Good morning. My name is Anas, and I'll be your conference operator today.
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I will now introduce Monsieur Jean-Philippe Lachance, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury at Alimentation Couche-Tard.
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English will follow.
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Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to this Web Conference Presenting Alimentation Couche-Tard Financial Results for its Third Quarter of Fiscal Year 2022. All lines will be kept on mute to prevent any background noise. After the presentation, we will answer questions from analysts asked live during the web conference. We would like to remind everyone that this webcast presentation will be available on our website for a 90-day period. Also, please remember that some of the issues discussed during this webcast 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. Brian Hannasch, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Monsieur Claude Tessier, Chief Financial Officer. Brian, you may begin your conference.
Thank you, Jean-Philippe, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us for this presentation of our Third Quarter 2022 Results. Two years after the start of the pandemic and during a quarter where the Omicron variant surged across our global network, I'm pleased to announce that we had strong results during the third quarter in both convenience and in fuel. Same-store merchandise sales were particularly strong in Europe as well as in the U.S., with our freshly prepared food programs and packaged beverages among the main drivers of continued growth. Across the business in fuel volumes and traffic, we saw strong results early in the quarter, but both were impacted by work from home orders and the rise in COVID-19 cases with the spread of Omicron, particularly toward the back half of the quarter.
The Omicron impact during the back half mainly affected our large and urban areas in North America and Europe, where we saw renewed lockdowns. However, we continue to achieve healthy fuel margins and benefit from our strategic initiatives that we're remaining laser-focused on. We've worked hard to overcome the historic labor and supply chain issues in our industry and are pleased to report significant improvement in more recent periods, as well as progress across many of our key priorities. I'll go into these in more detail on these initiatives during my presentation. Before moving to those results, I want to take a moment to comment on our decision to suspend our operations in Russia. In our announcement, we made it clear that we condemn Russia's aggression against Ukraine and the human impact it's having in both Ukrainians and Russians.
As such, we made the decision to suspend operations effectively immediately. Couche-Tard has been in Russia for nearly three decades and has been incredibly proud of our Russian team and their dedicated service to our customers and our communities in Russia. There are 38 Circle K stores located in St. Petersburg, Murmansk, and Pskov, as well as 320 employees, and we are committed to take care of them in a responsible and safe manner as we wind down our operations. Our hearts go out to all those impacted by the violence unfolding in that region.
Since the beginning of the crisis, we've been deeply moved by the outpouring of generosity by our local Circle K teams in Poland, the Baltic countries, and across our European network who've been helping refugees with free fuel, food, beverages, housing, and donations to a myriad of charities. Early on, Couche-Tard donated nearly $1.5 million to the Red Cross, and we started a global campaign to raise further funds for the Ukrainian people, including matching customer donations in all of our European stores and providing a platform for our global team members to make donations to the Red Cross. Let me turn to our results. Beginning with convenience.
Compared to the same quarter last year, same store merchandise revenues increased 3.7% in the U.S., 7.2% in Europe and other regions, and decreased 0.8% in Canada. Convenience activities performed well on a two-year stack basis, as same store merchandise revenues increased on a compound annual growth rate of 3.4% in the U.S., 5% in Europe, and 2.1% in Canada. Across the network, our Fresh Food, Fast programs continue to grow with over 2,900 stores now open in North America and over 300 in Europe, and we're seeing strong year-over-year growth.
In the U.S., where we have the majority of our Fresh Food, Fast sites, we've seen same store year-over-year gains in excess of 20%. We've continued to launch a variety of operational tools to continue to drive the simplicity and reduce labor hours, making it easier for our store teams to merchandise and produce these great products. While supply chain issues have continued to be challenging, we've modified our supplier base to provide redundancy and improve our stock positions. A pipeline of new items is also prepared to enter our stores as we continue to refine our assortment and make every effort to get in the chicken sandwich business. As our markets reopen, we're excited about the opportunities in front of us to promote and sample this great program in the coming weeks and months.
In our dispense beverage category, our Sip & Save subscription program has been expanded to include online enrollment, making sign-up easy and renewal quick and easy. We currently have 400,000 active subscribers in the program. We have very strong positive feedback from our customers, and we continue to look for opportunities to make it even easier for our customers to benefit from this program. While it's certainly in the short term probably impacts our sales in the dispense category, we think the ongoing loyalty and increase in traffic that we're seeing is a good move for us over the long term. Overall growth in packaged beverage remains strong, with good unit growth led by sports drinks and energy. Energy drinks continue to drive the category through innovation with high-value national activation and first-to-market opportunities in sports drinks.
They've all both combined driven strong sales increases year-over-year. Assortment, promotional activity, and supply chain management will be the core focus in the coming quarters as customers begin to shift back to immediate consumption and more normalized shopping patterns, and quite honestly, as we prepare for hopefully what an exciting summer as the societies are open. Overall, the company's total age-restricted category was up slightly compared to the same quarter last year, despite bars and restaurants being reopened. Europe continued to have good sales results in other tobacco products, and our U.S. business units continue to focus on wine and other age-restricted products, including the fast-growing single-serve wine and seltzer products. To enhance the in-store customer journey and maximize impulse purchases, we now have over 2,000 queue line installations complete in North America and over 300 in Europe.
These queue lines continue to show very strong value in building basket size, especially with confection, salty, and beverages. Our goal is to have over 50% of our North American network with queue lines installed by the end of the year. T he limiting factor being supply chain on fixtures and then quite honestly, the size of some of our boxes. In our data and analytics work, we continue to refine the localized pricing program, which is now live across the network, and we're seeing a clear average gross margin improvement from the effort. We've also ramped up our work to enable the optimization of promotions and assortment at scale. While still in the early days, we're seeing very encouraging results in both of those areas.
In Europe, we've begun executing on early key learnings across promotions, including the sunsetting of ineffective promotional activity. Overall, we're seeing margin improvement with little to no decrease in unit movement. I also want to bring attention to the investment we're making in the future of convenience with our Circle K Venture Fund. We've recently announced that we've invested more than half of the initial $100 million of the fund startup in companies that are developing forward-looking solutions focused on enhancing the customer experience in our stores and improving efficiency and making our customers' lives just a bit easier. Since the fund's inception in 2020, we've secured equity stakes in a number of these entrepreneurial startups, forming collaborative partnerships and agreements to test and commercialize these innovations.
The most recent investments are U.S.-based companies offering delivery grocery, convenience, and pantry items at competitive prices and very compelling speed. We're working with these partners on pilot and commercial programs by testing and learning, seeing how we can add restricted sales to the product mix, which we think is important to the basket, and certainly a way to look around the corner and clearly understand the economics of quick delivery and how it may or may not fit with our customers' needs and expectations from a convenience perspective. Moving to our fuel business. Same-store fuel road transportation volume increased 3.2% in the U.S., 3.2% in Europe and other regions, and 7.2% in Canada.
On a two-year stack basis, again, same store road transportation fuel volume decreased at an annual rate of 6.8% in the U.S., 3.4% in Europe, and 7.4% in Canada. W e still see, particularly in the morning day part, still impacted from work from home trends, and then during the quarter, certainly a resurgence of COVID, which created lockdowns in many of our markets. As societies open and people start to return back to the offices at least a few days a week, we believe we'll continue to see miles driven increase toward 2019 levels.
In our Circle K fuel rebranding work over the quarter, we completed another 181 locations, bringing the year-to-date total to 381 and total site count with the Circle K fuel brand in North America to 3,200 stores. Our Circle K Ambassador program kicked off to further support site-level rebrand activity, such as educating the customer about our Circle K fuel brand, our quality guarantee program, and our premium benefits. In the U.S., we've also began a win free fuel for a year national campaign, and we will have 144 winners of free fuel for a year by the end of the fiscal year. Also in our fuel category, we're pleased with our strong sourcing efficiency and growing in-house fuel transport operations across the network.
In Europe, we're on track to launch our fleet with the ambition of the recently started work in Sweden during the quarter. We now have over 1,000 drivers transporting Circle K fuel, and we just believe that provides tremendous upside in terms of reliability, but also our flexibility to optimize our fuel sourcing. In Europe, our B2B business was strong. V olumes for both fuel cards and bulk sales are trending ahead of prior year. In the quarter, card volumes trended ahead of pre-COVID levels, driven by strong recovery in the fleet sector and continued very robust performance in the transport sector. On both B2B and B2C in Europe, our teams are doing a great job and we are clearly gaining market share.
We've also made good progress on our electric vehicle work this quarter, reaching the 1,000 charger milestone, with new chargers being installed in Sweden in this quarter. We've developed our approach in North America. We opened our first Tesla EV charger in Austin, Texas during the quarter, and we now have over 100 charging locations active in Canada. Turning to innovation, we've continued to expand our Pay by Plate service across Canada. Excuse me, across Scandinavia, bringing the program to Denmark with 225 sites added during the quarter. It continues to be very well received by our customers and is clearly easier. Our next markets are Norway and Estonia, as we continue to take learnings from the initial launch in Sweden to drive improvements in this program. Again, just back to our Circle K fund briefly.
We're investing and partnering with groups that are working to enhance the in-store customer experience by leveraging technologies that enable store employees to focus more on the customer service and workforce efficiency. We're installing innovative and fast checkout technologies in our U.S. and European stores, as well as technology that's tapping into the fast-growing gig workforce. D uring COVID, we saw just a significant up spike in the percentage of the workforce that was shifting to and preferring the gig work methods, if you will. We've tapped into that and just really encouraged with the results of being able to bifurcate what's happened in our store and utilize that workforce to supplement our activities at site and let our people focus on serving the customer.
Finally, before turning it over to Claude, I wanted to further address those labor and supply chain challenges. We're pleased to report significant improvement in more recent periods of the quarter. In North America, we saw significant improvement in turnover trends at all levels of our operational teams, including store manager, assistant manager, and our customer service team members. We attribute this to certainly the targeted actions we've taken on the variable comp side, retention initiatives, training and benefits that we have closely tracked and worked with our business units to tailor to meet specific competitive needs in their environments and their local markets. We've also stepped up our leadership development and training programs, significantly focusing our attention on culture value and leadership expectation. T he fight isn't over, but certainly we see a light at the end of the tunnel.
With regard to supply chain, we've implemented mitigating efforts this quarter to increase our holding capacities and in-stock on key SKUs as we approach the summer selling season. This includes the additional queue lines I already touched on. We're also working to improve the holding capacity of our highest turning products, expanding shelf depth, and increasing cooler capacity. We're also reducing dependency on single-source supply by identifying alternative suppliers in key products such as food and waters. While there's no quick fixes, the teams are focused on being ready for the summer. I'm gonna pause there and let Claude take you through more of our third quarter financial results. Claude?
Thank you, Brian. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. For the third quarter of 2022, we're happy to report net earnings of $746.4 million or $0.70 per share on a diluted basis. Excluding certain items for both comparable periods, adjusted net earnings were approximately $746 million or $0.70 per share on a diluted basis for the third quarter of fiscal 2022, compared with $622 million or $0.56 per share on a diluted basis for the third quarter of fiscal 2021, an increase of 25% in the adjusted diluted net earnings per share. We delivered once again, sorry, a solid quarter as evidenced by increases of 15.2% in gross profit dollars and 18% in Adjusted EBITDA compared to the third quarter of last year.
In all, in an overall challenging environment in which we diligently manage higher than usual inflation and supply chain disruptions. We have continued to advance on our strategic priorities, including our fuel initiatives, network development, and cost optimization initiative across our network, bringing our the last four quarters Adjusted EBITDA above $5.2 billion. Our financial position remains strong, highlighted by our leverage ratio of 1.33, which allowed us during the quarter to upsize our current share repurchase program from almost 32.1 million shares to over 46.8 million shares. We are actively managing our balance sheet, and as a result, we repurchased close to $750 million of shares during the quarter and subsequent to the end of the quarter.
Following the end of the quarter, we also completed the yearly repayment of our Canadian dollar-denominated senior unsecured note issued on November 1, 2012. We also intend to renew our share repurchase program upon expiry on April 25, 2022, at a level of 10% of the then prevailing public float, giving us the opportunity to repurchase approximately $3.2 billion over the upcoming fiscal year. I will now go over some key figures for the quarter. For more details, please refer to our MD&A available on our website. During this most recent quarter, excluding the net impact from foreign currency translation, merchandise and service revenues increased by approximately $272 million or 6%. This increase is primarily attributable to the contribution from acquisitions, which amounted to approximately $158 million, as well as to organic growth.
On a two-year basis, same-store sales merchandise revenues increased at a solid compounded annual growth rate of 3.4% in the United States, 5% in Europe, and 2.1% in Canada. Excluding the net impact from foreign currency translation, merchandise and service gross profit increased by approximately $131 million or 8.8%, and the contribution from acquisitions amounted to $45 million. Our merchandise and service gross margin increased by 1% in the United States to 33.6% and 0.2% in Canada to 31.6%, mainly due to favorable changes in the product mix and pricing initiatives.
Our merchandise and service gross profit decreased by 0.7% in Europe and other regions to 37.8%, mainly due to the integration of Circle K Hong Kong, which has a different product mix than our European operations. Excluding Circle K Hong Kong, our merchandise and service gross profit in Europe and other regions would have been 42.1%, mainly driven by favorable changes in product mix. Moving on to the fuel side of our business. In the third quarter of fiscal 2022, our road transportation fuel gross margin was $0.3963 per gallon in the United States, an increase of $0.0887 per gallon.
In Europe and other regions, it was 10.83¢ per liter, a decrease of 0.53¢ per liter, and in Canada it was CA 11.73¢ per liter, an increase of CA 1.45¢ per liter. Fuel margin remained healthy throughout our network, mainly as a result of favorable market conditions and the continued work on the optimization of our supply chain. Now looking at the SG&A. For the third quarter of fiscal 2022, normalized operating expense increased by 9.8% year-over-year, driven by an increased level of marketing initiatives and other discretionary expenses that were significantly reduced in the prior year quarter, as well as by measures necessitated by the impact of the labor shortage and the need to improve employee retention.
We would also note that the impact of inflationary pressures, including higher utility costs in Europe, higher costs from rising minimum wage, and incremental investments in our store to support our strategic initiatives. This increase was partly offset by lower COVID-19 related expenses compared to the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal year, as well as by our cost optimization initiatives. Excluding the cost of the retention measures implemented, which totaled approximately $28 million, as well as the COVID costs in the prior year, such as the thank you bonus for our employees, the remaining variance for the third quarter of fiscal 2022 would have been 8.8%.
On a two-year basis, normalized ex-operating expense grew at a compound annual rate of 3.7%, which remains slightly below inflation as a result of our various cost optimization initiatives. Excluding specific items described in more detail in our MD&A, the Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of fiscal 2022 increased by $228.4 million or 18% compared with the corresponding quarter of fiscal 2021, mainly due to the higher road transportation fuel margins and organic growth in our convenience and road transportation fuel operations, partly offset by higher operating expenses as well as the net negative impact from foreign currency translation.
From a tax perspective, the income tax rate for the third quarter of fiscal 2022 was 21.3%, compared with 17.6% for the corresponding period of fiscal 2021. The increase in the income tax rate is mainly stemming from a prior year one-time gains taxable at a lower income tax rate. As of January 30, 2022, our return on equity remains strong at 22.2%, and our return on capital employed stood at 15.7%. During the quarter, we continued to generate strong free cash flows and our leverage ratio stood at 1.33x, only 10 basis points higher than Q2, despite having repurchased more than $500 million during the quarter under our NCIB.
We also have strong balance sheet liquidity with $2.5 billion in cash and an additional $2.5 billion available through our revolving credit facility. Turning to the dividend. The board of directors declared yesterday a quarterly dividend of CAD 0.11 per share for the third quarter of fiscal 2022 to shareholders on record as at March 24, 2022, and approved its payment effective April 7, 2022. Finally, as previously announced, as a result of Alimentation Couche-Tard's co-founder reaching the age of 65 years old, all of our Class B shares automatically converted into Class A multiple voting shares during the quarter on a share for share basis.
Following the automatic conversion, only Class A multiple voting shares of Couche-Tard are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol ATD. With that, I thank you all for your attention and turn the call back over to Brian.
All right. Thank you, Claude. I think even for the first time, we're gonna have live questions from analysts, and I'm expecting it's gonna take a little longer than usual. I'll try to be brief on my closing. Yeah, we feel good about the quarter. We feel good about the upcoming summer season. As Omicron has retreated, we're seeing nice trends in both fuel and convenience, sales and traffic. I wanna remind that in a very fragmented industry, we have a unique model with a diversified geographic footprint and significant competitive advantages versus the overall industry. We're focused on developing new ones, such as our food program, leveraging our data in unique ways to be even more relevant to our customers, and the upcoming launch of a new loyalty program, which is focused on rewarding in a variety of ways our most loyal customers.
Finally, operating in four countries in Eastern Europe, it's heartbreaking to witness the tragic events taking place in the Ukraine and the huge movement of refugees, mainly women and children, into our nearby countries. While it was the right decision to suspend our operations in Russia, it was not an easy one as Russian team members have been a valued part of our family for a very long time. Once again, just as the pandemic started to stabilize, our teams in Europe and across the globe are rising to the challenge of taking care of their fellow colleagues, customers, and communities, and at the same time, staying focused on our business and our key priorities. I couldn't be more proud to lead this company. I'm truly grateful for our team's commitment. With that, we'll now take questions from analysts. Operator, over to you.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now conduct the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press star two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment please for your first question. Your first question comes from Irene Nattel with RBC. Please go ahead.
Thanks, good morning, gentlemen. Delighted to ask the question live and in person. First question is really on so much has changed since the end of the quarter on January thirtieth. Can you please give us some color or some more information around what you've seen in terms of fuel demand, fuel margins, inside store, and any sort of disruptions that you're seeing in Europe?
Good morning, Irene. Happy to take and try to break those apart. I'll start with the last one first. Europe, our Scandinavian business and Irish business, largely unaffected. We have long-term supply agreements, so we're very stable there, and continue to perform very well as you heard from the numbers. If you look at Eastern Europe, our Polish business, really, we've been overrun like everyone has with refugees. Quite honestly, we've struggled to stay in stock and take care of our customers. That's improved, the last week, if you'd call this a three weeks into this, the last week's better. D emand's actually spiked there, but for horrible reasons. Seeing that to a lesser degree in the Baltics.
Supply chains have remained solid and, sales have been good. You know, knock on wood, that business has been stable, and we're making every effort to take care of the refugees that continue to pour out of the country. In terms of what's happening, I'll take fuel first. Supply has been stable. I t's a global commodity. I think the limiting factors, people continue to walk away from Russian product, could be shipping in the future. So far again, we're largely termed up in our European business, and we've seen no disruption in our North American business whatsoever. We feel good about that. From a margin standpoint, not great for consumers and in terms of a price shock.
In terms of, behavior in our industry, these price increases were so large that the industry had no choice but to pass them through. We are a very competitive industry. We're the only one that puts our prices out there in the front. B etween the labor pressures, credit card fees, and the product costs, we saw a very disciplined response globally to the price increases. O ur margins have actually remained relatively stable, versus, past quarters through this crisis. In terms of the consumer impact, I think we're gonna have to just wait, maybe a quarter and see what happens.
I think if this shock were to mitigate and we've seen crude go from $133, I'm talking about Brent, $133 back to $100 just in the last week, and we see corresponding retail price decreases, then that's a relatively short-term shock, and I don't think will have a meaningful impact on consumer behavior, whether it be, miles driven or whether it be, what kind of car am I trying to buy. If we did see that persist for a long period of time, I think there is obviously some risk of demand destruction. I think, what we're seeing is any potential customer hesitation has been offset by society opening.
Unlike, if you talk about the last recession being in 2008, 2009 in broad terms, I think the U.S. and Canadian consumers are in much better economic condition than they were in 2008, 2009, when we had a recession running in parallel. W hile we don't like, these high fuel prices at all, and their impact on the consumer and their pocketbook, we think we're, as a society, in a much better place to weather that storm. Then just merchandise, just to kind of finish the last piece of that. A gain, we saw a dip down in the last two months of the quarter as Omicron spread. I think there's pent-up demand out there.
We look at our last few weeks and, we're very pleased because we're right back where we were, which is, early in the last quarter with, some very strong year-over-year sales growth.
That's really helpful. A follow-up question on that. I f we go back to the investor event, you called out $0.28-$0.30 as let's call it a sustainable fuel margin. Since that time, we've had increasing cost pressures across the network and now of course, higher credit card fees with the higher prices. Would you... What would your comment be around bias to that number and whether we should just simply be thinking about higher numbers on a go-forward basis?
Yeah, I think, one, I would say we need to think long term. Q uarter- to- quarter, volatility is just inherent in our industry. That said, economics rule our industry, very fragmented, very competitive. When you look at a very fragmented industry, the marginal margin need of the bottom half of our industry, even the bottom quartile, is really what should set that incremental margin. T hey're facing, probably a lower store sales, lower fuel volume. They're getting the same credit card increases, labor increases, electrical increases. I think if you believe economics rule over time, you could make a case that, higher margins are needed on a sustained basis going forward.
That's great. Thank you, Brian.
Sure. Thank you, Irene.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Bonnie Herzog with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. My first question is on OpEx. It's certainly remained elevated in the past few quarters, given the tight labor market conditions and the higher hiring and retention costs that you called out as well as, inflationary environment. I recognize it's early, but can you talk a little bit about your expectations for OpEx in FY 2023? I guess I'm thinking about it, given rising fuel prices, associated increases in credit card fees. J just trying to think about, how we should assume or should we assume, possibly a mid-single-digit increase next fiscal year on top of the elevated increase you're seeing this year.
Do you guys see opportunities for you to potentially manage these expenses possibly more efficiently than some of your smaller peers given your scale?
Yeah. Maybe before answering the questions about next year, we could look at this year, how we performed. We performed with a 9.8% increase, which is elevated by our standards. You have to look also at last year. Last year in the same time period, we were declining our OpEx by 0.1% if you're going back to last year. The increase this year is first stemming from a really good quarter last year. What's also feeding into that increase is obviously like you mentioned, some labor challenges. There's increases on that front, for sure. We put temporary measures also in for retention.
If you're looking at both of these, they're probably there for half of that increase of 9.8%. The rest is really pressure on costs that we see on energy in Europe. A lot of increases on that and a bit of repair and maintenance compared to last year, we have an increase. Also marketing. Last year during COVID, we decreased marketing significantly, so now we're putting back that marketing this year. Those other factors are accounting for the other half of that increase.
If we're looking further, and first we're gonna cycle, and we're gonna start to cycle this decrease that we had in the last year, probably in Q1 of fiscal 2023. That's what you need to take into consideration so that we're gonna start to cycle some of those increases in Q1. There are temporary measures that we've put in place that we're reevaluating also as the conditions are changing on the field. Marketing, you need to think about it also as when it's gonna cycle, it's gonna be back to levels that are normal for our industry. Obviously there's inflation in the systems. We're doing all we can to pass it on.
We also have our cost optimization program that's going very well. That was one of our initiatives. We think we're gonna be probably close to $90 million-$100 million in terms of saving this year on that program. We're still optimistic about those initiatives and taking costs out of our stores by leaving more time for our associates to take care of customers and taking out of the back office work in our stores.
Bonnie
Yeah.
Bonnie, I'll jump in just 'cause I know this is a big question, not only for our company, but across a lot of companies. One, I would just point out, our European business, believe it or not, inflation is not an issue there. T he energy is really the only thing that has spiked. We're not seeing the same pressures on labor or other costs in Europe. I would say Canada would be medium, and then the U.S. would be, the heaviest impact. I'd say our teams on the labor side, which is our largest single investment in our business, have done a good job. Certainly, while wage rates have risen, particularly in the U.S., I think we've done a good job of keeping as much of those incentives, retention bonuses, those things variable.
As we see wage pressures mitigate, we think we can pull a lot of that back. From an efficiency standpoint, we've run in this quarter 2% less hours than we did a year ago. To Claude's point, we're trying to continue to look at efficiencies, particularly the administration of our business, to take hours out of the business, and we think there's more to do there. F inally, on price, we've taken in the quarter, and this doesn't match because it happens at different periods of time. W e've raised prices on average 5.6%, during the quarter. Again, that wasn't from day one in the quarter, so you can't look at it that way.
That's compared to an average cost increase of like 3.7%. W e've more than recovered the cost of goods increases in the quarter by carefully looking at, our competitors and other channels. We're seeing inflation as we do price surveys and, we think we've remained competitive, but at the same time been able to move retails and allow us to cover those costs.
Okay, that's super helpful and good to hear about the pricing and maybe so far the consumer acceptance of those. I guess my second question is just around your capital allocation. C learly, you've stepped up your buyback, this quarter, which is great, but suggests to me there might not be as many large-scale acquisition opportunities right now. As we look ahead to the rest of, I guess, this calendar year, I'm trying to get a sense of, how you're prioritizing share repurchases versus M&A. Thinking back to your Investor Day last year, you guys laid out, your EBITDA targets by the end of FY 2023 without, any major M&A. It was $5 billion and quite frankly you're tracking, there and probably will be above.
Can you maybe share with us, how much above you see your Adjusted EBITDA hitting by the end of FY 2023 would be helpful. Thank you.
Well, as far as capital allocation, that doesn't change our M&A strategy. I think we were always clear on that. We feel that we have a strong balance sheet and there's a lot of activity on M&A. Until there's something that materializes itself, then we're gonna continue to use our buyback program because of our low leverage. Being at 1.33 for us is low, very low. Our comfortable level would be around 2.25. That leaves ample room for us in terms of flexibility on our balance sheet. We have the ability to lever by over $10 billion really easily.
We're gonna continue to use our buyback and we're gonna also renew our program for next year. That's gonna give us the possibility with 10% of our public float, repurchasing 10% of our public float, to repurchase maybe over $3 billion next year, if nothing comes up. That's how we look at it and how we treat it. As far as EBITDA is concerned, first, we're not giving any guidance on EBITDA, but for sure, we feel comfortable about our target that we showed to everyone. Our target is at $5.1 billion. We've been trending last twelve months at $5.2 billion.
We see also continued success in our initiatives that we have in our five-year plan. Our Fresh Food, Fast program is doing and performing very well. We're continuing to develop it. Our merchandise pricing and promotion program local pricing has delivered great synergies. We're starting on the promotion side of it and just starting, we're optimistic also to continue to deliver on promotion and assortment also in these programs. Our fuel initiatives also are still thriving and obviously our NTI program is continuing. We see a continued growth and we're a firm believer in our strategy, we're cautiously optimistic that we're gonna achieve our number next year and hopefully more.
All right. Sounds good. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Mark Petrie with CIBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. I just wanted to follow up on a couple items, actually. Brian, thanks for the comments just with regards to the pricing and sort of offsetting the product cost inflation and sort of operating cost inflation. Just wondering how your work on sort of price optimization layers into that. I mean, is that sort of a key element in being able to achieve that, or is that sort of separate from that discussion?
It's a great question because as we went down this path, a lot of our teams have not experienced inflation. I think I'd say that having our D&A team there has helped us make price moves that we think are more elastic with the customer, less elastic, sorry, with the customer and, l ess noticeable. I think we've been able to make smarter moves. We've been able to pull back promotional activity that, the data is showing us isn't driving, strong economic results.
While the pace of change here has forced us to kind of get outside of that pure D&A modeling approach, I think the learnings that the team brings to the table has allowed us to do this in a much more thoughtful way in terms of consumer and consumer price perception.
Okay. Makes sense. Thank you. I guess just second question, Brian, you highlighted the plans for the loyalty program launch. Just hoping you can tell us a bit more about what you've learned from the pilots and what sort of impact you think that's gonna have on your business, be it sales, volumes, or margins.
Yes, we've piloted in Denver and then a small market in South Carolina, and we're really trying to differentiate here. This is , I think retail is kind of stuck in this buying club where, buy five, get one free, whether it's electronic or not. We're really trying to focus on, those customers that are most important to us and bring them significant value across not just our products, but also fuel services, our subscription programs, whether that be car wash or beverages. Layers of benefits, if you think about a pyramid of value, the more you buy, the more value we bring you. The pilots have gone very well. N et promoter scores have been very strong.
Technology is always the issue, and so we're really making sure that we've got it right before we press the button. Our goal is to be in 2,000 stores early in the next fiscal year.
Appreciate the comments. All the best.
Sure.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Michael Van Aelst with TD Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Looks like the industry's acting very rationally in this environment, regardless of the volumes or the OpEx inflation levels. One thing I'm trying to wrap my head around is the fuel volumes overall, because it seems like based on your same two-year stackers, you're still something in the mid-teens below, lower than the 2019 levels, pre-pandemic. The industry data is implying only a 3% drop versus 2019 level. T hat's miles driven and fuel consumption. I'm curious. Can you help me reconcile the difference and maybe why we're not seeing some of the retailers or the C-store operators see as much of a recovery?
It's a good question, Michael. I think, there's so many data points, EIA, we've got, Apple and the phone companies providing data on miles driven and, the variability of that data is, quite honestly frustrating a bit at our, on our side that we don't always get the same results for the same areas. I would say our results have varied materially depending on where you're at in the network. Europe, largely at 2019 numbers, B2B business actually over 2019 numbers. Canada and the U.S., it depends. If you take our competitor who released earnings this week and we compare the same geographies, we'd have very similar results to them in the period.
I think there's two other things that maybe are in play. One is, we've had a lot of rebranding activity, and those are disruptive to our sites. I t takes us some period of time to redo the canopies, the pumps and all that. T hat's not trivial when we look at the impact, and we certainly have a period where we're re-educating the customer on the value of the Circle K brand versus a Shell or BP or whatever that's been up there. So I haven't quantified that, but that's out there. I mean, that's a reality that we've torn up a lot of our forecourts in the efforts to improve them and improve our economics. I think that's a piece.
I think the industry too is maybe separated a bit from some of the low-price players that have been in the market. While I think it's economically rational, I could see maybe a little bit of volume bleeding into some of those historically low-price players the likes, the Costco, et cetera. Hard to quantify any bit of that, but I think our single biggest piece, Michael, is we're more impacted by that morning daypart, and with our network, and we just need people to get back. W e're largely a suburban network when you look at the bulk of our sites, and we need people to get back into the offices and commute to work again.
I think that's our biggest thing that we need to kind of get back to normal volumes.
That's helpful. Thank you. Speaking of the morning day part, you talked about Fresh Food, Fast in North America seeing, you're seeing a 20% increase in same store sales. Was that just in the fresh, or is that in the total store where you've implemented those programs?
No.
And then-
In that category. Yeah, it's in that category, Michael. W e are seeing it certainly grows the basket and helps the store as well.
Okay.
I think over time, if we're able to get the supply chain right and execute it right, we just think it'll also increase customer loyalty. Y ou've got a certain percent of our customers that are floaters, and I think just being able to serve another need state for them, it will bring them in more often. We're excited. W E've not sampled this program at all, due to COVID. We have a lot of activities planned in the coming months.
Okay. Can you talk about that chicken sandwich launch? Obviously chicken sandwiches are huge these days, and I'm just curious what type of product it is and where you're launching it.
Yeah, it is. I mean, it's no secret chicken's just been a hot commodity, very difficult to source. We have a sandwich that, if you think about a Chick-fil-A, in a foil wrapper, I think that's the core piece that we've been missing. Certainly we're doing chicken bites, chicken tenders as part of the offer. Where we've been able to source it, particularly in the Southeast U.S., they are some of our strongest SKUs. T hat's just a big hole in our current assortment. As those supply chains have started to stabilize, we're excited to get in that business.
Okay. Just finally, can you comment on the morning daypart and how it's been recovering the last little while as we've seen the restrictions and the work from home mandates start to come up?
Yeah, I'd say if you look back at the quarter, we were really encouraged by the first 45 days of the quarter. W e saw strong mid-single-digit growth in traffic and same-store sales. Then, Omicron just crushed us for the last part of the quarter. Then as we look into Q4, we're kind of back where we were early in the prior quarter. We're seeing, particularly in the U.S. and Europe, very strong, traffic and sales. That morning daypart's a part of that. I just think we're scratching the surface in terms of people going back to work yet.
I think the full effect of that is still to come as, I know for us, we literally are just opening offices now, and I know that's the case for a lot of the employers out there today.
Thanks, Brian. Thank you.
Thanks, Michael.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Christopher Li with Desjardins. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Brian, I'm just on maybe first one on fuel margins. O ver the past couple of years, Couche-Tard has consistently maintained a few cents premium over the open industry average. I guess my question is, do you think that level of premium is sustainable longer term as fuel volumes start to normalize?
Chris, thanks for the question. Our goal is to expand it. You know?
Yeah.
We're investing heavily to win in fuel both on the consumer side with our Pay by Plate initiatives, our brand promises. On the supply side, our partnership with Musket and Love's here in the U.S., we bring an unparalleled scale and certainly a very, very top quartile supply and trading capability to the market. Third, as we transition to more of our own fleet, we think the opportunity to be very opportunistic where we source product as we shift to our own brands will again just further enhance our advantages versus a very fragmented industry. We all need to remember 60% of the industry's single-site operators. Chris, our goal, and I'll be disappointed, is over time, we can't expand that.
Okay, that's very helpful. Maybe just a follow-up on that is, you mentioned that the bottom quartile players. Do you have a sense of what their break-even fuel margin is these days, given all the increased cost pressures?
I think there's some data out there from NACS, Chris. I don't have it off the top of my head, but Claude's nodding his head. We'd be happy to look that up and share that. There's some very good State of the Industry data out there that we'd be able to share with you.
Yeah.
That'll be great.
We think it's between $0.21 and $0.25, but I'm gonna get you the right data on that. Obviously, like Brian mentioned earlier, that's increasing with the pressure they have on with inflation. Inflation really in the last three months has been increasing. I'm not sure we're gonna have a reported real number.
Give a relative,
Yeah.
relative delta, though, versus
Yeah.
versus top quartile.
We'll provide that to you, Chris.
Perfect. Maybe last question, just maybe for Claude. Just in terms of the retention cost, you called out $20 million during the quarter, and I think last quarter was around $25 million. Is it fair to assume those are more one-time in nature, so as you go into next fiscal year, assuming the labor situation continues to improve, that maybe some of those retention costs will not recur again next year?
Yeah. Well, it's difficult to measure and say, "Well, we're gonna take out those costs, and then we're gonna decrease our cost base by the same amount." I think we're decreasing these costs in the different geography, but adapting also to the wage increase that we encounter in these geographies. If these temporary measures were there until we know more and we have more clarity on the increase in wages and what it, what it takes to have a good retention rate, turnover rate like we used to have, and once we achieve these, then we scale down these retention measures. But obviously, there's a portion of it that's gonna come into wage increase that are happening all over the U.S. and also in Canada.
Great. Thanks very much, and all the best.
Thanks, Chris.
Thank you, Chris.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Vishal Shreedhar with National Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. The geopolitical backdrop is under increased scrutiny, obviously. I'm wondering if you could provide us any updates on how Couche-Tard thinks about global expansion, either in Europe or in Asia. Are these the same priority that they were? How should we think about preferred countries of expansion or even potential divestitures?
Yeah, thanks, Vishal. I certainly hope, deep in my heart that this is a very temporary situation in Europe. Never thought I'd see a war in Europe in my lifetime. I think in terms of M&A, we think long term, and certainly don't take the geopolitical or currency risk lightly as we look forward. T he macro trends around where the world's gonna grow, looking at Latin America, looking at Southeast Asia remain intact. W e've signaled that those are areas we have ambitions to grow and doing it in the right way. We've operated again in Russia and Poland and other countries for decades, and, we've been able to operate, in the right way, in an ethical fashion and in a safe fashion.
As we look at other markets, we'll take the same approach, but again, long term. T his recent political event, I think heightens the reality that things can happen. I don't think it's changed where we're looking and where we're focused on getting something done.
Okay. Thanks for that color. With respect to fuel margins, they've increased rapidly post-COVID. I know Couche-Tard obviously will take, a dollar of earnings where they can get it, but these fuel margins are a more volatile source of earnings, let's say, versus your merchandising business. Does Couche-Tard consider the focus on fuel and the volatility of earnings as it looks forward and expands those fuel margins?
I think fuel will be an important piece of what we do for a long period of time. As we've talked about mitigating that via a number of ways. I think our goal is to create sustainable competitive advantages versus a fragmented industry and take market share versus this industry over the coming decade. Volatility is inherent in commodities, but volatility also creates opportunities for those that are good. W e think we've developed capabilities that put us in a top quartile in the fuel space. Quite honestly, we welcome the volatility. You may not like it every quarter in terms of t he earnings and trying to guess where fuel margins are.
Again, volatility does create, significant economic opportunities for those that have, the flexibility and capabilities to seize it. W e think it's a part of it, and we just encourage looking at fuel margins over longer periods of time. You looked at the last decade, you'd see a nice persistent increase in unit margins, and I think we continue to take advantage of that and widen the gap versus the industry.
Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes the Q&A portion of the conference. Mr. Lachance, back over to you.
Thank you, operator. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Claude. Thank you all for joining us. We wish you a great day and look forward to discussing our fourth quarter 2022 results in June. You may now disconnect.
Thanks, everyone. Have a good day.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Bye.