notably strong performance in whole pizza pies and bakery, as well as alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. Our team, with support from our supplier partners, continues to find the right product mix and promotional activity to drive sales and profitable results. Same-store prepared food and dispensed beverage sales were up 5.9 percent, or 14.8 percent on a two-year stack basis, with an average margin of 58.2 percent, up approximately 260 basis points from the prior year. The previously mentioned innovation with thin crust pizza helped drive sales as we saw great results with our whole pizza pies in addition to strong performance in bakery. Margin was favorably impacted by softening in commodities, notably cheese, during the quarter. Same-store grocery and general merchandise sales were up 5.2% or 11% on a two-year stack basis with an average margin of 34.1%, an increase of approximately 20 basis points from the prior year. We continued our strong momentum in beverages with non-alcoholic beverages, specifically energy drinks, showing fantastic results. Alcoholic beverages also performed quite well as we continued to leverage our competitive advantage of approximately 1,500 stores with liquor licenses. For fuel, same-store gallons sold increased 0.4% with a fuel margin of 41.6 cents per gallon. Our fuel team is striking the right balance between margin and gallon volume, and the results speak for themselves. This quarter marks the ninth quarter in a row with fuel margins above 34.5 cents per gallon, and four of the last five quarters have been over 40 cents per gallon. I would now like to turn the call over to Steve to discuss the financial results from the first quarter. Steve?