Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc.

Good morning, my name is Joelle and I will be your conference operator today. Bonjour, je m'appelle Joelle et je serai votre opératrice pour la conférence aujourd'hui. I will now introduce Mr. Mathieu Brunet, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury at Alimentation Couchetard. Je vais maintenant passer la parole à Mr. Mathieu Brunet, Vice President, Relations, Investisseurs et Trésorerie pour Alimentation Couchetard.

Bonjour, j'aimerais d'abord vous souhaiter la bienvenue à la téléconférence qui porte sur la diffusion des résultats financiers du quatrième trimestre de l'exercice 2025 d'alimentation couchsurf. Toutes les lignes seront placées en mode discrétion afin d'éviter tout bruit inutile. À la suite de la présentation, nous répondrons en direct aux questions des analystes. Nous souhaitons vous rappeler que cette webdiffusion sera disponible sur notre site Internet pour une période de quatre Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to this web conference presenting Alimentacion Costal's financial results for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025. All lines will be kept on mute to prevent any background noise. After the presentation, we will answer questions from analysts asked live 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. Silva, Chief Financial Officer. Alex, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Matthew. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our presentation of our fourth quarter results. As we conclude this milestone year, the 45th year since we opened our first store, we are proud of the resilience of our business and the award-winning engagement of our team members. During the fourth quarter, in the face of difficult economic and geopolitical conditions, we held the line in same-store sales in the United States, and had strong positive results in Canada and Europe. Our initiatives to provide compelling value to our customers with exclusive food and beverage offers are performing well across the network. Compared to the same period last year, in our fuel business, we have positive volumes in Canada and in the United States, we maintain market share and margins aligned with recent quarters. As we move into the new fiscal year, we remain confident in the strength of our global scale, long-term strategy, and customer-centric teams. Later in this presentation, I will go into more detail on our convenience and mobility results and value-building initiatives. However, before I do so, I first want to address our global efforts to grow the network through M&A, as well as our notable progress in organic growth. Let me begin by briefly mentioning our ongoing commitment to acquire Seven and I Holdings. At the end of April, we announced that we had signed a non-disclosure agreement with Seven and I to progress transaction discussions, facilitate due diligence, and collaborate on plans to engage with regulators. Over the last several weeks, we have begun those discussions and look forward to continuing to work with the special committee of Seven and I. We have also outlined what we believe is a clear path to U.S. regulatory approval, which you can find on our dedicated website, growing7.com. As we mentioned last quarter, and it is worth repeating, that while there has been extensive media coverage of our interest in Seven and I, internally, a very small team is involved in these efforts, as the vast majority of the business is laser-focused on our global operations. Also, as we discussed, we continue to consider other M&A opportunities as the strength of our globally diversified business allows us to pursue different tracks simultaneously as we have done so throughout our growth journey. Moving to Europe, I recently returned from a terrific pride tour to our new mid-European business units, visiting stores and team members, and I was able to see firsthand the progress we have made in the region as we begin our second year since completing the acquisition. From the visit, it was abundantly clear that team members have embraced our culture, values, and customer-focused approach to retail operations. We now have nearly 50 stores rebranded to Circle K and continue to see strong progress with store rebranding, both on the physical store layout as well as with product assortment and EV charging dispensers. Synergies from the transaction continue to be on track with expectations, which Felipe will cover in more detail in his presentation. While discussing M&A, let me briefly mention the ongoing progress we are making with GetGo, which we expect to close in the coming days. As we have always done with all our acquisitions, we have identified local management to lead the business as they know best how to serve local customers. We also continue to be excited about our learnings from GetGo's extremely popular food and loyalty programs and dedicated team members. In organic growth, we have made record progress with our 500 new store ambition. We have opened nearly 45 stores this quarter and over 110 stores in North America during this fiscal year. Our new stores include dozens of high-speed diesel in rural locations and are designed to win our customers by making it easy to enjoy our offers both inside the store and on the forecourt. As we start the new quarter, we have more than 40 stores currently under construction and 1,000 sites in our overall real estate development pipeline. Now let me get back to our quarterly results, starting with convenience. Compared to the same quarter last year, same-store merchandise revenues decreased by 0.4% in the United States while they increased by 3.4% in Europe and other regions and by 3.5% here in Canada. The U.S. same-store performance continued to be impacted by challenging economic and inflationary conditions as consumers carefully watched their spending. In Canada, same-store revenues were boosted by strong growth of the alcohol category. Europe's standout convenience performance was further supported by cigarette sales in the Netherlands, as new legislation continues to be favorable to our industry. I'll now go into more detail about our convenience offer and the ways in which we are focused on winning our customers by providing compelling value on products and services. Our meal deals in North America continue to deliver impressive sequential improvements. At the end of Q4 in the U.S., we topped over 500,000 meal deals sold each week, up over 35% from Q3. While on a smaller scale, Canada also showed good signs of growth, with food bundle sales up over 50% from the previous quarter. I am proud to share that now, as we start the new fiscal year, we are already up to nearly 800,000 meal deals sold each week in North America. Our win in food strategy continues to progress with nearly 6,200 fresh food fast stores open globally by the end of the quarter. The focus of the food team is on execution simplification, skew rationalization and consistency, margin improvement, and spoilage control. Back to the success of our meal deals, hot food units are increasing in percentage of those bundles as we strengthen the execution and popularity of our food offer. Turning to our loyalty membership programs, in the U.S., full enrollments in Inner Circle continue to grow quarter over quarter. It is now nearly 10.5 million members, and we are seeing an uptick in signups resulting from simplified enrollment features. We've also introduced new value campaigns and personalization efforts, which are driving incremental sales and traffic. We continue to be pleased with the linkage of EasyPay and Inner Circle introduced last quarter, which is allowing customers a more frictionless experience at both our pumps and in our stores. The extra loyalty program in Europe ended the year with a record number of active members and strong growth in both fuel and merchandise penetration. Plans are underway to roll out the 2.0 loyalty concept currently in Sweden to Poland and soon after to other European business units. This new concept is designed to offer rewards across all products and services at our site, whether a customer is looking to fill up with fuel, charge an electric vehicle, or grab a snack. Work is also underway to bring some of the communication and personalization capabilities to our new mid-European business units during the new fiscal year. In our goal of owning Thirst, we are excited about our many recent exclusive product launches in the U.S. including Celsius Watermelon Ice and our first Ghost brand. We also recently launched a second Gatorade exclusive, Summer Blaze, which is a bold, refreshing flavor only available at Circle K in 28-ounce bottles. These limited-edition offers help drive excitement, customer engagement, and traffic with store teams rallying support and display activity, making the offers hard to miss in our stores. While packaged beverages continue to face headwinds in the U.S., energy drinks help bolster the overall performance of the category. Cold and frozen dispensed beverages in the U.S. continued impressive growth, benefiting from traffic-driving promotional campaigns and popular flavor options. In the adult beverage category, Canada continued to have a strong performance in beer sales, following the recent change in legislation in Ontario, Canada's largest market. The impressive same-store sales growth in alcohol in Canada more than offset the decline in tobacco in the region, which continues to be impacted by illicit trade and removal of popular products in the other nicotine products category. In the U.S., overall nicotine performance was slightly negative with declines in cigarettes driven by lower demand. However, we continue to outperform the market due to our efforts around price optimization. assortment expansion, and personalization programs for our age-verified customers. Other nicotine product sales were up in the U.S. over the quarter as we deployed a series of initiatives across the segment. In Europe, we see signs of recovery in the nicotine category driven by growth in other nicotine products, helping offset declining combustibles, Legislation changes in cigarettes in the Netherlands and favorable competition in Luxembourg have resulted in positive nicotine performance as consumers increasingly shift their spending toward our channel. Moving to our fuel business, same-store road transportation fuel volumes decreased by 1.9% in the United States, by 0.6% in Europe and other regions, while an increase by 3.7% in Canada. As I mentioned earlier, We are maintaining market share in the United States and margins aligned with the trends of recent quarters as we continue to work on building value from our fuel supply chain and serving our customers through lower cost sourcing options. We also continued our efforts to provide compelling value to our customers with our very popular fuel days, including one in late May at over 7,000 locations in North America. We once again drove excitement for our brands while providing impactful savings on fuel and exciting promotional offers inside the store, especially for Inner Circle members. This fuel event also supported our communities with donations to the Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation in the U.S. and Food Banks Canada. Our European B2B fuel business demonstrated resilience this quarter despite adverse market conditions and volume volatility. Overall card volumes were slightly down. However, this was effectively offset by strong margin performance. Growing non-fuel income remains a strategic priority, with B2B transit charging volumes growing steadily, up over 75% year over year. Integration and synergy delivery plans for the new business units in Benelux in Germany are advancing. B2B fuel share in the U.S. continued to grow quarter over quarter as we developed customer relationships with fleets of all sizes. As for our B2B truck segment, we saw significant growth across all business units, especially in northern and western states. This has been realized by continued execution of our commercial diesel growth strategy, implementation of new strategic partners, and the optimization of existing partnerships. Our EV fast charging network in Europe now consists of nearly 3,480 charge points, up nearly 40% from the same quarter last year, with nearly 2,800 Circle K branded charge points. Our station Circle K Järna, which is Sweden's largest ultra-fast charging station located on a highway south of Stockholm, has been named one of the three best EV hubs in the world. We also just opened our first EV charging only convenience location in Europe in a high traffic area of Gothenburg, Sweden. With these notable EV developments, we are now the most preferred brand for charging in Sweden, surpassing Tesla and all other competitors, which is a testament to our brand strength and the quality of our product offering in winning local customers. Before I turn the call over to Felipe, I want to mention some exciting recognition and game-changing investments in innovative technology, which are benefiting our recruitment and onboarding, as well as inventory management. First, we have recently been awarded the 2025 NACS Convenience Retail Technology Award Europe for our AI-driven digital people platform. This solution, designed to streamline recruitment, onboarding, and ongoing training, has been recognized as industry's leading innovation in workforce technology. We are also advancing on our deployment of RELX in North America, which we aim to start piloting in September. RELX is a unified end-to-end inventory planning system that applies AI and machine learning to retailer data to assist with determining where merchandise should be positioned across the entirety of each store. Our investment in RELX is part of a historic multi-year inventory management modernization journey that stands to deliver significant improvement to our ordering and space planning capabilities in North America, similar to recent successes achieved in our Europe business. With that, let me turn it over to Felipe to dive deeper into our financial performance this quarter. Thank you, Alex, and good morning, everyone.