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All right, good afternoon, everyone. I'm Bonnie Herzog, and thanks so much for joining us today. It's a pleasure to introduce our next speakers. So with us today, we have YesWays Chairman, President, and CEO, Tom Terkla, as well as CFO and Treasurer, Erica Ailes. First and foremost, I'd like to congratulate you both on the recent and successful IPO of Yesway. We can only imagine how much work went into that from your end, and I'm sure you're both happy to have that process wrapped up, so congrats. And then for background for all of you, Yesway was established in 2015. It's the 15th largest convenience store operator in the U.S. with 450 stores. and they're the proud owner of the famous All Supps Burrito following their acquisition of that company back in 2019. YesRay really is one of the fastest growing convenience store operators and they just recently posted very strong Q2 results which included Eva Dodd-Gein's range. Now before we begin, the company wanted me to note that today's discussion may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 Any forward-looking statements made today are based on management's current expectations, assumptions, and beliefs about its business and the environment in which it operates. For a more detailed discussion of risk, please see its final perspective, dated April 21, 26, as filed with the FCC on April 23, 2026, and other filings with the FCC. So any forward-looking statements represent the company's outlook of today, and the company disclaims any obligation to update these statements except as may be required by law. Okay, now that that's out of the way. So I wanted to kind of kick things off and I thought it might be helpful since you've been public for a couple of quarters now. A lot of people in the room might not be as familiar with you and your business. So could you maybe take a minute to introduce yourselves, maybe your background and then ultimately what led you to this stage today as a public company?

Sure, thank you, and thank you for having us, and thank you all. It's a pleasure to be here. We're a bit unique because we sought this business out. We birthed it within a private equity platform. I started Brookwood, which is a private equity firm, about 33 years ago, and we had the good fortune of selling our entire portfolio before the crash of 08, and then took a couple years off, and I really was looking for businesses that were recession-resistant but also could benefit from what I call our acumens, our use of data-driven decision-making, Our use of technology. We looked at about 300 businesses, chose the C-Star business, looked at about 400 to 500 of our competitors, and then picked geography, and then basically because of private equity, raised the money. So we actually raised about $820 million. As Bonnie said, we're the fastest growing. We now have 450 stores. We're in nine states. But basically, we chose it, and ironically, we were just talking about this in a lot of meetings today and last week, and one of the things we were looking for was businesses that It didn't depend on where you were in the world with regard to interest rates or price of oil or what's going on in the Middle East or who's in the White House and whether the individual investor or, excuse me, the individual consumer didn't care about those things. And I use the term gobsmacked if you guys have heard that term from Britain. But, you know, we started the business and got hit by a pandemic. And then the aftermath and, you know, put, what, $8 trillion liquidity in the marketplace. And now the war in Iran. And as Erica will tell you when she speaks, Theodore Adams, Theodore Adams, Theodore Adams We were very selective about where we picked in terms of the country. We didn't want to compete with Wawa Rutters and Cumberland Farms in every corner. We understood the impact of fuel margin on EBITDA growth, so we chose Midwest. We actually correlated states that had and did not have minimum wage legislation, kind of the regulatory thing that affects your business, and then picked it and grew it. Our first acquisition, as Bonnie said, was in 2015, a 10-store portfolio in Iowa. And then culminating, we did 27 M&A deals to grow it. with the office transaction, which is a 305-store portfolio in November of 2019. So, in summary, we chose the business, we chose the location, and, you know, looking back now 10 1⁄2, 11 years later, we kind of proved our original thesis in terms of the consumer and the business itself. So we've been very pleased. And going public is a whole different story and a whole arduous process where you're largely dependent upon markets and bankers and things you can't control. and probably the best advice I gave my internal team is markets mean revert. Run your business well. Markets will come back to you. If you run your business well, you get rewarded for it. And so, yes, it was a pain to go public. And, yes, it took a lot of time. I will say this, though, Bonnie. The beauty of these conferences is you guys come to us in a room. When you're doing a road show, you have to get in a car and drive all over New York and Boston and other places. So we actually like this. It's a lot better. So hopefully that's a good predicate for our business.

Yes. Well, sort of on that point, thinking about your business, because I've known you for a few years now, Tom and Erica, can you maybe frame for us the industry and some of the drivers of growth that you see for your business?