Parkland Corporation

Good morning, my name is Sylvie and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Parkland 2021 Q4 Results Analyst Conference Call. Note that all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then number two. Thank you. and I would like to turn the conference over to Valerie Roberts, Director, Investor Relations for Parkland. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. With me today on the call are Bob Espy, President and CEO, and Marcel Tunison, Chief Financial Officer. This call is webcast, and I encourage listeners to follow along with the supporting slides. We will go through our prepared remarks and then open it up for questions from the investment community. Please limit yourself to one question and follow up as necessary, and if you have other questions, re-enter the queue. We would ask analysts to follow up directly with the investor relations team afterwards for any detailed modeling questions. During our call today, we may make forward-looking statements related to expected future performance. These statements are based on current views and assumptions and are subject to uncertainties which are difficult to predict. These uncertainties include, but are not limited to, expected operating results and industry conditions, among other factors. Risk factors applicable to our business are set out in our annual information form and management's discussion and analysis. We will also be discussing non-GAAP and other financial measures, which do not have any standardized meanings prescribed by IFRS. These measures are identified and defined in Parkland's continuous disclosure documents, which are available on our website or on CDAR. Please refer to these documents as they identify factors which may cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements. Dollar amounts discussed in today's call are expressed in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted. I will now turn the call over to Bob.

Great. Thanks, Val, and good morning, everyone. I appreciate you joining us to discuss what we believe are excellent fourth quarter results to close out an incredible year for Parkland. Before we jump in, I want to take a moment to highlight the image you see on the cover slide. It showcases the winning entry of an electrical autonomy design competition we sponsored to envision the electric charging destination of the future. Our goal in sponsoring this competition was to invite architects and designers from around the world to put the needs of EV customers first and entirely reimagine their charging experience. Modular in design and constructed using environmentally friendly materials, this winning design can be scaled large or small. It will feature amenities we know EV customers will value as they recharge, such as our on-the-run convenience stores, high-quality dining, relaxation and outdoor spaces. The result is a destination that customers can enjoy, which will set a new standard for electric vehicle charging and customer experience. We are committed to building this innovative concept as an extension of our electrical vehicle ultra-fast charging network in British Columbia. As followers of Parkland, you know that our purpose is to power journeys and energize communities. This means providing our customers and communities with the fuels, convenience items, and food they need today and to remain one step ahead of their needs of tomorrow.

We are very good at this.

While EVs currently represent around 1% of total vehicles in Canada and the U.S., We believe that in some markets, particularly British Columbia, meeting the needs of EV drivers presents an opportunity that is highly additive to our business. Commitment to build BC's largest ultra-fast charging network and build the electric charging destination of the future are just two examples of how we are seizing opportunities to serve our customers' needs in new and accretive ways. Moving to slide three. I'm very proud of the Parkland team who delivered an incredible year and accelerated the execution of our strategy. Their accomplishments set us up for continued growth and value creation. Safety and community are core values of Parkland, and through 2021, our teams delivered excellent safety performance. Also in the year, some of our communities face natural disasters. Parkland has a long track record being a trusted community partner and a company our customers can count on. We demonstrated this in 2021 and I'm immensely proud of the way our team stepped up. Our international team supported communities in Saint Vincent following a major volcanic eruption. In British Columbia, we ensured our customers and communities had reliable access to fuels, food and convenience items they depend on throughout a major flood event. As you may recall, the BC floods led to the shutdown of the Trans Mountain pipeline and required us to pause processing operations at our Burnaby refinery. While our 2021 adjusted EBITDA was consistent with our guidance, the BC floods cost us around $35 million and stopped us from delivering a record of almost $1.3 billion of adjusted EBITDA for the year. Driven by the quality of our offer, brands, and proven ability to meet our customers' evolving needs, our core marketing segments just kept growing. In 2021, they delivered record performance with combined annual adjusted EBITDA up 12% year over year. In 2021, we announced record acquisitions and welcomed more than 1,500 new employees to Parkland. The pace and value of these acquisitions transactions represents the execution of two years of acquisitions in one. As always, we were disciplined, selected companies that attract the values and with synergy potential. To put this into context, the companies we bought since the third quarter of 2020 will contribute around $200 million of adjusted EBITDA in 2022. Following synergy capture, We expect they will contribute $280 million by 2024. We track our synergies closely and will share our progress as we go. Sustainability is deeply embedded across our business. We published our sustainability report in November, which outlined our drive to zero goals and enterprise-wide sustainability strategy. This included ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. If you haven't read it, I encourage you to do so. We also made great strides helping our customers lower their environmental impact. We set another record in 2021 by co-processing 86 million liters of biofeedstocks. This had the equivalent environmental impact of removing 70,000 vehicles from the road. We would have co-processed 100 million liters without the impact of the BC floods. Our renewable fuels, have one-eighth of the carbon intensity of conventional fuels and can be used in existing vehicles without modification. They represent one of the most immediate and cost-effective ways for customers to reduce the environmental impact of their transportation. We continue to see customers looking for additional ways to lower the environmental impact of their operations. We are meeting this emerging need through our growing voluntary carbon offset business. This is a great example of how our existing expertise provides a springboard to capture new opportunities and play a leadership role in the energy transition. Lastly, as I look back at 2021, I am proud of the way we took advantage of favorable market conditions to strengthen our financial flexibility. We refinanced $1.8 billion of debt at lower interest rates and now have no bond maturities until 2026. Our accomplishments have set the stage for 2022 and provide us with confidence to increase guidance as well as the annual dividend to $1.30 per share. This is a 5.3% increase. Starting in the second quarter, we will switch to a quarterly payment schedule. This year will be exciting for Parkland, having accelerated execution of our strategy we are focused on integrating the companies we acquired on capturing synergies and deleveraging by slowing down acquisitions i'll now pass it over to marcel to discuss our results in more detail good morning everyone 2021 was a remarkable year and i echo your congratulations to the parkland team so turning to slide four and our segmented results

We generated a total adjusted EBITDA of $260 million for the quarter and $1.26 billion for the year. Our core marketing segments, which are Canada, the US, and international, delivered record annual performance. And although we continue to see the impacts of lingering COVID restrictions in quarter four, we also see signs of ongoing recovery and are confident there is more upside to come. I'll start with our Canadian segment, which delivered an adjusted EBITDA of $117 million. This is up almost 5% from Q4 in 2020, reflecting robust fuel and convenience store margins. Excluding cigarettes, company C-Store sales growth was 4.7%. This highlights the continued strength of our brands and convenience offering. Our Journey Rewards loyalty program continues to resonate strongly, and we now have around 2.9 million members. We also continue to expand our on-the-run brand, adding more than 100 stores, and this brings our total to around 375 stores and puts us well on our way towards our 1,000-store target by the end of 2025. In the fourth quarter, we saw volumes across all provinces in Canada take a slight step back compared to quarter three. We attribute this to the end of the summer driving season plus the impacts of Omicron restrictions. The Atlantic provinces, British Columbia and Quebec, are back to within 5% of pre-COVID volumes, while Ontario and the Prairies have some catch-up to do and are around 10% off. This gives us confidence that there's further upside as restrictions ease, and we saw that in quarter one. Subsequent to the fourth quarter, we closed the Cravier and M&M acquisitions. These advance our strategy to further develop our platform, diversify our revenue stream, and strengthen our customer offer. Our international segment delivered an adjusted EBITDA of $78 million. This is up over 8% from Q4 2020, reflecting our strong base and resource business. Through the quarter, we continue to grow wholesale volumes with increased drilling activities in Suriname and Guyana. We continue to see green shoots in the tourism industry, particularly in markets such as the Dominican Republic, Bahamas, and St. Martin. Just like Canada, we see future upside as the COVID recovery takes hold across the region. Our USA segment delivered an adjusted EBITDA of $41 million. This is up 400% from Q4 in 2020, reflecting the impact of acquisitions, synergy capture, and organic growth initiative. We successfully closed the acquisitions of Ubiata in southern Florida and Lynch in Idaho in December and will benefit from those businesses in our 2020 results. More broadly, US economic activity has returned to pre-COVID levels and increasing unit margins are offsetting higher labor and inflation costs. We are seeing an uptick in cruise ship bookings, which benefits our Florida business and expect tourism will return throughout 2020 as travel restrictions are lifted further. Supply delivered an adjusted EBITDA of $58 million, down 28% from quarter four in 2020. The BC floods had a negative one-time impact of $35 million. I'm incredibly proud, like Bob, of how we have continued to supply our customers during this period, and it demonstrates the strength of our supply infrastructure and capabilities. A minor turnaround was also completed on time and on budget in October. Looking to 2020, we expect strong operational performance from the refinery, as we do not have any planned turnarounds for the year. Our next major turnaround is planned for 2023. Corporate costs of $34 million were up slightly year over year, reflecting reduced benefits from the COVID-related wage assistance programs and a partial return to pre-COVID activity levels. Our annual run rate remains at between $115 and $120 million. We delivered net earnings of $23 million for the quarter and $97 million for the year. And when we adjust for items that we do not believe are reflective of our underlying operations, such as non-cash gains and losses, and refinancing and integration costs. Our adjusted earnings were $55 million for the quarter and $372 million for the year. All of these are substantial increases over the previous year. Turning to slide five. As you recall, in 2020, we shared our ambition to double the business from around $1 billion to $2 billion of run rate adjusted EBITDA by the end of 2025. With the acquisitions that we did since quarter three 2020, Two years in one, as Bob described it, we are well on track to achieve this ambition. We feel confident in our 2020 delivery, and with our latest acquisitions, we increased guidance from 1.45 billion to 1.5 billion, plus or minus 5%. As you can see from the chart, our core marketing businesses have grown consistently year over year, driven by our organic and inorganic growth initiative. It also shows the increase in contribution of our marketing business from around 45% in 2018 to 65% in 2021. And we expect this percentage to grow going forward. While periodic turnarounds and the margin environment create short-term volatility, our supply segment contributes maturely to the results and underpins our core marketing business. And as a reminder, we sell around 85% of the production volume from Burnaby to our own customers in British Columbia, and Burnaby makes up less than 15% of our total volume in Parkland. Finally, as we look at our capital plans for the year, we expect to come in at the lower end of our initial guidance due to prioritization of projects and some supply chain related issues leading to deferral. Turning now to slide six. Since the third quarter of 2020, we have done 17 acquisitions for around $1.8 billion in aggregate. This accelerated pace of acquisitions was opportunistic, partly driven by anticipated changes in US tax laws. Each transaction we did was on strategy in both the develop and diversification themes. We have also executed at attractive values and created many opportunities for synergies and growth in the future. The expected EBITDA contributions from these acquisitions in 2022 is around $200 million, And after delivering synergies and implementing our integration plans, we expect that this will grow to $280 million in 2024. This reflects an aggregate post-synergy purchase multiple of around 6.4 times. And taking into account some high-value real estate that was part of our Q3 Ubiata acquisition, this multiple is even lower and well within our historical range. We've had a busy year of acquisitions. We accelerated the delivery of our strategy and created value for the company. Turning to slide seven and our capital allocation framework. You will be familiar with this as we have discussed it several times previously, most recently at our investor day. Our goal is to drive sustainable growth in shareholder value. And in order of priority, we do this by allocating capital to grow the business, manage our leverage, and then return money to our shareholders. As I've mentioned, last year we have done two years of acquisitions in one. and we've had a few small deals to complete here in the next few weeks. And therefore, in 2020, our focus will shift to integration and delivering synergies and returns from these acquisitions. We are committed to bring down our leverage to normal levels. And as you know, our business has a high cash conversion and we generate significant amounts of distributable cash flow. As we slow down our pace of acquisitions, we expect to reduce leverage to come down at a rate of around half a turn a year We have front-loaded our acquisitions and continue to be well on track to deliver our strategy and $2 billion of EBITDA by 2025. Parkland has a 10-year track record of annual dividend increases, and we are confident in our business and our ability to generate cash. And we are therefore pleased to announce an increase of our annual dividends by 5.3% to $1.30 per share per year. We've also decided that starting from the second quarter, we will change to a quarterly dividend payment in line with industry practice. Finally, let me mention Sol and the put-call option. As you know, we currently own 75% of Sol, and we like this business, and we have a good relationship with our partner. With the completion of the 2021 accounts, we have an option to buy the remaining 25%, and our partners have an option to sell their 25%, but we don't have an obligation to buy. We continue to assess our next steps here and will disclose our decision at the appropriate time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Bob for final remarks.

Great. Thanks, Marcel. That was a good overview of the strength of our business, the way we think about capital allocation and our commitment to shareholder returns. Turning to slide eight. Having accelerated the execution of our acquisition strategy through 2021, we entered 2022 with a great deal of momentum and high confidence in our ability to advance our organic growth strategy. As Marcel said, we are focused on integrating the companies we have acquired on capturing synergies and deleveraging by significantly slowing down acquisitions. There's a lot to be excited about in 2022. We have a long runway of accretive organic growth opportunities which will strengthen our customer propositions and expand the ways we help our customers lower their environmental impact. In 2022, we will continue to develop our existing business by further strengthening our retail, our supply and retail capabilities across all geographies and win new accounts to grow our customer base and market share. We will continue to expand our on-the-run convenience stores across Canada and the U.S. This will include the launch of our Canadian standalone stores, which will feature a strong food component underpinned by M&M's proven capabilities. We are advancing our customer experience concept for these stores and aim to open our first in the fall. 2022 will also be an exciting year for our loyalty program. begin cross-promotional activity with M&M's active loyalty members, setting us on a path to create one of Canada's premier loyalty platforms. In the near term, our goal is to create a digital platform that seamlessly rewards our customers for their refueling, recharging, convenience, and quality food purchases. Longer term, we envision a digital ecosystem that enhances and connects our customers' end-to-end experience. We continue to make good progress on our decarbonization strategy. You will remember from Investor Day that we expect it will contribute approximately $150 million of incremental EBITDA by 2025. We see the tremendous role renewable fuels play in reducing the carbon intensity of our customers' transportation. We will continue to grow our coprocessing activity and expect coprocessing volumes will increase by 30% from last year. We are also expanding our biofeedstocks to include tall oil. This is a low-cost waste product from local British Columbia paper mills. In a world first, we have already successfully tested this feedstock, secured the supply chain, and expect to begin processing in the first half of the year. You can also expect to see significant growth in our carbon offset business. For some customers, offsetting the environmental impact of their operations by investing in impactful environmental projects is attractive. We'll continue to build our capacity in this area and we are planning to offer the service to our potential customers. Through 2022, as we continue to help our customers lower their environmental impact, you can expect continued growth in our renewable business. We anticipate this will deliver over $50 million of financial benefit in the year. Lastly, we expect to open BC's largest ultra-fast EV charging network in the summer. Our 25 locations network will connect Vancouver Island to Calgary, helping remove range anxiety and provide customers with an unrivaled level of amenity. Like we've previously said, the increased dwell time of EV customers creates opportunity for Parkland to meet their convenience and food needs. We have an exciting year ahead of us. We remain focused on providing our customers and communities with fuels, convenience items, and food they need, and to remain one step ahead of their needs of tomorrow. I will now turn the call back to the moderator for questions.

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your touch-tone phone. You will then hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request. And if you wish to withdraw your question, simply press star followed by 2. And if you're using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please lift a handset before pressing any keys. Please go ahead and press star 1 now if you have a question. And your first question will be from David Newman at Desjardins. Please go ahead.

Good morning, all. Very solid results. Congratulations.

Hi, David.

How are you doing, Bob? Yeah, good. Sorry, go ahead.

Oh, very good, very good. I hear it's your last call today, so you get two questions.

Yes, I do. Thanks, Bob. It's an absolute pleasure working with you and the team, and I won't be very far away. I'll just be in another seat, and I'll continue to push the story, so thank you. My first question is just on the surge in refined fuel prices that we're seeing today. on the back of the conflict, especially the pumps. Have you seen any de-stimulation of demand for fuel or the backcourt offerings coupled with, I guess, the lingering stages of Omicron? And is that just being offset by the reopening?

You know, look, in the markets that we're in, you know, as I like to say, people need to drive to live. And as a result, demand tends to be inelastic to price. And as you've also said, with reopening, you know, we are seeing that volumes continue to climb and certainly above 2020 and 21 as well. So, you know, we're quite optimistic here that volumes will continue to track well going forward through the year.

Okay, and I guess the second question is on the back of that, is with the increase in food prices and just inflation in general, and now that you're about to embark on standalone C-stores, have you seen any trend toward fewer purchases or a shift down in price points to maybe your private label offerings, 59th Street and Cargo? And maybe you can just remind us how many SKUs you have and what percentage of basket it might constitute.

Yeah.

A multi-parter for my very last question.

No, for sure. Yeah, no, that's a good question. Certainly, I think that constitutes four questions, David. You know, look, inflation, I mean, I think the economy seeing inflation in general across, you know, pretty much everything. And, you know, certainly that's not great for the consumer. That being said, We are able to manage inflation without it impacting our business. We are fortunate that we do have a very well-developed private label brand. As you know, over the last several years, we've built it out. And I don't have the exact number of SKUs, but we can follow up with that. But we've built it out to be a nice base within our convenience stores. We continue to grow it. and it is a more economic alternative for the consumer. Again, it's hard to, in the short term, look at whether we're seeing a significant uplift due to inflation or just due to the fact that we continue to develop and roll out products that consumers really enjoy and continue to buy.

Excellent. Thanks, Bob. And like I said, it's been an absolute pleasure, and I will be pushing the story for my new seat in institutional sales. Thank you very much. Great.

Thanks, David. Really appreciate your support.

Thank you. Next question will be from Ben Isaacson at Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, and good morning. And congrats on the quarter, the dividend bump, and the increase to guidance. Two macro questions. When we look at Canada fuel volume, Looks like you did about 10 billion liters in 18 and 10 again in 19. That dropped to 8.7 in 2020 with COVID. Came back a little bit to 9 in 2021. So we're still about a billion shy of where you were before COVID. Can you talk about how much you think that'll come back? Do you think you'll see a run rate of kind of closer to 9.5 or do you expect to get back to that 10 billion liter type area?

Yeah, we don't guide on our specific volumes, but I would say the trends are positive for volume to continue to increase, and I'd say that's driven by three factors. One is the continued reopening and demand coming back, particularly on the commuting traffic that had been taken out of the market for the last couple of years. The second thing is our marketing initiatives and the organic growth that that drives, particularly the link to Journey has been beneficial. And then the third thing is our organic growth capital that we've continued to invest in the base business. As we add new sites, new dealers, they continue to add incremental volume. expected to continue to trend up. But again, we don't forecast where it's going to be. That's fair.

Thank you. And then maybe just an extension to David's question. So with oil in the $100 to $110 area, can you talk about what the puts and takes are? You did talk about demand already, but is it possible that some will switch into diesel? Are there higher logistics costs for yourself? Is there a lag towards margins? Can you just highlight what we should be thinking about with the oil price move?

Why don't I take the first part of that and Marcel can talk about the impacts on the balance sheet. You know, look, again, in Canada, or in the markets that we're in, you know, in Canada, the US and throughout our international business, generally, there are not good substitutes for consumers. So, you know, again, people need to drive to live, you know, whether that's to work to take their kids to school or sporting events, you know, these things will continue to happen. and you know it's always hard to predict whether they will adjust their their behavior you know the the in terms of you know we often get asset you know on the way up to margins get compressed you know it varies by market I would say predominantly markets are quite responsive and dynamic and and the increases get passed through fairly quickly so you know that's not And again, as I've often said, our margins do fluctuate around, but certainly they are very rateable on a quarterly or annual basis. So it's not something that we get concerned about. And then, again, we continue to see good growth across all of our fuel commodities and our convenience business. So again, what it does show is the strength of our customer value proposition, and we can continue to win in any environment. Over to you.

Yeah, let me just add to that, Ben. You know, of course, prices are moving up, but they're also quite volatile, and we see some different shifts in trade patterns at the moment, right, as events in the world unfold. So I think it will take a little bit of time to establish kind of what the new norm is and the direction. We do see in our international markets some parties no longer being able to trade or trade flows go in different directions as certain sanctions actually implemented. So I would mention that and we'll have to see how that unfolds in the next little while. On the balance sheet, so I think working capital implications. So in 2021, we increased our working capital by 340 million. That was partly driven by increased activity and acquisitions as we have done. and then also partly driven by an increase in commodity prices that we already saw during the year. Of course, we're monitoring this closely and managing that. With higher prices, we generally focus on our receivable balances and to ensure that the customers that we do give credit to, that they can actually pass on higher costs to their customers, or otherwise we see an increased risk on that side. So it's all very active and being actively monitored from our end.

Thanks so much and congrats again.

Thanks, Ben.

And your next question will be from Kevin Chang at CIBC. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. I apologize maybe for the length of this one. So if I look at the $500 million EBITDA stuff you have remaining between what you're guiding to this year and your mid-decade target of $2 billion, I'm just trying to get a sense of what you can do internally versus what you have to go out and buy. And it seems like if I take that $500 million, I think you called it about $80 million of synergies from deals that you've done that would help there. You obviously have the Sol put, which I suspect you'll exercise at some point, so that's $100 million. Organic growth within your base business typically grows. Low single digit, that could be another almost $150 million. It sounds like the decarbonization could be an incremental $100 million. When I add all these things up, it doesn't seem like there's a large pre-synergy stub remaining of kind of unannounced M&A. Is that the right way to think about this, that you kind of have 70%, 80%, 90% of the stuff you need to get to $2 billion without another major deal, XTOL?

Yeah. You know, as we did announce today or indicate that we grew, we did twice the amount of M&A than we had sort of put in our plan in one year. So we are slowing down right now. And, you know, the purpose of that has a number of, you know, first and foremost it's to, you know, to integrate effectively. Last year we welcomed roughly 1,500 new people to Parkland. We need some time to let everybody settle in and also some time for our integrations to catch up with the acquisitions. So that's the first and foremost priority and make sure that we get the value we talked about, the additional $80 million. You know, in terms of our priority is to de-lever. You know, we've always guided that we would push to get our leverage ratio below three. And, you know, certainly as, you know, that's one of our priorities here. Once we get below that, we'll be in a good position to push growth again. You know, both organically and M&A. And again, we're always careful on the M&A side to make sure that we find good value that's accretive and that we can get some upside in the acquisitions that we do execute against.

Okay, that's helpful. And then maybe a derivative of David's question earlier, just with higher fees, fuel prices, just broader inflation. Are you seeing an impact on the basket size or consumer behavior within your backcourt offering? Is that flowing through at all?

As we indicated, we do see good same-store sales growth. We do continue to see consumers rely on the convenience segment for their convenience items. and haven't seen a dramatic change in that going into this quarter.

Okay, that's helpful. Have a good quarter there, and have a great weekend, everybody.

Great. Thanks, Kevin.

Your next question will be from Michael Van Elst at TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. You did mention that the Canadian business was about 5% to 10% off pre-pandemic volume level still. I'm wondering where the other parts of the business currently sit, particularly the U.S. and international, where there's a tourism impact.

If we could start with that.

Yes. Good morning, Michael. Let me start with the U.S. So the U.S., again, their volumes have recovered to 2019 levels. And on top of that, we've acquired a lot of business. So it's always hard to parse out exactly where the base volume was versus the acquired. But we're quite bullish on our U.S. business and the growth that we can achieve in that market. On the international side, Things have certainly come back quite nicely. There are certain markets that are still reopening, but I would say some of the core items, marine and jet, we are seeing come back quite nicely right now. The jet would not be back to 2019 levels, but If you recall, we have added some new locations into our Caribbean business, and that has allowed us to increase that volume inorganically. But again, expect a tailwind there as things continue to open throughout the year.

Okay, perfect. And then on the C-Store traffic, I'm just wondering how the actual consumer... trip is differing versus pre-pandemic and if it's having any impact on how you are thinking about setting up the stores in the future you know whether it's the day part or the product mix or whatnot yeah good question and and you know as you recall in our investor day we talked about our next evolution in our convenience concept and and our push to have uh uh

a more relevant food offer. And, you know, and I would say that's the biggest change that we've seen through the pandemic where the consumer, you know, has come and is looking for two items that, you know, there was a shift. One is just common food items, which start to constitute itself in larger sizes. And then the second thing is the food offer, the fresh food offer. And with M&Ms and the team that joined us, Andy and his team from M&Ms, we have a world-class capability in food and convenience food. And we're able to now execute on the strategy which we laid out, which was three components. One is a good frozen food offer, which M&Ms will bring. The second thing is fresh from frozen. And the third thing is to continue to develop our – prepared fresh at the store offers. So as we look forward, those are the areas that we're focusing on. We do think through the pandemic and with consumers changing their buying behavior, that that will continue to make that strategy successful here going forward.

And just to clarify, is the morning day part coming back as the volumes come back?

You know, I can get specific data on that. I mean, my understanding is as we roll out new concepts that we're getting good uplift, but we'll circle back on that specifically.

And just as a comment, Michael, on the fuel side, that hasn't completely recovered yet. So when we look at the fuel volumes in the metro areas, we still see, you know, people working from home, at least in the fourth quarter. I think as we go now to the, you know, to the first quarter and we see restrictions lifted, I would expect that the morning park and the morning commute will return more so than we have seen over the last year.

Thank you very much.

Next question will be from Neil Mehta at Goldman Sachs.

Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. This is Carly on for Neil. Thanks for taking the questions today. I wanted to start out on the $2 billion 2025 EBITDA target. We had historically been thinking about that as a full year number. Is that the right way to think about it? It seems like in the release it was framed more as an exit rate versus a full year number. So any clarification there would be helpful.

Good question, Carly. We have always guided this to be the run rate in 2025. So that will be towards the end of the year.

Got it. Okay, great. Thank you.

Um, and then the follow-up was just around, um, around leverage where, you know, you've talked about keeping leverage levels below this 3.5 times kind of range. So can you just talk about, you know, how you're thinking about the bridge from where you've ended 2021 here to get to those target levels and perhaps, um, you know, if maybe you consider monetizing some of the real estate in order to get there.

Um, so again, you know, we do have, uh, the business naturally deleavers at about half a turn a year. And, you know, our aim is to, you know, as we've indicated, slow down on M&A, you know, allow ourselves to reduce our leverage. You know, we don't need to monetize any significant assets to achieve that. Now, that being said, you know, we always look at our asset base and our, trimming less productive assets or assets where we can get a better return out of the portfolio. It's something we do on an ongoing basis and we'll continue to do. But again, the business will naturally deliver at a roughly half a turn a year.

I appreciate that. Thank you. Next question will be from Derek DeLay at Canaccord.

Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi, good morning. I just wanted to follow up on the comment about acquisitions The pace of acquisition is slowing this year. I think at the investor day you commented that Florida is an area where you expect to see meaningful growth, and this was post-Urbieta. What is the plan in Florida? If you see an opportunistic acquisition, I'm assuming you would still jump on it, but is the plan to slow the pace across the board in the near term?

You know, look, we've grown dramatically in Florida. We've been able to purchase some really strong assets in the market, and the team there is currently focused on integrating those. And that is our priority right now, is to integrate, you know, and as I said previously, to allow the business to delever, which does it about half a turn a year.

Okay, and then... In the MD&A, you mentioned new digital analytics capabilities a few times. I think mainly as it relates to the C-Store in Canada. Can you just comment on what these are and some of the early learnings you've gained from these?

Yeah. So, Derek, as you know, we've rolled out our journey program, and we continue to evolve that. And, you know, next steps on that are, as we've talked about, rolling that out to the M&M loyalty plan. Other things are reducing the friction in the experience, trying to get payments and location integrated in. And then we continue to evolve the connection with the convenience store and making sure that we continue to evolve what the consumer can benefit from within the convenience store. And then the final item is integrating our EV network. into the digital platform so that again consumers have a seamless experience independent of the type of vehicle they drive. So we're quite excited about that. The other thing that our digital platform allows us to do is get a lot of great insights into our business. The team continues to develop not only for our consumer business but for our B2B business. We continue to to develop the functionality and the ability to connect directly with our customers.

Yeah, and maybe to just add, we've talked about this before, our kind of digital pricing capability, which we rolled out, you know, in 2020, and we've seen continued benefits from in terms of, you know, real-time pricing, you know, relevant for the markets in which we operate. And we see that, well, we see that continuity opportunities to expand the scope of that work, too.

Great. Thank you very much.

Next question will be from Steve Hansen at Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Oh, yes. Good morning, everyone. Just a quick question on the Husky acquisition. I realize it's still in process, but I was just hoping you could speak to your plans for the 156 locations that relates to investment, OTR upgrades, I suppose M&M, food introduction, et cetera, and just as a second part, you know, how that integration with a good number of stations out west relates to the refinery. Just trying to get a sense for incremental volume coverage you're going to have off the refinery and what's ultimately left over. Thanks.

Yeah. Good morning, Steve, and thanks for the question. You know, we're quite excited about the acquisition of the Husky branded business. and really see a good opportunity there to apply our brands into that network and expect to get significant lift out of our brands. So that will start to happen in the back half of the year, presuming that we close as indicated mid-year on that transaction. We believe, and certainly within our own network, we've seen really great lift just by rebranding to on the run. Again, we believe that coupled with our journey loyalty program will produce some really good lift and also with our offer as well. So again, we see significant upside in that. In terms of the volume, I mean, look, we expect that these sites will perform well with Parkland Brands. As we've indicated, our brands in each region, we have top quartile consumer brands from volume per site perspective and expect that those brands will bring some additional volume, specifically as relates to the Burnaby Refinery. I mean, our team has done a great job since we took possession of the refinery of continuing to grow our market share. in the market, both organically and now through acquisition, and that certainly helps cement volume locally in the market.

Yeah, it's Dirk here. I just want to add one more thing. The acquisition of Husky should take us from about 85% of our volume going into our system to around 90%. Yeah, that's good. In BC. Yeah, in the BC market, yeah.

Very helpful, guys. And just one follow-up, just to drill down one level further. Have you had a chance to identify how many of those sites will get the on-the-run brand at this point? I'm just curious if it changes the broader strategy. The acquisition was announced, of course, post-investor day. So just curious if it accelerates or creates incremental opportunities for the brand beyond the original plan.

Yeah, look, I don't have the exact number, but certainly, you know, our team, our Canadian team looks at it from a network planning perspective. And they do, you know, they're always evolving the network. And again, as we continue to dig into the sites, there are opportunities where we can use that. you know, the organic growth capital that we would have identified previously without Husky, but re-vectoring that into this business to redevelop it. You know, look, as we, once the business closes, I think we'll be in a good position to provide a more fulsome update on, you know, how we see that business tracking and, you know, what some of the plans are.

Very good. Thank you. Appreciate having you.

Your next question will be from Vishal Sridhar at National Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. I was hoping you could comment on PKI's positioning in the Energy Index. Given numerous changes that you've implemented and the roadmap to diversify the business, does it still make sense in your view to be in the Energy Index, particularly given that PKI doesn't necessarily have torque to the underlying oil commodity?

Yeah, that's a very good question. I'll turn that over to Marcel.

Yeah, thank you, Michel. Good morning, and thanks for the question. Yeah, no, we, of course, see the same thing, and much of our share price movement, which we have seen throughout last year and also this year, of course, relates to that. That's our view. We don't control the index in which we are, so Standard & Poor's does that. You know, we, of course, don't believe we belong in that index, at least not in the way that we currently are there. So that's one that in our disclosures we try to emphasize that we've done some of that during this quarter, and in quarter one we'll continue to kind of shine a light on the core businesses that we believe define Parkland.

Okay. And just changing topics here, a little bit more detailed question. Particularly on the fuel and petroleum gross margin, CPL, in the international business, it deteriorated a bit more than anticipated. And my previous understanding was that there was a large portion of that business that was rateable and had legislated margins. So just hoping you can give us any perspective on that decline and should we anticipate that to go back to kind of the run rate that we saw through the year for 2021?

Yeah, Vishal, that's a great question. Through the pandemic, our team there has done an excellent job of growing the business organically. And it's really a mixed impact that you're seeing. So they grew the wholesale business and quite frankly gained a lot of market share in that area. And as a result, though, our wholesale business is lower margin. The margins in the other segments have stayed consistent with what they would have been previously. Again, it's the mix that shifted.

We saw some aviation volume coming back. That's generally lower margin as well. And maybe just to add to what Bob said, the reason we acquired this wholesale margin, it's really optimizing the supply chain. We already have vessels going from the Gulf Coast to locations we're in. And so if we can add volume to that and fill up the ships, that will just optimize those routes. And so that's why it's an attractive business for us from an end-to-end perspective.

Okay, thank you for taking my question.

Next question will be from Peter Sklar at BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good morning. Bob, could you explain exactly what is the voluntary carbon offset business, how that works, and what kind of economics is it generating now for Parkland, and what are your expectations there?

Yeah, so the carbon offset market has two components. The first is there's a regulated component and those are in markets like in British Columbia and also in California where we do participate in those markets. And then the second thing is a voluntary market. So this is where emitters look for projects that they can offset their emissions. and from projects that are leading to a reduction in CO2 emissions. A great example would be, in this case, for example, would be a methane capture project on a landfill. And it helps not only assist the emitter, and they have to pay to abate their carbon, but it also helps the developer of the project. And the voluntary market, in our belief, is going to be critical to enabling decarbonization, particularly in poorer countries where governments don't have the balance sheets to fund the transition. The voluntary market is an enabler for that. And we've participated in that. So our team, based here in Calgary, has really grown a nice business organically and has become a major... We've been able to put buyers and sellers together and help people develop some of these projects with the capital from the voluntary offset market and then selling those into... to emitters that have a regulatory requirement to reduce. So we like to see that's a very fast-growing part of our business. We haven't parsed it out specifically, so I can't comment on that, but I did talk about that next year we expect the renewables business and our carbon offset business to contribute roughly $50 million to parklands. So it does show how big that business is getting. And we'll start to report on that. We'll update it on a quarterly basis, and then annually you'll start to see the growth that we're expecting to achieve. And it ties right back into our investor day and our commitment to add $150 million of decarbonized EBITDA by mid-decade.

But I'm still not sure. Like, are you... structuring these deals? Are you deploying capital in these deals and capturing the offsets and then selling them?

Mainly, we're an intermediary. So we bring buyers and sellers together to enable the projects. We're not putting capital into specific projects at this point. We do have an inventory of carbon offsets in the regulated market that we use. But that would be That would be really the only capital that's invested in this business. I don't know, Marcel, if you want to comment on that. That's correct. It is a very high return business.

Okay. And then the second area I wanted to discuss, like, you've really gone out of your way to discuss this new messaging on this call regarding the, you know, slowdown in M&A. You want to build your balance sheet and, you know, you know, allow some time for integration. Like when did the company come to this decision? Is this something you saw coming and like what motivated this change? And like, I think your debt to EBITDA is 3.3 times. So, so you're going to deliver within a year to where you want to be, which is under three times. So what's really going on here?

Yeah, let me kick off. So look, we've always guided that, you know, getting towards three and a half, we will signal to the market that we'll deliver, which we are doing. You know, as you said, we've grown a lot here in the last 18 months. We've acquired a lot of business and, you know, we really do want to make sure that we focus on integrating them effectively. and make sure that we get the value out of those deals. So that's, you know, first and foremost. You know, the second thing I do want to reinforce is this does not, our commitment to get to 2025 to $2 billion by 2025 is still there and very achievable. And again, you know, in essence, we pulled forward a lot of our growth through the extensive M&A we've done over the last 18 months. So comfortable with where we're at. It does make sense to pause right now and, you know, allow the business and the balance sheet to recover.

Yeah, so no change in strategy, clearly. But, you know, we talked about it, and I think as Bob described with, you know, once we get to that, so think of 12 months of kind of pausing for us, before we pick that up again. So it's not a change of the strategy. I think to your question, why is that? I'll bring you back to our capital allocation framework, which we talked about. So we do think that by investing in our business, we create sustainable shareholder value. And we'll continue, of course, to look at that. But this time, we focus on the balance sheet. And once we get also into a more normal leverage range, we see the opportunity for additional shareholder distributions once we get there.

So what are you going to do if really great opportunities arise in the U.S., which is an area really focused for growth? We've been buying great companies at low multiples. Are you just going to let them go and say we'll be back in 12 months? I just don't understand.

Look, our pipeline still remains robust. We do have... productive conversations with vendors. And again, the fact that a large number, I mean, the majority of our deals are proprietary to Parkland does give us some leeway here to manage that and make sure that we don't miss any compelling opportunities.

Okay. Thank you for your comments this morning.

Next question will be from Carla Casella at JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi. Have you ever broken out how much of your business is related to tourism?

I didn't hear that.

Oh, I'm wondering if you've ever broken out how much of your business is related to tourism?

You know, look, we haven't broken out specifically. You know, other than the... international business I would say we're not levered to tourism at all the in a material way and then in the international business look we've often talked about their beings or three markets thin within our international business you know those that are very linked to tourism those are driven by natural resources. And then there's a group of markets that really don't have a tourism or a natural resource impact that are driven by their local economies. So when you look at that, while we do have some exposure, we've certainly been able to mitigate that. And I would say on an overall basis, that parkland, the direct drive into tourism, you know, is there, but it's not, you know, not a material part of the business.

Okay. And then could you give us a sense for the economics of new stores and how they differ, whether it's a different, you know, differ by format or maybe a benchmark of the high and the low cost for the stores and payback period?

Yeah. You know, so if we look at a new store, new-to-market site so you know when we look at our business we've got three ways that we deploy capital within the retail business so one is that we're refreshing and redeveloping to an existing structure the second would be what we call a knockdown and rebuild so where we have a site with proven traffic patterns but you know we we see an opportunity to improve the productivity of the site with a new building, new look. And then the third would be a new to industry site. And our capital fluctuates between all three of those. I would say from a payback period, when we put capital into an existing site and do a refresh, it's fairly quick. I mean, you're talking sort of two to three years that you get the capital back out. On a knockdown and rebuild where you have proven traffic patterns and proven customer behavior, they tend to return quicker. And, you know, one of the things that – and then on a – new to industry, you take a little longer because you generally take some time to build volume and customer traffic into the site. You know, typically for those sites, you know, you're looking in the five to, you know, five to seven year payback depending on where it is and how big it is. But just as an indication anecdotally, we would invest in a large format with fresh food site, with a car wash, roughly $5 million. And I would expect that in year three, that site's generating somewhere between $500,000 and $700,000 annually.

Okay, great. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next question will be from Matthew Weeks at IA Capital. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just looking at slide six of the presentation and the acquisitions done over the past year and a half, $1.8 billion for $200 million of EBITDA, so about a nine times pre-synergy multiple on that. I'm just wondering if you can comment on sort of what's driving that multiple, you know, acquisitions like Urbietta and M&M transacting at premium multiples. In general, is Parkland sort of buying more owned sites, real estates, with these acquisitions? Is it just to do more with size and being platform type acquisitions, quality? And as Parkland does start to acquire more after a bit of deleveraging here, how do you expect that to sort of influence acquisitions going forward?

Yeah, thanks for the question, Matthew. And we don't specifically have targets around owned and lease sites. It depends on the opportunity. We're not scared to own property and always think it is a good backstop for the asset longer term.

We have generally seen, I think, Matt, the The multiples for acquisitions haven't really gone up, but when you have a particularly heavy retail mix, like the Obiata acquisition with quite a lot of real estate, then of course the multiples are a bit higher. M&M, which was in a different segment altogether, was of course a bit there. And that gets offset by the opportunity for synergies and growth in some of those businesses which we've highlighted. So as we said before, on a post-synergy basis, When you look at the numbers, that's just under seven there. And then once you take the real estate into account, which was a material portion, and we talked about it when we announced the Obiata deal, it drops a bit further across even this whole mix. But we also continue to see businesses that we buy, if they are a good mix and they're smaller businesses, you know, in Idaho and in Utah where we've done some acquisitions, we're very much at that lower end of the spectrum where we buy. And I think that will continue to be like that.

Okay, thanks for the commentary on that. And then just one more question. I know you commented a little bit on it earlier, but I'm just wondering if you could provide some commentary on broad trends you're seeing and you talk about expectations for growing the carbon offsets business. How are you seeing demand trend in that business from your commercial customers and demand in the carbon market, offset market in general going forward here?

Yeah, I mean, it's growing at a very rapid rate. We continue to... grow at a higher rate I would say and to your point I mean we do it does fit very well with our strategy to help our customers decarbonize and you know a great example is we have large industrial customers that now have carbon reduction targets and you know they are coming to us to get whether that's renewables or to help them through offsets, we're really able to offer them a suite of solutions to reduce their carbon footprint. So expect that to continue to grow at a very high rate here going forward.

Okay, thank you. I appreciate the commentary. That's it for me. I'll turn it back.

Great, thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude the question and answer period as well as your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. And at this time, we do ask that you please disconnect your lines. Enjoy your weekend.