Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to this web conference presenting Alimentation Couche-Tard Financial Results for the Fourth Quarter of Fiscal Year 2023. 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. 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. 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.
Monsieur Filipe Da Silva, Senior Vice President, Finance, future Chief Financial Officer, effective July first, is also present with us on this call. Brian, you may begin your conference.
Thank you, Jean-Philippe. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for this presentation of our quarterly results. We're pleased to report strong results this quarter, as well as exceptional results for the fiscal year. Before I go into more detail, I want to highlight some of the other significant investments in our business. First, let me say a few remarks on our five-year Double Again strategy, which came to successful close at the end of this fiscal year. Many organizations chart ambitious strategic plans. Along the way, they can lose momentum and don't stay their course. We were able to march forward, growing, innovating, and producing exceptional financial results, thanks to our team members and their focus on our customers.
Even with a global pandemic, labor shortages, and supply chain issues, our stores and forecourts continued evolving for the future of convenience and mobility, introducing new programs and initiatives, always striving to make it easier for our customers and creating value for our shareholders. We're very proud of keeping on track with all of our strategic goals, we look forward to going into more detail on Double Again and the next legs of our strategic journey in our upcoming Analyst and Investor Conference on October 11 in Phoenix, Arizona. Keeping to our customary financial and operational discipline, we did not close on any large acquisitions through most of this 5-year time frame. We're excited in recent months by the progress and more positive environment for M&A after many years of inflative multiples that we did not think would create shareholder value.
As opposed to sitting back, we took the opportunity during those five years to focus on organic growth, and we're more than pleased with the EBIT result of almost $5.8 billion, well above our Double Again objective that we set five years ago. At the beginning of the quarter, we announced our game-changing proposed acquisition of certain assets from TotalEnergies in four new European markets. They're very strategically placed versus our existing network in Europe, and we're looking forward to closing on that transaction by the end of the calendar year. We also reached an agreement during the quarter to acquire 112 fuel and convenience retail sites to be carved out from MAPCO, which includes a very strong network of modern, well-located sites in attractive markets, predominantly in Tennessee and Alabama.
During the quarter, we also closed on the acquisition of 55 high-quality locations in Arkansas and Florida and 65 Express Tunnel Car Wash sites, primarily in Arizona and Illinois, that are very close to our existing network. In each case, we see significant opportunities to bring value to these businesses. I also want to take a moment to go over our recent announcement that Claude Tessier will retire as our CFO on July 1st of this year. At that time, Filipe Da Silva will become Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. It'd be hard to list all the ways his leadership has impacted the business, adding tremendous value over those years. During his tenure, we launched and successfully completed our Double Again strategy. We made sustainability a lens to the business with transparent reporting.
We greatly expanded the scale and reach of the organization with acquisitions of Topaz, CST, and Holiday, in addition to Hong Kong, and more recently announced the transactions in Europe and the U.S. that I just outlined. Our stock price more than doubled during Claude's tenure. Through his wise counsel and leadership, Claude made us a better, stronger business. We will miss him and wish him all the best in the future. We're also pleased that Claude identified and mentored his successor in Filipe, and that Claude will be around for a while to help with a seamless transition. Filipe brings a wealth of international retail and financial expertise to Couche-Tard. He started his career with TotalEnergies in Argentina, then joined the Carrefour Group, where he worked in Buenos Aires, Colombia, India, and Indonesia.
He later worked with Grupo Éxito, one of the South America's largest big box retailers, before joining Walmart's Central American subsidiary as its CFO, then later becoming Walmart Canada's CFO. For the last 4 months, Filipe has been Senior Vice President of Finance here at Couche-Tard, I've greatly enjoyed getting to know him, and I'm sure you will too. I'm also confident that he will help drive our exceptional and disciplined growth journey in the years ahead. I'll ask Filipe to make a few short comments following Claude's presentation. Let me turn to our results for the quarter, beginning with convenience. Compared to the same quarter last year, same store merchandise revenues increased 3.3% in the U.S.
3% in Europe and other regions, and 5.9% in Canada, driven by strong performance in the beverage category, as well as continued growth of our Fresh Food Fast programs and also private label. This has been offset a little bit by continued softness in our Cigarette and other Tobacco products, driven from illicit trade here in Canada, and then also increased restrictions in some of our markets. Across the network, our Fresh Food Fast program is now in nearly 4,860 sites globally. Sales and profits continue to grow double-digit as store teams dial up execution and our customers drive strong trial and repeat purchase of our products. Our Griddle Cake limited time breakfast sandwich offer concluded this quarter and was the most successful LTO, or limited time offer, in our company history.
The current limited time offer, Philly Cheesesteak Sandwich, has now launched and is showing very strong early results. Assortment localization in the food category is increasing as business units refine their offers for local tastes while leveraging our national supplier relationships and scale. We introduced a digital time and temperature system that's been implemented across North America, allowing for more efficient monitoring and rapid resolution of any quality issues. This is just one of the many operational innovations to make the lives easier for our team members and ensure high-quality, safe food for our customers. Total company packed beverage sales across the network were up significantly from prior year.
Currently, we're gearing up for the warmer weather with our Hundred Days of Summer promotion in North America, including a 33 stop Purple Thunder anniversary tour, celebrating the highly successful first anniversary of Mountain Dew Purple Thunder, which was a Circle K exclusive in North America. In age-restricted beverages, global alcohol sales had a strong performance. In the U.S., we now have private label wine selling in nearly 3,100 stores. Our exclusive Sunshine Bliss wines include seven varieties priced under $8, while our six premium fine wines range in price between $10 and $25. Both Sunshine Bliss and fine wines boast strong tasting point ratings, have received several gold and silver awards, and have been named best buys by Tastings.com and the Wine Enthusiast.
These proprietary wine offers, as well as our Private Brand products in general, are doing very well in providing highly competitive products at good value for our customers. I also want to share that earlier this month, actually, 3 weeks ago today, our Inner Circle loyalty program went live in 429 sites across the Florida business unit. Inner Circle is a free membership program delivered in targeted value via a seamless experience to our customers with fuel rewards, food rewards, and much more, while also providing new personalized experiences. No doubt, launching Inner Circle turned out to be more difficult than we expected as we navigated a highly complex technical roadmap and our goal to get it right, developing a unique, valuable, and easy-to-use program for our customers.
Three weeks in, I couldn't be more pleased with the rollout so far, with over 1.2 million people enrolled in just three weeks. I want to thank the many team members across the organization who have contributed to bringing Inner Circle to life. We plan to expand to more business units, starting in the U.S., as the Southeast U.S., as this year progresses. Moving to our Fuel business, same-store road transportation fuel volume increased 0.8% in the U.S. and by 6% in Canada, favorably impacted by lower pricing and pent-up demand for travel. In Europe and other regions, same-store fuel transportation volume decreased by 2.4%, unfavorably impacted by challenging macroeconomic conditions, particularly in Eastern Europe, higher inflation, and the cycling of the Ukraine war that created an influx of refugees last year into our Baltic countries and Poland.
In our Circle K fuel rebranding work, we completed nearly 360 new sites in the quarter, bringing our total to nearly 4,200 Circle K fuel branded sites in the U.S. and Canada. We also continued with our fuel promotional events, hosting over 140 local events to help alleviate some of the cost pressures at the pump for our customers. In May, we had two national fuel days in the U.S. and Canada, which included over 6,500 sites and created great saving opportunities for our customers in both countries. Our EV fast charging network in Europe now consists of 1,570 charging stalls, covering more than 320 sites. We also have 1,600 truck charging locations in Sweden and Norway alone, year- to- date, we have sold over 10,000 home and workplace chargers.
In fiscal 2023, we had 1.5 million charging transactions on Circle K transit chargers, doubling the amount from last year. The increase is driven both by network expansion and higher utilization of our existing network. We continue to expand the charging network in Europe with increased focus on Ireland and pilots in the Baltics and Poland. In North America, we expanded our own and operated network to Virginia and California, BC and Canada, as we progress on our commitment of 200 EV sites in the next two years. We've received good customer feedback on our integrated offer and our well-located sites. Before I turn it over to Claude, I want to discuss a notable improvement in the labor situation. Candidates in the last fiscal year topped 1 million versus 670,000 in the year prior.
This is due to more robust internal sourcing of candidates, better employer marketing and recruiting tools, and then the macroeconomic environment. It allowed us to be far more selective with our candidates that we hire, and we're seeing turnover for stores decreasing over 13% this year versus prior year, and the trend continues to improve. Retention has also continued to improve, as well as we pilot innovative approaches, including store, employee store discounts, and new manager hiring and training programs. I'll pause there and let Claude take you through more of our fourth quarter and annual financial results. Claude?
Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Brian, for the kind words. I truly appreciate them, and will say more about my announced departure as CFO at the end of my remarks. However, being a finance guy, I want to first turn to the numbers and our quarterly annual results. Our results for both the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 have exceeded our expectations on many fronts, allowing us to significantly surpass our Double Again strategic ambitions, bringing our adjusted EBITDA for fiscal 2023 to almost $5.8 billion.
For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023, adjusted diluted net earnings per share increased by 29.1% compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022, driven by strong results on all our key metrics, including a decelerating normalized growth of expenses, which was below inflation for the fourth quarter when normalized for the additional week in this quarter. Our balance sheet continues to be particularly strong, and our key return metrics are also healthy, with returns on equity and return on capital employed reaching 24.7% and 17.5%. We are also happy to report that, following the end of the quarter, Moody's has upgraded our long-term senior unsecured rating to Baa1 from Baa2, with a stable outlook as a reflection of our strong track record and enhanced scale, broad geographic footprint and conservative balance sheet.
I will now go over some key figures for the quarter. For more details, please refer to our MD&A available on our website. For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023, we are happy to report net earnings of $670.7 million or $0.68 per share on a diluted basis. Excluding certain items described in more detail in our MD&A, adjusted net earnings were approximately $698 million or $0.71 per share on a diluted basis for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023, compared with $573 million or $0.55 per share on a diluted basis for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022, an increase of approximately 29.1% in the adjusted diluted earnings per share.
For fiscal 2023, net earnings stood at $3.1 billion, an increase of $407.6 million, or 15.2%, compared with fiscal 2022. Diluted net earnings per share stood at $3.06, compared with $2.52 for the previous fiscal year. Adjusted net earnings stood at $3.2 billion, an increase of $382 million, or 13.8%, compared with fiscal 2022. Adjusted net earnings per share were $3.12, compared with $2.60 for fiscal 2022, an increase of 20%. During the fourth quarter, excluding the net impact from foreign currency translation, merchandise and service revenues increased by approximately $472 million or 12.5%.
This increase is primarily attributable to the impact of the thirteenth week in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023 to organic growth, as well as to contribution from acquisitions, which amounted to approximately $33 million. During fiscal 2023, excluding the net impact from foreign currency translation, merchandise and service revenues increased by approximately $1 billion or 6.1%. Including the net impact from foreign currency translation, merchandise and service gross profit increased by approximately $215 million or 16.9%. This is primarily due to organic growth as well as to the impact of the thirteenth week in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023.
Our gross margin increased by 1% in the U.S. to 34.1%, by 2.6% in Europe and other regions to 40.9%, and in Canada by 1.7%- 34.1%, all impacted favorably by a change in product mix. Fiscal 23, excluding the net impact from foreign currency translation, merchandise and service gross profit increased by approximately $409.3 million or 7.2%. Our gross margins in the U.S. increased by 0.1%- 33.8%, by 0.6% in Europe and other regions to 38.8%, and by 0.9% in Canada to 33.1%. Moving on to the fuel side of our business.
In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023, our road transportation fuel gross margin was $0.4534 per gallon in the U.S., a decrease of $0.0078 per gallon. In Canada, it was CAD 0.1213 per liter, a decrease of CAD 0.0128 per liter. In Europe and other regions, our road transportation fuel margins was $0.1060 per liter, an increase of $0.0309 per liter due to the geopolitical context and difficult supply condition in the comparable quarter last year. Fuel margins remained healthy throughout our network due to favorable market conditions and the continued work on the optimization of our supply chain. During fiscal 2023, our road transportation fuel gross profit was $6 billion, an increase of $779.5 million compared with fiscal 2022.
Our road transportation fuel gross margin was $0.4751 per gallon in the U.S., EUR 0.0998 per liter in Europe and other regions, and CAD 0.1275 per liter in Canada. Now, looking at SG&A. For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023, normalized operating expenses are increased by 9.9% year-over-year. This is mainly driven by the impact of the 13th week in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023, in addition to the costs from rising minimum wages, inflationary pressures, increased usage of software as a service solutions, increased investments to support our strategic initiatives, as well as by charges for the early termination of an existing fuel supply agreement, while being partly offset by the impact of lower pressure in the employment market.
When factoring in the estimated impact of the 13th week in the fourth quarter, our normalized growth of expenses remain lower than the average inflation observed throughout our network of 5.8%, as we have continued to deploy strategic efforts in order to mitigate the impact of a higher inflation level and continued pressure on wages. Excluding specific items described in more detail in our MD&A, the adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023 increased by $189.6 million, or 16.7%, compared with the corresponding quarter of fiscal 2022, mainly due to the impact of the 13th week in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023.
Organic growth in our convenience store operation, as well as higher road transportation fuel gross profit in Europe and other regions, partly offset by higher expenses by the translation of our foreign currency operations into U.S. dollars, which have a negative impact of approximately $14 million. During fiscal 2023, on the same basis, the adjusted EBITDA increased by $509.3 million, or 9.7%, compared with fiscal 2022, mainly attributable to a higher road transportation fuel gross profit. Organic growth in our convenience store operation, as well as to the impact of the 53rd week in fiscal 2023, partly offset by higher expenses and by the translation of our foreign currency operations in U.S. dollar, which had a negative impact of approximately $133 million.
From a tax perspective, the income tax rate for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023 was 19.2%, compared with 22.6% for the corresponding period of fiscal 2022. The decrease mainly stems from the impact of the different mix in our earnings across the various jurisdiction in which we operate. As at April 30, 2023, our return on equity remains strong at 24.7%, and our return on capital employed stood at 17.5%, both figures higher sequentially compared to the third quarter. During the fiscal year, we continued to generate strong free cash flows, our leverage ratio stood at 1.49 times, despite having repurchased 52 million shares for $2.3 billion during the year under our NCIB.
Subsequent to the end of the fiscal 2023, and under the renewed program, we repurchased more than 4.1 million shares for an amount of $204.1 million dollar. We also have strong balance sheet liquidity, with $834 million in cash and an additional $3.5 billion dollar available through our main revolving credit facility. Turning to the dividend, the board of directors declared yesterday a quarterly dividend of CAD 0.14 per share for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023, to shareholders on record as of July seventh, 2023, and approve its payment effective July twenty-first, 2023. Before I go, I would like to say a few personal words, as this will be my last call as Couche-Tard CFO. Believe me, deciding to leave was not an easy decision.
Being at the end of our Double Again strategy, it was the right time for the business and for me to focus on my family and other challenges ahead. I leave with a great sense of pride and accomplishment. I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank our Founder and Executive Chairman of the Board, Alain Bouchard, Brian and executive leadership team, all my wonderful colleagues around the world, and the board members for their support over my years spent with Couche-Tard. I would also like to thank you, all of you on this call today. It has been a pleasure working with you, being a steward of your trust and your investment in our business.
My parting promise is that you can expect the transition to be seamless and transparent as I pass the baton, as we say, to my friend and colleague, Filipe Da Silva. Filipe, you want to address the people?
Thank you. Thank you, Claude, thank you, Brian, and thank you to all on the call this morning. I won't take time to go over my background, as Brian covered that at the beginning of the call, and I know there are many questions to be answered in very limited time. Let me just take the opportunity to say that I'm humbled and honored to be the next CFO of Couche-Tard. During my four months here, I have learned firsthand about Couche-Tard's special One Team culture. It's a great company with strong financial foundation, a great future ahead, and with a welcoming and inclusive environment. I have been around long enough to know how rare and wonderful it is. I'm excited to get started at CFO and glad Claude is sticking around to further show me the ropes.
I am also thrilled about proposed acquisition of certain retail assets of TotalEnergies. As Brian said earlier, I started my career there, and I look forward to working again with this fantastic business. As we look again to fiscal 2024, we are excited to hold our Investor Day on October 11 in Phoenix, Arizona, where we will be discussing our new multi-year strategic plan in greater detail, including the renewed focus around cost optimization. I look forward to meeting you all in person at this event. I will turn it back over to Brian.
All right, thank you, Filipe. Thank you sincerely, Claude. I want to finish my remarks by thanking all of our team members for their hard work and commitment to the business. They're the ones that have produced the really strong results this year, and together, we recently received the Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award for the second year in a row. This award recognizes our efforts to create a culture where employees feel valued and respected, know and embrace their roles in our success, and seize opportunities for personal and professional growth. We're among the largest organizations to win this award, and I'm delighted and proud to see our engagement paying off, allowing each of us to reach our strategic goals and continue our exceptional and disciplined journey, growing together as One Team. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator to answer analyst questions this morning.
Operator?
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the one on your touch-tone phone. You'll hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request, and your questions will be pulled in the order they are received. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the 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 Vishal Shreedhar with National Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to focus in on the merchandising margin and maybe some help on understanding the quarter, the sequential progress that you've made in the merchandising margin, you know, some notable strength there. Maybe if you go down the regions, if you can help me understand what changed sequentially to drive the improvement in the gross margin rates that we're seeing.
Vishal, I'll take a stab. Focusing on North America, I'd say in Canada, largely driven by a mix issue, where we've seen softness in Cigarettes driven by illicit Tobacco. It's sad and I think it needs government intervention, illicit is now approaching almost 40% of total volume in Canada. That category has been weak for us, we've seen strong growth in the beverage category in particular. It's, you know, the mix has really driven the growth in Canada. U.S. is a little different. You know, Tobacco's been soft. Our trends have been largely in line with market, which candidly is quite not good enough. We're working with our suppliers to engage with them on how do we use our loyalty properties to drive growth in that category.
You'll see more activity from us in the coming quarter. 1, a mix. 2, food continues to grow and improve. you know, just the shrink, which is, 1, better operational controls, but then also, 2, just driven by sales. You know, the best thing to fix food spoilage is growing sales, and we continue to see sales grow strong double digits on a same-store basis. Third, you know, beverage continues to do very, very well in the category. That's, that's certainly accretive to the margin picture. I'd say those are the 3 drivers. you know, we continue to work with our suppliers and with our procurement groups to optimize, you know, how we procure, and, you know, we try to take advantage of the scale where we can.
Okay. Maybe just a longer-term question. You know, your Car Wash initiative, how significant can Car Wash be? Is this a major driver, or is it more of an adjunct driver for Couche-Tard, as you think over the next few years? Maybe just on that, on an unrelated note, if someone could just, Claude, maybe you could just jump in and also help us understand how much the extra week added EPS. That's it. Thanks.
Okay. Car Wash. We love Car Wash business. When we complete the acquisition of TotalEnergies sites, we'll have over 3,000 Car Washes in the network. We're in that business. The tunnel wash offer that we purchased in Illinois and Arizona, it's a bit of an experiment. You know, we like the model. We like the customer experience of that of that tunnel business. We know that cars will continue to get dirty no matter what propels them or powers them. We're in the middle of you know, several very disciplined pilots to see if we can drive Car Wash customers to our forecourt and to our stores at Circle K.
Also, can we create value with our Circle K customers, driving them to the Car Wash sites and maybe even the subscription membership. Early in that process, but pleased with the initial results. Whether we go deeper or not remains to be seen, but you know, we like the business. Claude?
Vishal, on your question on the extra week, we're not providing exact information on that as you know, but the estimate, if you're taking an estimate of 2% for the year and 8% for the quarter, I think you're pretty close to the impact that it would have on our EBITDA, and you can translate that into net earnings and EPS, taking the same metrics. That's the impact that we have from this 53rd or 13 weeks, depending on how you look at it.
Your next question comes from Mark Petrie with CIBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. I wanted to ask about the U.S. merchandise, but same-store sales, and specifically sort of the, you know, the sales performance, specifically some color on the trends in basket and traffic. Any commentary about the trajectory of same-store sales growth through Q4 and then so far in Q1? I guess, finally, just any commentary on what you're seeing in the market and the consumer, and if price is getting any tougher to pass through? Thanks.
Yeah, thanks for the question, Mark. You know, the 3.5%, again, hampered significantly by Tobacco. We're continuing to see growth in alternative nicotine, but the combustibles have a very soft year. Again, you can see Altria and RAI's results were largely in line with negative units in that category. If you say, "Hey, Tobacco is 30% of sales, and that's either zero or negative growth," you can do some math and say that the rest of the business is actually very strong. The one issue I missed before on the margin, too, was private label continues to be very robust for us, up, you know, 27%, I think, for the quarter, year-over-year. You know, that continues to be very strong.
I think that's an example of your question about the consumer. We're certainly seeing the consumer in certain pockets of our geographies, looking for more value. We're seeing some trade down, certainly in brands. In the beer category, we're seeing, again, strong private label growth, seeing some brand trading in the Tobacco category as well. Overall, you know, the consumer's held up pretty well. You know, employment's been good, and we're not seeing some of the same weaknesses that maybe some of the other channels have had. Traffic, relatively flat, so most of the sales growth that you see is basket-driven, units relatively flat as well. Again, overall pleased, but certainly watching the consumer, and we're focused on, you know, fewer, more impactful, value-oriented offers to our customers.
On the opposite side, you know, as we've seen fuel prices come down, you know, volumes increased, and we're actually seeing premium sales recover as a percentage of total volume as well. That's obviously good for our margin profile. A little bit of a mixed message there, but again, overall, pleased. As I think about what we've seen in the last six to eight weeks, I'd say largely the trends have continued, if not strengthened a little bit.
Okay, excellent. Appreciate the comments, and Claude, congratulations on an excellent career and run at Couche-Tard, and all the best.
Yeah. Thank you, Mark. Appreciate it.
Your next question comes from Irene Nattel with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Before I ask my questions, I wanna echo what Mark just said. It's been a pleasure working with Claude all these years. Wish you best of luck and welcome, Filipe. I have a couple of follow-up questions, please, from some of the commentary. On private label, can you give us an update on private label sales as a % of total? Also, can you give us an update on food sales or food penetration as a % of total in the stores in which it is offered right now?
Yeah, Irene, I'll take the private label and ask Claude on the food. Private label is roughly around 7% of inside sales in the U.S., slightly less in Canada. If you look at gross margin contribution, it'd be a bit higher than that. Food we have, you know, in the 5,000, whatever stores that we talked about earlier.
We have 5,000 stores that we've deployed food into. I think we did during the quarter 320 more. Also, we are still enjoying great sales performance. We're trending well over 20% in same store volume growth. We still are excited about the results of our program and how the consumer likes our program. Obviously, Brian told earlier that we're still working on the shrink side of the equation, but in terms of sales, the impact is there.
In our Northern Tier business, which was really the model for this program in North America, you know, we would be north 15% food penetration as a percentage of total sales. You know, so that's our, you know, that's certainly a goalpost that we're shooting for as we grow the food culture and, you know, create awareness of trial in our other geographies.
That's great. Thank you. Very helpful. Moving on to the other questions. One of the things, obviously, gas margins, really strong. Would it be possible for you to give us an idea of how much of the strength in the gas margins is really due to shifts that you have made in your procurement strategies and your more sophisticated pricing algorithms? Therefore, you know, how much of this sort of gas margin, if we call it, you know, premium to the market, should be sustainable?
Yeah. I'd say again, we're pleased with the results and also pleased with recent trends in the fuel category, both in terms of volume and margin. I'd say we continue to develop and strengthen our fuel trading and procurement practice. We're now transporting 60% of our own fuel with our own trucks. You know, two years ago, it was almost zero. You know, that gives us tremendous flexibility to maximize cost arbitrages as they exist geographically. The rebrands Circle K are not immaterial. Almost 400 for the quarter, you know, with the Circle K brand, it gives us a lot of flexibility to source from alternative points and, you know, just, it's a better margin profile for us. Shrink control, as we look at fuel, the Fuel business. It's 100 little things, Irene.
You know, both in Europe and North America, our Trading business is certainly creating value. I would say just, you know, geographically, you know, we're a very diverse organization. You've got sometimes, you know, you've got areas that are compressed and other areas that are performing very well. You know, geographic diversification, I think, has been our friend in this, in this case, too. Yeah.
Yeah, just to add maybe a point of reference is on Europe, I think we have high improved margins. You need to think about last year also, and with all the geopolitical disruption that we had last year, our quarter was not probably up to par. We have an easier comparable also in Europe, that explains the great performance of Europe this quarter.
Thank you. Just a follow-up question, if I may. On M&A, the tone of the release was decidedly more positive than, let's say, a couple of quarters ago. Can you talk about what you're seeing right now and whether there's been any changes in your geographic hierarchy, if you will?
I'd say no change in focus. You know, we still love North America. You know, we would be open to South America, Asia, as those opportunities would arise. You know, opportunistic in Europe, as you saw with the TotalEnergies acquisition. You know, we'll do four or five material deals this year. Just, you know, our hypothesis is that, you know, the competition has to be less than it was a year ago. You know, high yield money is, you know, largely on the sideline. Private equity should be largely on the sideline. You know, we're in great shape. As Claude said, our balance sheet is robust. You know, we've got plenty of dry powder, and we've got an organization that's capable. We're ready to do more and, just need the right opportunities at the right values.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Michael Van Aelst with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
I'm going to ask on M&A, but just to finish off on that, can you just comment, maybe you talked about 4-5 deals possible, and I think you're talking about the fiscal 2024. What size range are you looking at? Like, what's, what kind of scale can we be thinking about?
Mike, you've kind of seen it, right? You've got, you know, at the high water mark, 2,200 sites in Europe, then, you know, we did 1 for 10 stores. I think anything in between there is likely in play. You know, again, I think it's going to be a variety of things. I really can't say much more than that.
Well, that 4-5 deals that you commented on, is that including the ones already announced, or is that still to come?
Combination, I guess.
Okay. All right. On the loyalty program, you gave us a little bit of an update there, but what do you see as the most attractive features on this loyalty program, since it is new? You know, what's your geographic rollout looking like over the next, you know, year? How quickly are you gonna be able to get this throughout North America?
Yeah. Again, we're very early, and we took a long time to do this, but, you know, everybody's got a loyalty card, loyalty tag in their, in their wallet. Yeah, we really focused on trying to do something that's differentiated. It's a tier-based program that will be across really all of our offers, you know, Car Wash, subscription, Sip & Save, fuel, store, and we're targeting, you know, the high-value customers. The more you spend, the more you earn. Instant gratification, easy to use, you know, knock on wood, but if you look at the App Store, I think we had a 4.8 or 4.9 rating on all of our downloads so far.
Really it just focused on easy to use, clear value, focusing the value on, you know, the high-value customers that we know are out there in our stores, but also at our competitor sites. Claude, anything to add there?
No, I think you did very well.
Okay.
You mentioned-
It's the rollout piece. Our plan right now is to roll out to about 2,500 stores before the end of the calendar. We've got a plan B, that if we've got good technical performance on the platform by the end of July, so next month, we'd be prepared to expand that to another 2,000 stores. Making a total of about 4,500 stores for the year. That would cover a big chunk of the U.S.
Okay, you're starting in the U.S.-
Yeah. The other piece I'd add, there's an engine inside of this that allows for much more personalized and targeted offers, really getting to know the customer as a customer, not as just a someone. You know, we feel we've got the opportunity with the right the right work to, you know, just be more personalized and more in touch with our customers.
All right. Thank you.
Please only ask one question. Your next question comes from George Doumet with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Congrats, Filipe, and all the best, Claude. I just wanted to touch on the SG&A. It was a really strong performance in the quarter. Can you maybe talk to how much that extra week contributed and perhaps how you see that run rate evolving in the context of your commentary around renewed focus on the cost optimization?
Yeah. you know that 9.9% is the disclosed number that we have. A big part of it was mainly driven by the 13th week. obviously, the same buckets that I've been talking about the last two, three quarters were there. there's inflation on the wages, there's inflation also in our expenses and a lot in utilities and energies for our stores, as well as support to our strategic initiatives. that's all offset also a bit by our lower lower expense and the efforts that we're taking to control our cost base. If we're looking at it and try to look at the impact, the inflation for a quarter was 5.8%.
If we're taking out the 13th week, or our number would be closer to 5.5% increase in terms of SG&A. If you look at it by bucket, they're probably split, like wages is less impactful this quarter. I think that's what we said earlier this year, that at the end of the year, we would see easier compare, and we would see the end of the cycle also. The start of the cycle happened early last year. We're cycling that right now, and the 5.5% is continue to be, I think, through the beginning of this year.
we're gonna see more and our usual target for cost increases to be lower than inflation. I think you need to look at inflation, and we're trying to beat inflation, and we're taking the measures to make sure that we're meeting that.
Thanks.
Your next question comes from Chris Li with Desjardins. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everyone. Claude, let me also add my congratulations and best wishes. You'll certainly be missed.
Thank you, Chris.
Just maybe a welcome. Yeah, Brian, just maybe a question on the U.S. merchandise, same store sales growth. You know, it was obviously very strong at over 4% in fiscal 2023. Just curious, do you think this rate of growth is sustainable in fiscal 2024 as you lap some of the price increases? I know you touched on this already, but can you remind us, what are some of the major growth drivers, you know, in the, say, upcoming 12 months? Thank you.
Yeah, Chris, thanks for the question. Yeah, I think it's watching the consumer, and I think every retailer is saying the same thing. You know, if we continue the trends we're on and have a relatively soft landing, you know, we feel pretty good that we can continue our trends. You know, we think this industry continues to be uniquely positioned in the beverage category, and that is a big focus for us. You will see us push hard on both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages to drive traffic. We know food is a differentiator and a reason that people turn right versus left. If we can continue to grow that category double digit, and then provide just true value, you know, to our customers, you know, where and when they need it.
We think our loyalty platform, while certainly not available in every site, tomorrow, we're on a path to have a tool that we think is pretty unique in the industry and can, you know, drive loyalty, help us gather new customers and increase frequency of visits. You know, pending no big change in the macro environment, we feel pretty good that, you know, we can maintain those trends.
Great. Thanks, and all the best.
Next question.
Thanks, Chris.
Comes from Tamy Chen with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. My one question is, I wanted to go back to the U.S. fuel margin specifically. The press release called out the optimization of the supply chain. Can you elaborate on what that's referring to? Is that the fuel rebrand or is that something else? I was just curious, were there any favorable but transitory or opportunistic dynamics that occurred in the quarter? Because your U.S. fuel margin is just such a strong outperformance versus what it looked like the industry was tracking to. Thanks.
Just in terms of one-offs, there were no one-offs in the quarter for the U.S., so it was just straight organic performance. I'll just be a little repetitive or redundant with earlier, but, you know, we've got a really unique relationship with Musket, that allows us not only to, you know, bring the scale of both of our companies to bear, but also has really accelerated our capabilities in the trading space, and then the fuel rebranding that's occurred over the last couple of years, you know, shifting from mostly a major branded fuel offer to Circle K brand, just allow a lot more flexibility in purchasing and procurement.
I think that's been a big piece, and certainly, we do focus also on the consumer side of this, you know, very thoughtful in our pricing, trying to bring more technology into those pricing decisions. You know, when we're trying to bring value to our customer, we're trying to do it off MID in a lot of cases, whether that be through cards or fuel day promotions, as you saw, over the Memorial Day holiday. It's a combination of all those, Tamy, that we think continues to deliver strong results for us.
Great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Bonnie Herzog with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
All right. Thank you. Good morning. I just had a quick question on gallons and maybe traffic. Just hoping to hear a little bit more color on the consumer in terms of, you know, traffic, fill-up rates, and maybe anything else impacting volumes in the quarter or May, June. You know, did anything, I guess, surprise you in the quarter? Then, you know, really, what are the trends you're seeing with the consumer this summer? You know, any dynamics to call out, maybe from a macro perspective? Thanks.
Yeah, I guess I read the same things you do. I think in the Wall Street Journal, they talked about this, you know, being one of the busiest summers, in the U.S. for travel. We feel good about miles driven despite, you know, all the economic uncertainty that we read about. That's showing up in our results a bit. You know, we've been positive, same store gallons, both in Canada and the U.S., and, you know, so far into, you know, May and June, excuse me, you know, those trends have continued. Now, they vary geographically.
You know, I would say that, you know, the West, we've got some Western markets that have continued to be a little bit soft. The center of the country, in contrast, has been very, very strong. We feel good that, while we're certainly not at pre-COVID levels, that we've stabilized and, you know, hopefully with, again, the loyalty platform and other things we're doing, you know, we can start to gradually take share in the fuel space.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Bonnie.
Your next question comes from Martin Landry with Stifel. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Congratulations, Claude, on your achievement. Good luck with your future endeavors, and also congratulations on Filipe for your appointment.
Thanks.
I just had a high-level question on when you look at your Double Again achievements, you know, your fuel initiatives and your fresh food program have been a very important contributor to get there. I'm trying to better understand, you know, where are we in that journey for these two programs? Are we getting towards the end of the life cycle of these programs, or is there still more to come?
I'll start and then ask Claude to contribute there. Yeah, Fresh Food Fast, I think we're just scratching the surface, quite honestly. We've got a significant number of sites to roll out yet, and sales continue to grow. Then I think the margin piece comes. Again, that comes with culture, that comes with execution, that comes with trial. You know, we launched a program in the middle of COVID. You couldn't sample. In some geographies, you couldn't even put out product. You know, we think we've got a lot to do to get that out in front of the customer and continue to grow that. The fuel journey, I think we've got a lot to do yet.
you know, we've, I think, tackled some of the big areas, but I think our opportunities are on the consumer side. How do we continue to bring targeted value to those customers, on the fueling journey? you know, whether that be seamless payment, whether that be our loyalty platform, whether that be just something as simple as having, you know, receipt paper in the card reader. We've got lots of opportunities to continue to just provide a better experience for that customer, across the experience, and so more to do. I don't think that's run its course.
Maybe, if I can complete on a couple of things, Martin, if you wanna refer also to the document we shared with you at last Investor Day, where we outlined our, the impact of our initiatives and what we think they would bring in the timeframe of fiscal 23 and then later, I think that is still very accurate in terms of what we think we've achieved and the potential further. There's still a lot of potential there. The exciting thing, I think, and Brian, I think, would agree, is that, you know, putting loyalty on top of this, it could also trigger more value.
We're gonna talk more about this and where growth came from and where it's gonna come from in the future, in our Investor Day on October 11. I invite you to stay tuned, because then we're gonna go into more details on the opportunities in the future, and also giving you feedback on the performance for Double Again.
I'd also add data and analytics. You know, we've got tremendous data from the customer visits we have. I've just returned from a week in India last week, you know, met a really solid team that we've assembled there that's helping us on that journey. That's another area I'd say, you know, Martin, that we just are scratching the surface. You know, using data to just be more personalized, whether that's in the loyalty, whether that's being very localized in our promotion activity, our pricing activity, or our assortment. You know, we're excited. There's just a lot more to do there.
Okay, that's helpful. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Karen Short with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is actually Zane Brock on for Karen. Good morning, everyone. Great quarter. Also wanted to congratulate Filipe on his new role, and Claude, best of luck to you with your future endeavors. Our question is on the promotional environment in the U.S. It seems like, you know, the tone has continued to tick up a bit in the U.S. I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about, first, what you're seeing in the environment and how you expect to manage promos going forward, and maybe comment on your philosophy around price investments in the coming year, especially in the wake of decelerating inflation and increasing competition. Maybe as a part of that, tie that into the analytics pilot you're doing on the price and promo side.
Take a shot at that. You know, one, I would say, just as a general theme, you know, given the context of where the consumer is, you know, I would say there's a theme of fewer but more meaningful promotions, you know, so not trying to be everything to everybody, but, you know, those areas where, you know, we've got high-frequency visits and, you know, really good consumer awareness of what good looks like on price. You know, we're trying to be a consistent value in those areas. General theme, fewer but bigger promotions, and that includes fuel, which, you know, I think is a bit new to us, you know.
We've really gotten active both in Europe and North America on treating fuel as more of a category and being relevant with our customers and how we price it. You know, other than maybe Tobacco, I really don't see a big need for price investment, you know. Tobacco will be thoughtful. I think our trend, as I said earlier, our trends have been very consistent with the industry. You know, I think we need to do better than the industry, we're gonna figure out, both with our loyalty platform and other properties we have, like our list screens, you know, can we utilize those to be very targeted and drive additional sales in the combustible, in particular category on Tobacco?
I don't see us, you know, being compelled to make huge price investments today.
If I may add also, price investment could be take form of promoting or putting our private label up front. That drives value for a consumer, for a consumer that's, might be looking for value. We see that in our stores. We see that in the performance of our private label, like we highlighted earlier on the call.
Got it. Appreciate it.
There are no further questions at this time. Please proceed.
Thank you, operator. Thank you, Brian, Claude, and Filipe. That covers the Q&A portion for today's call as we are at the top of the hour. Thank you all for joining us. We wish you a great day and look forward to discussing our first quarter 2024 results in September. [Foreign language]
All right. Thanks, everyone. Have a great day.
Thank you all.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.