Caseys General Stores, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the second quarter FY 2025 Casey's General Stores 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 the session you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. 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. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Brian Johnson, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us to discuss the results from our second quarter ended October 31, 2024. I'm Brian Johnson, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Business Development. With me today are Dan Rabelas, Board Chair, President, and Chief Executive Officer, as well as Steve Bramlage, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I remind you that certain statements made by us during this investor call may constitute forward-looking statements. potential impact of the FIX transaction, expectations for future periods, possible or assumed future results of operations, financial conditions, liquidity and related sources or needs, the company's supply chain, business and integration strategies, plans and synergies, growth opportunities, and performance at our 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 express 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-gap-to-gap financial measures referenced in this call, as well as a detailed breakdown of the operating expense increase for the second 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 second quarter results. Darren.

Thanks, Brian, and good morning, everyone. We're excited to discuss the strong second quarter results in a moment. First, however, I want to thank the Casey's team for delivering another outstanding quarter. In addition to officially welcoming the Fikes team to the Casey's family. Each November, we raised funds for two organizations to support veterans and their families, children to follow Patriots and hope for the warriors. This year, we raised over $1 million. Thanks to our team members, generous guests and partners at PepsiCo. As a veteran myself, I'm personally grateful for the engagement and responses campaign draws each year. Thank you for helping veterans when you shop at TASIS. Now let's discuss the results from the quarter. Diluted earnings per share finished at $4.85 per share, net income was $181 million, and EBITDA was $349 million. All of these metrics were up 14% from the prior year. Our second quarter results were an excellent example of the strength of Casey's differentiated business model. We were again able to expand gross profit dollars while simultaneously controlling operating expenses. Inside the store, innovation in prepared food continued to drive strong performance, while the grocery and general merchandise category was a primary driver of margin expansion. On the fuel side, the team is doing an excellent job balancing volume and margin, with fuel margins over 40 cents per gallon while outperforming the geographic market in same-store fuel gallons. As we discussed at our analyst day in October, we are very confident in our ability to execute on our three-year strategic plan and is showing up in the results both inside and outside the store. I'd now like to go over our results and share some of the details in each of the categories. Inside same-store sales were up 4 percent for the second quarter or 7.1% on a two-year stack basis, with an average margin of 42.2%. Same-store prepared food and dispensed beverage led the way, as sales were up 5.2%, or 11.6% on a two-year stack basis, with an average margin of 58.7%. Hot sandwiches continued their strong performance, up over 60%, and cold dispensed beverages also performed well, up nearly 10%. Margin was down approximately 30 basis points from the prior year due to a modest cheese headwind. Same-store grocery and general merchandise sales were up 3.6% or 5.4% on a two-year stack basis with an average margin of 35.6%, an increase of approximately 160 basis points from the prior year due to product mix and the excellent work of our asset protection and strategic sourcing teams. We saw positive momentum in the category. notably in both non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverages, specifically in the energy and liquor categories. Our merchandising team is doing an excellent job optimizing our assortment to meet our guests' needs. For fuel, same-store gallons sold were down 0.6%, with a fuel margin of 40.2 cents per gallon. We continue to outperform our geographic region on volume, as Opus Fuel Gallon Sold data shows the mid-continent region down approximately 5% in the quarter, indicating that we are taking market share. Our field team is doing a tremendous job balancing volume and margin, and the results continue to show it. Operating expense management remains a focus. In the second quarter, saw an increase of just 2.3% on a same store excluding credit card fee basis. Our continuous improvement team is identifying areas to be more efficient, and our store operations team is executing on those opportunities at a high level. The results speak for themselves. The same store labor hours were down 1% once again. I'd now like to turn the call over to Steve to discuss the financial results from the second quarter. Steve?