Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Alain Bouchard. I am the Founder and Executive Chairman of the Board of Alimentation Couche-Tard. I'm very pleased to welcome you to our annual shareholders' meeting. I now declare the meeting open. In accordance with the company's bylaws, as Executive Chairman of the Board, I shall chair this meeting, and Julia Wojciechowska, Assistant Corporate Secretary, will serve as secretary of the meeting. Julia? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Since the meeting is being held virtually through a live audio webcast, we believe that it is necessary to set a few rules for this to run smoothly. The agenda of the meeting includes one, the receipt of the audited consolidated financial statements for the financial year ending April 30, 2023, together with the auditors' report. Two, the appointment of auditors. Three, the election of directors.
Four, an advisory vote on our executive compensation policy. Five, to review two shareholder proposals she received from a shareholder this year, but not submitted to a vote. Details of these matters are outlined in the Management Proxy Circular. Details are also found on our website. The chairman will present all the proposals as they are presented in the Management Proxy Circular, and they will not need to be seconded. Only holders of record as of July 10, 2023, or their duly appointed proxies, who are registered with our transfer agent and have obtained a control number prior to this meeting, may participate, ask questions, and vote at the meeting. All other persons may attend the meeting as guests.
At the appropriate time, shareholders or their duly appointed proxy holders will be asked to vote on the virtual meeting platform after all items on the agenda have been presented. You will have only a limited time to do this. If you already voted and you vote on the meeting platform, it will change your previous vote. Registered shareholders and duly registered proxies who have voted already do not need to vote unless they wish to change their vote. Registered shareholders and duly appointed proxies who wish to communicate with members of the executive team or board, or who wish to ask questions, may do so using the instant messaging service provided on the virtual meeting platform. There are two ways of asking questions during this meeting. Questions may be submitted in writing by using the relevant dialogue box in the function, Ask a Question, during the meeting.
Questions may also be asked over the phone. To do so, the shareholder or proxy holder will need to submit their name or their telephone number by using the relevant dialogue box in the function, Messaging, during the meeting, in order to be reached by telephone at the appropriate time. Their telephone number will not be shared with the other meeting attendees. Only shareholders and duly appointed and registered proxy holders may ask questions during the question period. When you ask a question, please indicate your name and the entity that you are representing, if any, and confirm that you are a registered shareholder or a duly appointed proxy. Please also indicate to which member of our leadership team you wish to address your question.
Questions will generally be received shortly after being submitted, but will be dealt with only during the question period at the end of the meeting. Answers will not be provided to questions that have already been answered or that are redundant or repetitive. I wish to advise you that some of the topics discussed during the presentations following the legal portion of the meeting may constitute forward-looking statements issued by the company with the usual provisions. We'd like to give everybody the opportunity to ask questions, and therefore, we would like to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to ask questions.
Since we have forward-looking statements issued by the company with the usual provisions, details of the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements could be found and may be found in the Alimentation Couche-Tard Management Proxy Circular for the 2023 fiscal year, which is available on SEDAR and on the company's website. We will now proceed. Thank you, Julia. I now appoint TSX Trust Company, Canada, as scrutineers of this meeting, represented today by Mr. Mathias Jalali and Ms. Isabelle Vachon. The secretary has informed me that from TSX Trust Company, we received confirmation that he has sent the documents regarding the meeting to all shareholders of record on the company's books as of July 31, 2023. I'm instructing the secretary, therefore, to keep these documents in the company's records with the affidavit from TSX Trust Company, confirming that documents have been sent to Couche-Tard shareholders.
The scrutineer has submitted their report on attendance at the meeting, which shows that quorum has been reached. I ask therefore the secretary to attach the scrutineer's report to the minutes of this meeting. Accordingly, I declare this meeting duly convened and legally constituted to conduct the business for which it was called. Our first item on the agenda regards the receipt of the company's financial statements. I now submit for receipt the consolidated financial statements of Alimentation Couche-Tard and its subsidiaries for the financial year, the fiscal year ended April 30, 2023, as well as the auditor's report for these financial statements. The next item on the agenda is regarding the appointment of auditors for the current fiscal year and the authorization provided to the board of directors to set their compensation.
As indicated in this circular, the company recommends the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, a firm of chartered accountants, until the next annual meeting of Alimentation Couche-Tard. I propose that PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP be appointed auditor of the company and that the board of directors be authorized to set the auditor's compensation. As indicated in the circular, the board of directors has set the number of directors to be elected today at 16. Biographical notes on the candidates are included in the Management Proxy Circular made available to our shareholders. I shall now introduce you to the 16 people who have been nominated. Louis Vachon, board member since 2021 and lead director. Jean Bernier, board member since 2019. Karinne Bouchard, board member since 2021. Éric Boyko, board member since 2019. Marie-Ève D'Amours, new candidate to the director's position. Janice L.
Fields, board member since 2020. Éric Fortin, board member since 2021. Richard Fortin, co-founder and board member since 1988. Brian Hannasch, board member, President, and Chief Executive Officer of the company since 2014. Mélanie Kau, board member since 2006. Marie-Josée Lamothe, board member since 2019. Monique F. Leroux, board member since 2015. Réal Plourde, co-founder and board member since 1988. Daniel Rabinowicz, board member since 2016. Louis Têtu, board member since 2019, and myself, Alain Bouchard, co-founder, board member since 1988 and Executive Chairman of the board. Each candidate has indicated their desire to serve as a director of the company.
I propose that each of these individuals be selected as a director of the company until the close of the next annual shareholders meeting, or until a successor is duly elected or appointed. As mentioned at the start of the meeting, votes will be cast today through a single electronic ballot after the items on the agenda have been presented. The next item on the agenda is the advisory vote on the board of directors' executive compensation policy. We are confident that you will judge the company's executive compensation program to be based on a performance-based approach aligned with our shareholders' long-term interests. As this will be a non-binding vote on the board, the results will not be binding to the board. However, the board will take into consideration all these results and all comments from shareholders.
The full text of the advisory resolution appears in the Management Proxy Circular. I propose the adoption of the advisory resolution concerning the company's executive compensation practices set out in the Management Proxy Circular. All this information is found in the Management Proxy Circular. Julia?
The next item on the agenda concerns the two shareholder proposals received this year, but not submitted to a shareholder vote by MÉDAC, [Foreign language] Mouvement d'éducation et de défense des actionnaires, for the education and defense of shareholders, represented by Mr. Willie Gagnon. These proposals relate to, number one, disclosure regarding the language proficiency of directors, and two, the presence of women, a breakdown by executive position. The corporation has reproduced in Appendix D of the Management Proxy Circular, the full text of these proposals and the presentation that is given to shareholders.
This is what the MÉDAC transmitted to us, and it has not been modified other than to translate into English, since everything was provided in French. Appendix D of the management proxy circular also contains the company's response to the MÉDAC's proposals. I'd like to point out that we have included disclosure of our 2023 management proxy circular, highlighting languages spoken by our board nominees. 14 of 16 board members have professional fluency, proficiency in French, while all board nominees speak English. In addition, three board nominees have respectively working proficiency in German and Italian, Spanish and Yiddish.
With regards to shareholder proposal number two, because the previous one was shareholder proposal number one, I'd like to highlight that in our Management Proxy Circular, we already have disclosed at the end of the fiscal year 2023, that 39% of our executives and 27% who we believe have the potential to become executives are women. 21% of our vice president-level employees, 23% of our heads, 32% of our directors, and with the ambition of 35% by 2025. 40% of our office managers, 46% of our market managers, 71% of our store managers are women. The corporation also aspires to maintain a board composition in which women represent at least 30% of its members, and we are proud to say that we have reached this goal over the past three years. Mr. Gagnon would like to address the assembly and speak to the MÉDAC proposals. Mr. Gagnon, you have two minutes to speak to the proposals.
Yes. Good morning. Can you hear me clearly?
Yes, we can, Mr. Gagnon.
Yes. Hello, my name is Willie Gagnon. I represent the MÉDAC. Every year, the MÉDAC suppose or submits proposals, shareholder proposals, and you summarized what I submitted to you. So yes, the languages spoken, and not the linguistic skills, but the languages spoken by directors of the company. That was the first thing we submitted, and following the corporate answer in the circular at page 111, the company states that they were already doing these things, but to our knowledge, this is new. This is following our request for competencies and when things were shared in the circular.
We are happy to hear that the company was able to provide us with information this year. We're very pleased. As it comes to the proposal for female managers and upper management, women in upper management positions, the company continues to provide information around the presence of women at the upper management level, like on page 58 of the circular. We are happy to hear the new information unveiled following our request. We're also very pleased to hear about the discussions that we've had with the company. We know that with the departure of Ms. Namina, that we learned recently, it was with her that we had discussions and negotiated all these things this year. Mr. Chair, I would like to ask a question during question period. I don't know if I have to stay online or not.
It'll be at the end, Mr. Gagnon, during the question period. You'll have an opportunity to ask your question at that point.
Fine. Thank you very much.
Yes, you can stay online for the rest of the meeting, and at the very end, there will be a question period. Thank you, Mr. Gagnon, for your comments on shareholder proposals. We'll now vote using a single electronic ballot. I remind you that the items to be voted on are, one, the appointment of auditors, two, the election of directors, and three, an advisory note on our executive compensation policy. You will now be asked to vote on each of the three items on the agenda. When you are asked to do so, please go to the voting page and first press the For or Abstain button next to the resolution to appoint PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the company's auditor.
Then press the For or Abstain button next to the name of each candidate for the director. So you click For or Abstain, and thirdly, you press the For or Against button next to the advisory resolution on the company's executive compensation practices. Your vote will then be recorded. You will have a couple of minutes to register your vote, and then the voting page will disappear. We will start up again with the meeting as soon as. Thank you for your patience. I received the scrutineer's report on the voting results, and I confirm the following: I am pleased to announce that the resolution on the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the advisory resolution on the company's executive compensation practices have been adopted. Regarding the election of directors, Louis Vachon, Jean Bernier, Karinne Bouchard, Éric Boyko, Marie-Ève D'Amours, Janice L.
Fields, Éric Fortin, Richard Fortin, Brian Hannasch, Mélanie Kau, Marie-Josée Lamothe, Monique F. Leroux, Réal Plourde, Daniel Rabinowicz, Louis Têtu, and myself have been duly elected as directors of the company. I'm pleased to announce that the board's approach to executive compensation, for executive compensation has been adopted. Details of the results will be available shortly on the SEDAR website, SEDAR+ website, and on the company's website. With the legal formalities now completed, it is time to close the meeting, then move on to the corporate presentations. Therefore, I declare the formal portion of the meeting closed. I'm very happy to be with you here today, and to reflect upon the incredible 43 past years of Alimentation Couche-Tard, and the magnificent achievements of producing exceptional financial results and reaching our, our goal to double things again.
Believe me, that for a company that prides itself on easy, this has not always been easy. Three of the five years of our Double Again strategy took place during highly turbulent times that have been defined by global pandemic and extraordinary geographic and economic conditions. Perhaps you're wondering how, amidst these unprecedented challenges, we kept our strategic focus and did not waver from our key growth pillars. How were we able to stay the course? Well, the answer is simple. We remain steadfast in our commitment to the business, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to doing the right things for our people and customers. Our culture and values are stronger than ever.
Perhaps this is reflected best in the wonderful achievement of winning for the second time in a row, the Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award, which recognizes among the world's most engaged workplace cultures, all of the top quality cultures. Over these five years, as we strive to double again, we also embarked upon another ambitious journey, making sustainability a lens to the business. This year, we made good progress, including in workplace safety, by reducing theft, addressing harassment in our stores, creating pipelines for the advancement of our diverse and inclusive workforce, and expanding our efforts toward cleaner energy sources by increasing electric vehicle charging capacities and growing alternative fuel offers. From the start of our humble beginnings, it has always been important for the founders and for myself, that our stores and team members play a pivotal part in the communities where we work and live.
This year, across the network, and particularly in the Baltics, we provided generous support to Ukrainian refugees, raising millions for the Red Cross relief efforts and providing essential care packages, housing, and employment. We also took care of our own U.S. team members, impacted the fury of Hurricane Ian, and we gave countless hours to support youth in trouble and to fight food waste. We support young people, and we continue our work around food waste. I'm also proud to say that as we Double Again and work on this goal, we have kept our customary financial discipline. We walked away from acquisitions and investments that simply did not meet our strict criteria, and we stayed true to our operations' initial mindset.
We also seized the correct opportunities at the right price, and we are looking forward to bringing into our family four new countries, Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium, through the TotalEnergies' proposed acquisition. Finally, I'd like to thank all team members, clients, and shareholders for being part of this truly remarkable year. I'm excited to have your support and trust as we continue to innovate, execute, and lead the industry. We intend to continue to do so for many decades ahead. Now, I'd like to introduce our President, CEO, and my dear friend, Brian Hannasch.
Thank you, Alain, and good day, ladies and gentlemen. Once again, I'm so proud of all of our team members and their commitment to the business during another year of both profound challenges and opportunities. We remain focused on delivering strong, consistent value for our customers and maintaining cost discipline across our operations as we achieved exceptional financial results and reached our five-year Double Again ambition. The challenges of this past year helped us focus on our frontline teams and core operational strengths. As part of this, the food and merchandising team were brought under the umbrella of operations and Alex Miller, our newly appointed Chief Operating Officer. By fiscal year-end, Fresh Food Fast reached more than 4,800 locations, and we're seeing strong same-store sales growth, thanks to improving operational execution and compelling food offers.
As part of our efforts to own thirst, we built momentum around our Sip & Save monthly subscription program and our made-to-order coffee program, while driving excitement in our cold beverages with successful exclusive offers. Our investment in food and beverage, inventory management, and data-driven merchandising over the year are part of our efforts to enhance the customer journeys in our stores. At the point of sale, we installed more than 2,400 AI-powered smart checkout units globally. This reduces transaction time for our customers and frees up our team members to provide better service throughout the store. At the close of the year, we reached an important milestone with the launch of our Inner Circle loyalty program across the Florida Business Unit.
Inner Circle is a free membership program delivering value and ease to our customers with fuel and food rewards, while also providing unique, personalized experiences. To date, the program is exceeding expectations, both in enrollment and in performance in Florida, and we just introduced it to the Grand Canyon Business Unit. In the coming months, we'll expand it to more US business units. In fuel, we continue to see healthy margins, supported by our investments in our energy trading capabilities, as well as successful ongoing efforts to optimize our fuel supply chain. By year-end, Circle K Fuel was at approximately 4,200 locations across North America, giving us more flexibility in our supply chain and delivering a more consistent brand experience across our network.
We also continue to strengthen our leadership in EV fast charging in Scandinavia, with nearly 1,600 EV fast charging units at over 300 of our locations, as well as new truck charging capacity, primarily in Sweden. North America, we've made inroads in our commitment to have 200 Circle K and Couche-Tard branded EV fast charging sites. As we face the most challenging retail labor environment, probably in a generation, we've prioritized our people by investing in technology and processes that streamline the recruitment, hiring, and onboarding process, and deploy engaging and effective gamified training that covers operations, customer service-
... product offerings, and safety. We instituted leadership and development programs for store managers and market managers, and rolled out scheduling and administrative tools that make it easier for our store team members in allowing them to better serve our customers. Over the year, we've embarked on game-changing growth through acquisitions. In North America, we added 228 locations, including 45 Big Red Stores in Arkansas, 42 owned company-operated, and 120 dealer-operated Wilsons locations in Atlantic Canada. So we now have a strong foothold in the fast-growing express tunnel car wash category, following our acquisition of True Blue, with 65 standalone washes in the U.S. Midwest and Southwestern parts of the country. Our footprint will also go in the Southeast U.S. with the pending acquisition of 112 stores from MAPCO, which we anticipate closing in October.
We've also made good progress with the expected addition of approximately 2,200 retail assets of TotalEnergies, which will boost our presence in Europe by nearly 80%, and we're looking to close this transaction by the end of this calendar year. As always, we remain disciplined in our approach and committed to our vision of becoming the world's preferred destination for convenience and mobility. To that end, as we start the next chapter of our strategic journey, we've committed to a very focused plan that will build upon the benefits of our scale, make us more efficient and agile, while most importantly, developing unique value propositions for our customers. We look forward to going into more depth on our new strategy at our Investor Day on October eleventh in Phoenix, Arizona.
To conclude, I want to thank all of our team members, our customers, and our shareholders for another extraordinary year and for joining us on our strategic journey ahead. Our new CFO, Filipe Da Silva, is next. Filipe will have a chance to meet many of you in person at our Investor Day, and I have no doubt you'll appreciate his addition to the leadership of Couche-Tard as much as I have this past quarter. Filipe?
[Foreign language] Merci, Brian. Bonjour, mesdames et messieurs. Commençons la discussion par Un aperçu.
Let's start the discussion by looking at financial performance since 2013. These indicators tell us what the teams have done year over year to create value for our shareholders. Gross margin has gone up by 10.1% since 2013, and more than new, more, but more like 9% over the past year for $12 billion. In addition to that, since 2013, the EBITDA has normalized by 5.15%, and we have an annualized rate of more than 10% to reach more than $5.72 billion and $3.12 per share, which explains our leverage effect. For the capital, it's a creation of value. It's gone up by 14% since 2013.
If you look at this chart showing EBITDA growth, you'll notice that the long-term plan has been in place for more than 10 years. We have long, good revenues with good raw data, and we have lots of, discipline when it comes to cost controls, and that has allowed us to get great performance as we increased EBITDA growth by more than 20% since the beginning. It's incredible to see that we started in, at $100,000 in 2000, and we are now at $5.75 billion this year in EBITDA. Over the past 10 years, the value of shares has increased by more than 625%, exceeding all references by far.
It's interesting to mention that an investment of $1,000 in shares made twenty-seven years ago, when we were before we were on the stock market. It's now worth $1.3 million based on the end of the day of the markets in August, without counting the dividends paid out over the years. Last year, you also saw the growth, and we had an increase of 9% given the previous year, and so we've hit $75 million. Over the same period, we generated a cash flow of $2.4 billion as available. Over the years, we determined strong growth in cash flow, with annual compound growth of more than 15% since 2013 and 2023.
In 2023, we also allowed ourselves to look at capital invested, and this is a good evaluation for operational performance. With solid performance in operations, along with good capital allocation, it allowed us to look at 17.7% in terms of investments over the past few, in the past, over the past year. We are also looking at exceptional results. We have a promising future to increase our dividend quarterly by 27%. We looked and increased our dividend for more than 17 years in a row since the first payment of the dividend in November 2020, uh, 20, 2005. This has allowed all shareholders to see how we are increasing our value.
We have also increased our share buyback program since 2023, and we have a redemption of 50,000, sorry, 2.39 billion shares. At the end of 2023, we also had a new redemption program that allowed us to buy back 5% of our shares, so a total of $49.1 million. In the context of this plan, we have already paid back or bought back for a number of American dollars. Last year, we paid out more than $2.8 billion to shareholders after looking at optimal approaches in our growth and in the maintenance of our activities. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Alain Bouchard.
Thank you, Filipe. We're now going to move on to the question period. Over to you. Any questions? Willie Gagnon, you wanted to ask a question?
Yes, indeed, I did. Yes. Hello, Mr. Chair. Can you hear me clearly?
Yes, indeed.
Wonderful. All right, listen, I'd like to know why there is no in-person meeting this year. There are no more limitations around COVID. Obviously, there are huge advantages to a virtual meeting, but nothing can replace an in-person meeting. We believe that an annual, in-person meeting should be added to virtual and not replace, and the virtual should not replace the in-person. Today, we can't see anybody's face. We can't see if shareholders are asking questions and lining up to do so. Maybe some people have decided that they don't want to ask questions. It's not possible to see who's sitting next to you, can't shake hands, you can't talk to directors or leaders.
We can't virtually hold a vote with raised hands, and there are lots of things that we can't do. All banks did hybrid meetings this year, so in-person and virtual. So when will you be having meetings in person, Mr. Chair? I would also like to address, if we have time, top questions with regards to containers that are not recyclable. In March, apparently, Couche-Tard has been dumping millions of unrecyclable containers in the garbage, and apparently, there is a lot of food waste in that file, as published in the newspaper, Le Soleil. I'm not sure if you're aware of that, but I'd like to hear from you on those two topics, please. In-person meetings and dumping of containers into the garbage.
Thank you, Mr. Gagnon. I will answer. For the first question, given our recent experience with our shareholders, this is our fourth meeting virtually, and so far we've been very satisfied. As with you, I like to meet people, shake hands. I love meeting with people when we are in person. We have discussed this. This said, the virtual format is also very appreciated by our shareholders because it means that it reduces costs, it reduces the carbon footprint of the meeting. People don't need to drive or travel, so there seem to be a whole lot of positive aspects to virtual meetings. It's always been really important for me to meet people, given our corporate culture. But over here, we still believe that the virtual meeting, the advantages are more in favor of virtual meetings.
So we are doing lots of things to improve shareholder participation during the meetings so that the experience be as good as possible, just like in person. We have clear instructions, easy approaches to follow, and people can contribute, just like you have today. So we've got the capacity to click, and so we'll continue to improve the experience year over year, given your feedback and all of the information that we get. Everything continues to evolve. So, Mr. Gagnon, that's the answer to your first question. Now, for these recyclable containers that are still full, I've asked some questions on that. Unfortunately, I don't have all the details in front of me. I got some information here. We're currently looking at our policies and our practices as applicable, including training by employees.
We need to make sure that employees understand the guidelines and the instructions, and that they follow them in a coherent way. We're also working with our partners and suppliers to find a much more sustainable solutions. We don't control the entire supply chain, Mr. Gagnon, so it's not that easy. Couche-Tard attributes priority to best practices in management for recyclable materials, and we also wish to follow all of the rules with regards to recycling and waste management. There were some cases reported in the newspaper. I'm not entirely sure of all the details, but we can't use one single report and generalize and say that we do this all the time.
We have a full policy that we are developing to ensure that we dispose of responsibly dispose of anything, recycling or garbage, transportation and elimination of all waste, and training for employees is something that we continue to work on. We want to make sure that our employees know the guidelines and follow the guidelines. Rest assured that if we see any violations of policies, appropriate measures will be taken. You can understand that we have lots of employees in store, people who need to be trained, and in some cases, there could be some lacks in some stores, but we simply can't generalize to the entire network. So, Mr. Gagnon, thank you for your questions. Are there any other questions? If there are no other questions, thank you for your participation in this meeting, and we will see you again.