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 Couche-Tard. Je vais maintenant passer la parole à Monsieur Mathieu Brunet, Vice-Président Relations, Investisseurs et Trésorerie pour Alimentation Couche-Tard.

And this will follow. Bonjour. J'aimerais d'abord vous souhaiter la bienvenue à la téléconférence qui porte sur la diffusion des résultats financiers du premier trimestre de l'exercice 2026 d'alimentation couche-tard. Toutes les lignes seront placées en mode discrétion afin d'éviter tout bruit inutile. À la suite de la présentation, nous répondrons aux questions des analystes. Nous souhaitons vous rappeler que cette webdiffusion sera disponible sur notre site Internet pour une période de 90 jours. De plus, prenez note que certains des sujets discutés au cours de cette webdiffusion pourraient consister en des déclarations prospectives qui sont fournies par la société avec des avertissements habituels. Ces avertissements ou risques, ainsi que ces incertitudes, sont décrits dans nos rapports financiers. Il est donc possible que nos résultats futurs puissent différer des informations présentées aujourd'hui. Les résultats financiers seront présentés par M. Alex Miller, président et chef de la direction, et M. Philippe De Silva, chef de la direction financière. Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to this web conference presenting Animatación Cuestal's financial results for the first 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 this 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 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, Matthew. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We are pleased by our improved performance in the first quarter of the new fiscal year. Across our network, we are reporting positive same-store sales, which includes our US market for the first time in several quarters. This progress is driven by our focus on providing compelling value and ease, especially in our food and beverage offers, to win our customers who continue to watch their spending. In our fuel business, we had overall good results, especially in Canada and our larger European markets. While in North America, fuel margins remained aligned with previous quarters, 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 cover the support we provided for our Texas communities in need this quarter, as well as our progress growing the network through both acquisitions and new store builds. Let me begin by briefly mentioning the courageous efforts by our Texas store and operations teams during the catastrophic floods in early July. We had only a few stores directly in the path of the storm, with several more in the wider vicinity, and we are truly grateful that all Circle K team members are safe and that store damage was limited. Our store teams operated 24-7 during the recovery period, providing free water and coffee to first responders and search and rescue teams. as well as launching a statewide register campaign to raise funds for the American Red Cross. Supporting our communities is fundamental to our special culture, and we are committed to having our stores stay open, providing friendly, comforting service and needed goods during the most difficult of days. Our hearts go out to all those grieving the loss of loved ones. Turning to brighter news. Early in this quarter, we closed on the acquisition of nearly 270 stores operating under the GetGo brand from supermarket retailer Giant Eagle. In August, several members of the ACT leadership team and I had the great pleasure of meeting with over 300 GetGo store and operations team members. During that rally, I shared our excitement in having them as part of our growing family. We focused on our shared values, growth opportunities, and the power of combining GetGo strengths in food service and loyalty with CouchTard's scale, technology, and global reach. Our food and loyalty teams have already spent a considerable amount of time at get-go locations, deep diving into learnings on how we can become better together. Moving to Europe and our four new business units there, we continue to expand Circle K branding and offers to the region. And by the end of the quarter, we had about 65 sites branded Circle K, as well as over 30 car wash sites and EV charging dispensers at nearly 185 sites. We are clearly making a positive impact on our customers and communities as we grow in these new countries. In organic growth, after record progress last year, we continue to make notable strides in our 500 new store ambition. We opened 10 new stores in Q1 and are on track to open up over 100 in North America for this fiscal year. Our new stores include dozens of high-speed diesel in rural locations, And currently, we have nearly 65 stores 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 increased by 0.4% in the United States, by 3.8% in Europe and other regions, and by 4.1% in Canada. As I mentioned earlier, this positive performance of same-store sales in our U.S. market was a first in many quarters, and we continue to see positive momentum building up. In Canada, same-store revenues continue to be driven by strong growth of the alcohol category, while Europe's standout convenience performance was further supported by cigarette sales in the Netherlands and Luxembourg, as new legislation and conditions continue to be favorable to our industry. We are also pleased with the recovery that we are seeing in our Hong Kong convenience business, although it is still impacted by decrease in cigarette units from outbound travel and increased sales taxes. However, normalizing for the impact of cigarette sales, our same store merchandise revenue in Hong Kong would have increased by 2.7% compared to the same quarter last year, highlighting strong execution in our ability to grow market share. 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 consistent quarter-over-quarter gains. At the end of Q1 in North America, we sold 8.6 million food bundles, with a weekly average exceeding 750,000, from about 540,000 at the end of FY25, nearly a 40% increase. We continue to optimize our meal deal offers based on vendor engagement and customer purchasing behavior, and we are actively reviewing opportunities to expand the offering to drive incremental growth. The U.S. Roller Grill offer was our top performer alongside bakery and breakfast sandwiches. While smaller in scope, the initiative is very popular in Canada, where meal deal sales doubled in Q1 versus the prior quarter. In our wind and food strategy, we have been laser focused on execution and skew rationalization. We have significantly reduced the number of items freshly prepared in our stores to enhance operational excellence and ease while optimizing our assortment. And as we focus on execution, value and simplicity, we are also dialing up the fun. Flavor and innovation with an exciting new collaboration announced just this morning. We are partnering with Emmy Award winning chef and Food Network personality, Guy Fieri, best known to many from his popular Diner, Drive-In, and Dives TV show to launch 11 Flavortown-inspired menu offerings. The initial rollout this week in hundreds of our locations in 10 states across the northern U.S. includes unique exclusive items such as mac and cheeseburger, sweet heat fried chicken and waffle sandwich, and candy chaos cookies. In our goal of owning thirst in the U.S., total packaged beverages were up this quarter with energy drinks continuing to lead category strength and profitability. Our differentiation here comes from exclusive launches and integrated campaigns that connect energy to meal deal bundles with over 20% of all sold breakfast bundles including an energy drink. Cold and frozen dispensed beverages in the U.S. continued their growth trajectory benefiting from traffic driving promotional campaigns, popular flavor options, and improved operational execution. In the adult beverage category, Canada continued to have a strong performance as our market leading efforts are clearly resonating with our customers. Following changes last year in legislation in Ontario, our beer sales again experienced notable growth. In our central Canada business unit, we more than doubled the sales in the wine category compared to last year. Liquor performance was equally robust. 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 sales grew slightly versus last year, And despite changes in the regulatory landscape, we also had modest growth in other nicotine product sales versus last year, led by modern oral growth innovation. Our cigarette pricing optimization plan launched in June is showing promising results. Looking ahead, we are improving space productivity, deploying industry-leading promotions, and expanding loyalty integration with age-verified enrollment up quarter over quarter. In Europe, we see signs of recovery in the nicotine category driven by growth in other nicotine products, helping offset decline in 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. Turning to our loyalty membership programs, in the U.S., Inner Circle enrollments continue to grow and we're at nearly 11.5 million members at the end of the quarter. We expect to see significant growth in sign-ups as we expand the program this month to Texas, our largest U.S. market, leaning into recent advancements in personalization as well as gamification to drive urgency and excitement with our members. We have seen sustained growth in retention and repeat visits among our members. We also completed the implementation of a new customer data platform that allows us to engage with our customers at our physical sites in real time while they are filling up at the pump or shopping in our stores. Early signs are positive, and we fully expect our digital penetration to grow, driving traffic to both our forecourts and inside our stores. With the extra loyalty program in Europe, we are on schedule to start rolling out the 2.0 loyalty concept this fall to Poland and quickly move to the other European BU's in the following months. The new concept is designed to incentivize and reward traffic across all products and services at our locations. In our Sweden BU, which has had the new loyalty program for several months, we are seeing a lift in both traffic and increased value as our targeted campaigns and promotional offers have improved conversion and engagement. We are also working to expand our existing communication and personalization capabilities to our four new European business units. Moving to our fuel business, same-store road transportation fuel volumes decreased by 0.9% in the United States and by 1.3% in Europe and other regions, while it increased by 2.2% in Canada. Overall, given marking conditions, we see these as good results, especially in Canada and our larger European markets, as well as in the complex U.S. environment as we continue to work on building value from our fuel supply chain and serving our customers through lower cost sourcing options. Fuel margins in North America also remained aligned with previous quarters. We also continued our efforts to provide compelling value to our customers with our very popular fuel days, including two in August, coinciding with the beginning of school and the end of summer travel. which were held at over 4,700 participating U.S. locations. At the first one, we offered 40 cents off per gallon to Inner Circle members only, including visitors who signed up instantly to access this exclusive event as a further way to reward our loyal customers. Despite challenging market conditions and volume volatility, the European B2B business demonstrated resilience. While overall card volume slightly underperformed versus prior year, This was effectively offset by strong margin performance. First quarter of our fiscal year is also materially impacted by summer seasonality that hits fuel B2B sales. We expect the full year to recover to an overall even mix. Growing non-fuel income remains a strategic priority as B2B transit charging volumes grew steadily, offsetting a significant share of accelerated fuel shrinkage. Volt fuel volumes remained robust despite excise duty increase in Lithuania and intense price competition in Ireland and Norway. In the U.S., our B2B fuel share is growing as customers continue to see great value in our ability to offer consistency across our company-owned network to serve their business and provide a great experience for their drivers. Additionally, we expanded our B2B customers active and inner circle allowing them to receive personal rewards for commercial fueling. In our B2B truck segment, we now have over 510 truck accessible sites, including 10 get-go sites. We are growing accessibility in parallel with our commercial diesel growth strategy, implementation of new strategic partners, and optimization of existing partnerships. Our European EV charging network now comprises nearly 3,660 charge points. up over 35% year to year. Out of these, over 2,970 are Circle K branded charge points, and about 150 of those are chargers for trucks in Scandinavia. In Q1, we had more than 1 million charging transactions on Circle K branded transit chargers at our stations in Europe, which is a 50% increase from the same period last year. This increase is driven both by network expansion and improved utilization of our chargers. With that, let me turn it over to Philippe to dive deeper into our financial performance this quarter.