Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. [Non-English content ] My name is Alain Bouchard. I'm the Founder and Executive Chairman of the Board of Alimentation Couche-Tard. I am pleased to welcome you to our Annual Shareholders' Meeting. I now declare the meeting open. In my role as Executive Chairman of the Board, and in accordance with the company's bylaws, I will chair this meeting, and Valéry Zamuner, Corporate Secretary, will serve as secretary of the meeting. Valéry?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Since the meeting is being held virtually through a live audio webcast, we believe it is necessary to set a few ground rules just to ensure that it runs smoothly. The agenda of the meeting includes the appointment of auditors, the election of directors, an advisory vote on our executive compensation policy, and the adoption of an ordinary resolution ratifying the company's amended and restated stock incentive plan.
Details of these matters are outlined in the management proxy circular. The Chairman will present all the proposals and motions that will not need to be seconded. Only holders of record as of July 6, 2021, or their duly appointed proxies who are registered with our transfer agent and who have obtained a control number prior to this meeting may participate, ask questions, and vote at the meeting. All other persons may attend the meeting as guests. At the opportune time, shareholders or their duly appointed proxies will be asked to vote on the virtual meeting platform after all items of the agenda have been presented. We will have a limited time to do this.
Registered shareholders and duly appointed proxies who wish to communicate with members of the executive team or board or who wish to ask a question may do so by using the instant messaging if they want to ask any questions, and they can use the provided virtual meeting platform. There are two ways of asking questions during the meeting: by using the relevant dialog box in the function Ask a Question during the meeting. Questions may also be asked over the phone. To do so, the shareholder or proxy holder will need to submit their telephone number by using the relevant dialog box in the function Ask a Question during the meeting in order to be reached by telephone at the appropriate time. Your telephone number will not be shared with the other meeting attendees.
Only shareholders and duly appointed and registered proxy holders may ask questions during the question period. When asking a question, please indicate your name and the entity that you represent, if any, and confirm that you are a registered shareholder or a duly appointed proxy. Please also indicate to which member of our leadership committee you wish to address your question. Questions will generally be received shortly after being submitted, but will be dealt with only during the question period at the end of the meeting. Answers will not be provided to questions that have already been asked or answered, or those that are redundant or repetitive. I wish to tell you that some of the topics addressed during the presentation following the legal portion of the meeting may constitute forward-looking statements issued by the company with the usual provisions.
Details of the cautionary statements regarding forward-looking statements may be found in the Alimentation Couche-Tard management discussion and analysis for the 2021 fiscal year, which is available on SEDAR and on the company's website. Let us now proceed. Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Valéry. I now appoint the AST Trust Company (Canada) as scrutineer of this meeting, represented today by Ms. Francine Beausoleil and Ms. Isabelle Vachon. The Secretary has informed me that we have received confirmation from AST Trust Company, stating that it has sent the documents regarding the meeting to all shareholders of record on the company's books as of July 30th, 2021. I am instructing the Secretary to keep these documents in the company's records with the affidavit from the AST Trust Company confirming that they have been sent to Couche-Tard shareholders.
The scrutineer has submitted to me its report on attendance at the meeting, showing that quorum has been reached. I will therefore ask the Secretary to attach the scrutineer's report to the minutes of this meeting. Accordingly, I declare this meeting duly convened and legally constituted to conduct the business for which it was called. The first item on the agenda regards receipt of the company's financial statement. I now submit for receipt the consolidated financial statements of Alimentation Couche-Tard and its subsidiaries for the fiscal year ending April 25th, 2021, as well as the Auditor's Report on these financial statements. These documents will be addressed during the presentation that will be done by our Chief Financial Officer, and we will be able to answer questions at that time.
The next item on the agenda concerns the appointment of auditors for the fiscal year. The authorization provided to the Board of Directors to set their compensation. As indicated in the circular, the company recommends the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, a firm of chartered professional accountants, until the next Annual Meeting of Alimentation Couche-Tard. I propose that PricewaterhouseCoopers be appointed auditor of the company and that the Board of Directors be authorized to set the auditor's compensation. As indicated in the circular, the Board of Directors has set the number of directors to be elected today at 15. 15 people are to be elected today. Biographical notes on the candidates are included in the management proxy circular that has been made available to our shareholders. I will now introduce you to the 15 people who have been nominated. Mélanie Kau, Board Member since 2006 and Lead Director.
Jean Bernier, Member of the Board since 2019. Karinne Bouchard, new candidate to the position of director. Eric Boyko, Board Member since 2017. Jacques D'Amours, Co-Founder and Board Member since 1988. Janice L. Fields, Board Member since 2020. Richard Fortin, Co-Founder and Board Member since 1988. Brian Hannasch, Board Member and President and Chief Executive Officer of Alimentation Couche-Tard, and this since 2014. Marie-Josée Lamothe, Board Member since 2019. Monique F. Leroux, Board Member since 2015. Réal Plourde, Co-Founder and board member since 1988. Daniel Rabinowicz, Board Member since 2013. Louis Têtu, Board Member since 2019. Louis Vachon, new candidate to the position of director. Myself, Alain Bouchard, Co-Founder, Board Member since 1978, and Executive Chairman of the Board. Each candidate has indicated their desire to serve as a director of the company.
I propose that each of these individuals be elected as a director of the company until the close of the next Annual Shareholders' Meeting or until a successor is duly elected or appointed. As mentioned at the start of the meeting, votes will be cast today through a single electronic ballot after the items on the agenda have been presented. We will therefore continue with the next item on our agenda. You'll be asked to vote on the election of each director and shortly afterwards on all the matters to be voted upon. The next item on our agenda is the advisory vote on the Board of Directors' executive compensation policy. This is for members of upper management and for the company.
We are pleased to provide our shareholders with the opportunity to express their views on compensation for members of upper management, given that we are committed to maintaining an active, open, and continuous communication process with you. We are confident that you will judge that the company's executive compensation program to be based on a performance-based approach aligned with our shareholders' long-term interests. As this is an advisory vote, the result will not be binding to the board. When examining the company's approach to compensation in the future, the board will take into account this result, as well as the other comments formulated by shareholders. The full text of the advisory resolution appears in the management proxy circular. I propose that we adopt the advisory resolution concerning the company's executive compensation practices as set out in the management proxy circular.
The next item on the agenda is the consideration and adoption of an ordinary resolution ratifying and approving the company's amended and restated stock incentive plan as adopted by the Board of Directors on March 17th, 2021, and which amends and restates the company's 1999 stock incentive plan. A detailed description of the amendment is found in the company's management proxy circular. The full text of the amended and restated stock incentive plan appears on the SEDAR website, which can be found at www.sedar, S-E-D-A-R, .com. I propose adopting an ordinary resolution ratifying and approving the company's amended and restated stock incentive plan as set out, updated and modified in the management proxy circular. We will now move on to a vote using a single electronic ballot.
I remind you that the items on the agenda are the following: the appointment of the auditor, the election of each director, the advisory resolution on the company's executive compensation practices, and the ratification and approval of the company's amended and restated stock incentive plan. You will now be asked to vote on each of the four items on the agenda. When you're asked to do so, please go to the voting page and first click on the button for or abstain to the resolution to appoint PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the company's auditor. Click on for or abstain, that button, either for or abstain buttons, next to the name of each of the candidates for director. Click on the for or against button next to the advisory resolution on company's executive compensation practices.
Finally, press on the button for or against next to the approval and ratification of the stock incentive plan. Once the electronic voting is complete, the voting page will disappear, and your votes will have automatically been recorded. Let's give you just a few moments now to fill out your electronic ballot, and we will resume the meeting once the vote has ended.
[Non-English content]
Thank you. Thank you for your patience. I received the scrutineer's report on the voting results. I confirm the following. I am pleased to announce that the resolution on the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers and the advisory resolution on the company's executive compensation practices for upper management have been adopted. When it comes to the election of directors, I'm pleased to announce that Mélanie Kau, Jean Bernier, Karinne Bouchard, Eric Boyko, Jacques D'Amours, Janice L. Fields, Richard Fortin, Brian Hannasch, Marie-Josée Lamothe, Monique F. Leroux, Réal Plourde, Daniel Rabinowicz, Louis Têtu, Louis Vachon, and myself have been duly elected as directors of the company. Finally, the adoption of the ordinary resolution ratifying and approving the company's amended and restated stock incentive plan, as updated by the company, has been approved. Details of all these results will be available on the SEDAR website and on the company's website as well.
With the legal formalities now completed, it is time to close the meeting and move to corporate presentations. I therefore declare the meeting closed and adjourned. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, hello to you after an extraordinary year. A year in which every month we bravely faced the COVID-19 pandemic. A year when, once again, we had record-breaking results and kept on track with our strategic growth plans. I hope you and your loved ones are doing well. I know that this has been a difficult time for us all. We do continue to move forward. I am optimistic, albeit cautious, about the future. As we hear in the news, variants of the virus are still haunting our global family. Despite it all, however, we recognize the great promise of the vaccines for our lives and businesses, and to a return to normal.
I'm extremely proud of Couche-Tard's contribution to the vaccination efforts in Canada, and the company's work across the network in promoting vaccinations and keeping our team members and customers safe. I'm also quite aware that I am addressing you at a very notable juncture in Couche-Tard's history. Before I go any further, I want to talk about a topic that was specifically relevant for this year's meeting. That is the special voting rights of Couche-Tard's founders, as well as a few other shareholders. Now, this will expire at the end of this calendar year. I'd like to take this opportunity to say that it is, for us, a non-event. We are not expecting any change in the way in which we manage the business. I will remain fully committed to the company's strategic success, and I will continue to be a good steward of shareholders' trust.
I am convinced that our size, our winning culture, our strategy, and the structures that we have put in place, both at the leadership level and from a governance standpoint, as you have already seen today, will serve the company well as we move towards an even and ever brighter future. Since the day I opened my first store more than 41 years ago, that's quite a long time ago, I've always been very proud of this company and proud of the people, the more than 124,000 devoted team members working out of 14,200 stores and distributed around 26 countries and territories. While our presence is global, the recipe that has defined us since the get-go has not changed. We are a family of local merchants with a mission to make our customers' lives a little easier every single day.
Once again, during this year, this pandemic year, we put our people and our customers at the forefront of all of our decision-making, and we have worked hard to be part of the solution in the communities that we serve. Our people and our culture, what we call our special sauce, are at the foundation, at the basis of our success. Together, we never let our COVID guard down, and together we got better. We got stronger and more ready for the future. In fact, I am particularly proud to report that we scored higher than ever before results in our annual engagement survey, and that we ranked among the best in the retail industry. This is a tremendous achievement as far as I'm concerned, and it is a great source of pride for me this year. Our financial results this year speak for themselves.
Despite challenges from the pandemic, we're showing record net earnings of over CAD 2.7 billion. We have ample balance sheet flexibility. We have increased our annual dividend and had a solid share buyback. Together, this amazing management team and culture have built a solid foundation that enables us to keep investing in our growth, both organically and through acquisitions. Since our first store in Laval was opened, growth is perfectly in our DNA. We're always on the lookout for acquisition opportunities that may arise, we do remain disciplined. After a long but patient wait, we found the right opportunity to enter the dynamic Asian market with the acquisition of Circle K Hong Kong. I've admired the leadership of this group now for several years, I know that they will be able to provide greater insight and greater expertise that will allow us to grow in the region.
As you know, we also took some big risks this year in terms of growth. Even if conditions around the pandemic meant that at times we had to walk away, I remain impressed by our foresight and confidence. We kept our customary financial discipline, and we made it clear that we are ready both financially and operationally to become the world's preferred destination for convenience and mobility. I have no doubt that future opportunities await, and we are ready to move forward with the right fit at the right price. As always, our guiding principle will be to create value for our shareholders. We also intensified our internal and organic growth. I am very proud of our progress here, from growing the network with new store builds and remodels, to growing our offering inside our stores and in our store courts.
The work that we are doing in terms of organic growth is clearly preparing us to win in the future. Our entrepreneurial spirit always served to guide us well, and the pandemic only inspired us to innovate at a faster pace, pushing us to improve our customer experience. This year, we escalated our work in gamification, in data analytics, thus making our work more local than ever before. We also opened our first frictionless store right here in Montreal. In Scandinavia, we expanded payment via license plate recognition, and we are very proud to have progressed as one of the global leaders in electric vehicle charging solutions. We are laying the groundwork for the future of mobility in North America. We also made advances in age-restricted products. That is where we have decades of experience being an accountable and responsible retailer.
This includes increasing our investment in cannabis retailing in Canada, and it also includes the creation of a partnership aiming to sell digital products in our U.S. stores, digital lottery. Our decentralized business model, our entrepreneurial spirit, and our agility have once again enabled us to quickly begin pilot projects and to determine how to best share the learnings across the network. Everything that we need to share across the board. Doing good matters to me. It matters for our management team, and it matters for all of our stakeholders. It matters because we have committed to building a better future. We've expanded our efforts towards a cleaner, safer world by reducing our energy footprint and by placing sustainability as a lens to our businesses.
We recently even issued green bonds that will help us finance sustainable projects across many parts of our business in terms of many of the sustainable development projects that we want to create. We are also continuing to care for our communities. We ensure that we are part of the solution in the neighborhoods that we serve. This year, I am particularly proud that we added diversity and inclusion values to our sustainability ambitions. An initiative from our Chief Executive Officer, Brian Hannasch. We committed ourselves to creating a workplace with equitable pay and equitable representation. We will continue along this path and ensure that each team member be able to express their authenticity and their authentic selves at work. Across all businesses, executive sponsors are holding their teams accountable for our sustainability goals, from fuel to energy, waste, and safety.
We are transparent in all of our sustainability work. I encourage you to look to our website for future information on our journey. Couche-Tard is ready for the future. This future is one beyond the pandemic, where we become the world's preferred destination for convenience and mobility. This is a future where we make our customers' lives just a little easier every day. On behalf of the board and of shareholders, I wanted to conclude by expressing my deepest gratitude to all our people in our stores and support offices, as well as to the management teams, during this extraordinary and difficult year. Thank you for all of the tough work that you've accomplished over the course of this very challenging and unusual year. Believe me, it was a big challenge. I would also like to thank you for your support and your trust.
I will now turn the floor over to Brian Hannasch, our President and Chief Executive Officer. Thank you very much.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, thank you, Alain. I'm truly proud to report that during this fiscal year, a year impacted by COVID-19 in so many ways, we had record-breaking financial results, we stayed focused on our strategic goals, and executed and innovated better than ever before. Let me just share some of the highlights from this historic year and the ways in which we're building competitive advantages for future growth for Couche-Tard. We had record EBITDA of almost $5.1 billion. We enhanced our convenience offer with fresh food and utilized data in new ways to become even more local for our customers. We strengthened our fuel brand, supply, and trading capabilities. We innovated payment and delivery capacity inside our stores and on our forecourts. We established a new platform for growth in Asia with the acquisition of Circle K Hong Kong.
As Alain Bouchard said, our teams are more engaged than ever before, enabling us to push forward our strategy and organic growth ambitions. Before I dive deeper into these highlights, I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to all of our team members, customers, and shareholders for their continued commitment to the business and to each other during this difficult year. It is only because of the hard work, engagement, and courage of all of our employees that our company culture and balance sheet are stronger than ever before. Throughout the year, as Alain Bouchard noted, the health and safety of our team members and customers has been at the forefront of all of our decision-making, and we continue to be part of the solution in the communities where we live and work.
With the rise of the Delta variant challenging some of our communities, particularly in the U.S., we're not letting our COVID guard down. We're continuing to clearly honor our safety guidelines at our locations and actively promote vaccines among our team members. I also want to say a few words about Hurricane Ida, a catastrophic Category four storm that battered Louisiana and our Gulf Coast states in the last few days. It was one of the strongest hurricanes ever to hit this area. Currently, we're confirming the safety of all of our team members and assessing any damage to our location in Ida's path. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those impacted team members and customers, and we're working hard to help our local communities impacted by the storm. This year, we did more than maintain the status quo. We innovated for the future of convenience.
We were laser-focused on improving the customer experience by growing our fresh food offer, localizing our pricing, promotion, and assortment on a store-by-store basis, and adding easier payment and delivery options both inside our stores and again on our forecourts. We've also been keeping our customers engaged with new, more modern branding, enhanced store layouts, and gamification initiatives to drive traffic in the stores. Expanding our new food initiative, Fresh Food, Fast, remained a top priority for the company. This offer, offering great food for our customers on the go, is key to our future as an innovative, differentiated retailer. In North America, we completed the first stage of opening 1,500 Fresh Food stores, and we expanded the program to an additional 2,600 stores in this fiscal year.
As we continue to work and refine the operational side, our focus remains on the quality and ease of the offer, both for the customer and for our store team members. Stores with Fresh Food, Fast continue to outperform those without in the same markets. In Europe, we continue to develop Fresh Food, Fast concept as a platform for future growth. We'll be adding the program to 500 sites this fiscal year. We are making it easier for our customers by introducing a self-serve option, adding grab-and-go elements to the freshly prepared offers that we've already had in our stores in Europe for many years. Being a more data-centric company is one of the biggest strategic goals, as we believe there's a very large prize to optimize locally in pricing, assortment, and promotion.
After piloting store-by-store pricing in our Sweden and Grand Canyon business units, starting with a limited number of stores and SKUs to make sure we're doing it right and benchmarking constantly, we rolled this out to nine more divisions this year. We're especially pleased with the improvement in gross margin dollars, which are exceeding our projections. In the upcoming year, we'll begin to bring the initiative to the remainder of the network and go deeper into additional categories. We will also use store-specific data to enhance product assortment and promotional activity. We see these as big opportunities and pilots are actively underway. Across the network, we're prepared for the future by innovating our payment and delivery. In response to the pandemic and changing shopping behaviors, we expanded and gained valuable insight into what our customers want in terms of convenience, including curbside pickup and home delivery options.
We're evaluating these models for further understanding and deployment. We also made noticeable advances in frictionless payment inside our store and on our forecourts. At our first frictionless store in Montreal, we've been impressed by the results, and we're now delivering a fully frictionless experience in a timely manner and with great accuracy. We're planning on having several more stores in Arizona this fall using technology from leading providers of autonomous checkout technology, another marker on our innovation journey. Another initiative that we quickly developed and scaled is our subscription beverage program in the United States, where customers can sign up and get a coffee or a dispensed beverage every day for a fixed low monthly fee.
In Norway, after piloting our license plate recognition payment system at the forecourt and seeing great results, we've launched this initiative across our entire Sweden business unit with plans to expand across the network. We're excited about the positive initial response and proud to be among the first to introduce this time-saving technology to our customers. Over the coming months, we'll continue to pilot other ways to differentiate our offer and make our shopping experiences even easier as we prepare for the future. There's no doubt this year's been a challenging year for mobility globally, as security measures and work from home impeded daily commutes and travel plans. Despite the challenges, we believe that our customers will continue to rely on our network for their timely energy needs as routines progressively return to normal. As a company, we did not stand still.
We made many moves to strengthen the fuel side of our business, while at the same time looking to the future by investing in the electrification of our network. In fiscal 2021, we continue to press forward with our initiative to rebrand our forecourts to Circle K, converting an additional 450 sites and adding another 71 branded new-to-industry locations, bringing the total to nearly 2,800 Circle K branded stores in North America and over 5,000 globally. In the coming year, we plan to accelerate the pace as we build further brand awareness in the minds of our customers. As we scale this rebranding work, we're also pushing forward our value proposition by developing a new loyalty program that will be both easy and engaging for our customers.
One of the biggest developments in our fuel business this year has been the strides we've made in our journey to become a world-class supply chain, as we formed a partnership with Musket to take advantage of pooled volume procurement synergies and become increasingly active in fuel trading opportunities. We also opened a logistics tower in Riga, Latvia, where all of our global fuel logistics are monitored 24/7, 365 days a year, as we aim to drive efficiencies in our supply chain as we scale it even further. During the past year, we continued to accrue valuable benefits and experience from our Norway lab, solidifying our position as a global leader in the future of electric vehicle charging solutions.
In Norway, at our stations, we now have nearly 500 charging points, and we've gained much insight into the charging and shopping behaviors of our EV customers. To complement our on-site charging, we've expanded our home and workplace EV solutions to over 4,500 charging points. Additionally, with Circle K Pro, our new commercial fuel and charge platform, we are addressing our growing B2B customer base and learning how to best serve them as we mature our mobility offer. As part of our EV journey, we have successfully developed destination stores that offer a more experiential customer experience, an enhanced food offer, and table seating with complimentary Wi-Fi. On that note, our new site in Bamble, Norway, was recognized by NACS as a winner of the most important store in 2020.
We are now particularly proud of this award as it showcases this incredible destination and is one of Norway's largest EV hubs with 32 charging stations. Outside of Norway, we have expanded our charging capabilities in Europe through partnerships with IONITY, and we've rolled out our first Circle K chargers in Ireland, Sweden, and Denmark. We now have 800 charging stations in our European region. In the coming year, we'll be sharing these learnings as we begin to deploy charging points in North America, starting with select markets in Quebec and California. Organic network opportunities continue to be an essential component of our growth strategy.
Whether we're building new sites in key locations, renovating and reimaging existing stores, or acquiring complementary networks, our goal as a seller of time and convenience is to always keep in close contact with our customers. To engage them in meaningful ways with our brand, and to satisfy their daily needs. As part of our five-year plan to double the business, we set a path to increase the number of new builds, new stores, from approximately 100 per year to 200 a year. While the pandemic and our consequent focus on capital preservation early in the pandemic temporarily delayed our pace, we did not remove our focus from our long-term objectives. During the past year, we strengthened our global development team. We completed a comprehensive review of our global portfolio and grew our pipeline for future stores.
We also divested a limited number of stores, which we didn't believe fit our strategic offers and platform. For the upcoming year, we will put significant capital toward accelerating our rollout of new stores. We are also excited by our new North America franchise model that incorporates Circle K Pro and all of our innovations as ways to increase the reach of our brand presence. Additionally, we continue to roll out our new Project Horizon stores, both in new builds, remodels across the network. With their enhanced layout, these larger sites permit us to display a full array of our commercial programs and brand, including our new Fresh Food, Fast initiative, combining these with wider aisles, more space, more refrigerated casings, and a greater variety of center aisle products. M&A remains fundamental to our strategic growth journey.
We continue to focus on reinforcing and growing our core convenience and retail business through further consolidation of the U.S. market and growing in our dynamic Asian market. This year, as Alain said, we took that long-flamed and exciting step of entering the Asian market with our purchase of Circle K Hong Kong, a network of more than 370 stores in Hong Kong and Macau. With an experienced leadership team, Circle K Hong Kong gives us a platform for growth in the region. We will also continue to opportunistically look at opportunities in Europe and Canada, as seen by our recent announcement of the transaction with Wilsons Gas in Atlantic Canada, a network of 226 convenience retail and fuel locations that we see as a. Excuse me.
As well as a binding agreement to acquire 35 sites, primarily in Oregon and Washington, which have been operated under the Porter's brand. We'll also use M&A as a way to accelerate innovation, adding key capabilities and support for strategic objectives, including through investment by using our newly formed Circle K Venture Fund. Couche-Tard has a long history of successful acquisitions, a disciplined approach, and a clear set of criteria for assessing acquisitions, and we will continue to do the right thing for our shareholders, our partners, and our customers for the long-term health of our business. Age-restricted products are also an important growth lever, and we're proud of the role we play as a responsible retailer of age-restricted products. We spent decades building this reputation and the necessary capabilities to lead in this area.
These capabilities extend well into the sale of cannabis and related products, and we've been dedicating resources to better understand what we'll need to do to succeed in that area. In that regard, in the past year, we increased our investment in Fire & Flower, now possess a 22.4% minority stake in the company with a path to control should we choose to do so. We now also have 2 Fire & Flower stores co-located next to our own Circle K stores in Western Canada. We'll continue to learn from these investments as they mature and explore how we will expand these findings into the U.S. as regulations develop in that country. Let me now turn to the significant strides we made during the year and our ambition to grow together as one team, particularly in employee engagement, diversity and inclusion, and sustainability.
Across the board, our team members are recognizing our efforts to drive engagement and overwhelmingly believe we are fulfilling our mission of making our customers' lives a little easier every day. We also do not shy away from the ongoing intense developments over racial injustice witnessed this year, especially in the U.S., our largest market. Instead, we took determined steps to become a more diverse and inclusive company. We've established several business resource groups for underrepresented minorities, conducted surveys and focus groups to better understand roadblocks to career paths, and we've set firm leadership expectations for creating roadmaps for a more diverse team. We also integrated our ambition around a more diverse and inclusive organization into developing our sustainability work, an increasingly vital lens in every aspect of our business.
We want to earn our customers' trust by being a responsible retailer who's working to support a healthier, cleaner, and more equitable future for everyone. As we progress in our sustainability journey, we've also brought more clarity to the work by aligning it with our industry best practices. This can be seen in our new ESG sustainability framework, which consists of three overarching pillars: planet, people, and prosperity, mapped to the UN Global Goals and highlighting our contribution towards global sustainable development. We also recently issued green bonds, by which we aim to finance low carbon and sustainable future by investing CAD 350 million in new, friendly projects and community initiatives. This funding undeniably shows our commitment to sustainability.
We're not only talking about it, we have substantial dollars behind it, which we must be used to execute for our work. Finally, in our sustainability journey, we continue to welcome standardization and transparency, as seen in our most recent sustainability reporting, which can be found on our corporate website. In conclusion, I'd like to say that in my almost seven years as CEO, probably one of the most challenging years has also been one of my most proudest years. Our teams have strived to do the right things, to be a part of the solutions in our communities in a tremendous time of need. Once again, I want to express my deep gratitude to all of our team members, customers, and you, our shareholders, for the continued support and commitment. With that, I will turn it over to our CFO, Claude Tessier, to provide further financial details.
Thank you and [Non-English content]
[Non-English content] Brian [Non-English content] 2011. Thank you, Brian. Let's look at our financial performance since 2011. The following metrics illustrate well the work that our teams do year in and year out to create value for shareholders. As you can see, total gross profit increased at an annualized rate of 13.9% since 2011, close to 5% over the past year to reach CAD 10.1 billion, even as we faced some very challenging times created by the pandemic over the past year and a half. In addition, since 2011, our EBITDA grew at an annualized rate of 21%, and our adjusted diluted earnings per share grew at an annualized rate of approximately 22% to reach CAD 5.1 billion and CAD 2.45, respectively, demonstrating fully our operating leverage.
Finally, shareholder equity, which is a good proxy for value creation, rose almost by 20% annually since 2011 and 21% over the past year to reach nearly CAD 12.2 billion. If you look at this chart here showing growth of EBITDA since 2000, you can see the long-lasting equation that has been at work for more than 10 years. The equation of strong revenue and gross profit generation, combined with outstanding operational skills and strong cost discipline, has been able to deliver a long streak of great performance by generating 21% CAGR of EBITDA growth since year 2000. It's impressive to see the starting point, which was CAD 100 million in 2000 and the road to the CAD 5 billion of EBITDA that we achieved this year.
Over the past 10 years, the value of Alimentation Couche-Tard's Class B shares increased by 944%, by far exceeding the main benchmark indexes in North America. It's important to mention that the investment of CAD 1,000 made in Alimentation Couche-Tard stock 35 years ago, more specifically at the initial public offering on August 22nd, 1986, would be worth more than CAD 1.1 million today, based on the stock price at the close of markets on April 13th and not counting the return from dividends paid over the years. In organic growth in our merchandise and services category maintains a positive trend in 2021 on the back of continued development of our global Circle K brand, further improved to our offer and assortment, as well as the implementation of various traffic-driving initiatives.
Overall, merchandise and services revenue, as well as gross profit increased 8.2% and 7%, respectively, compared to the previous year, excluding results from CAPL that we sold over the course of the financial year. Here, we exclude the net impact from currency variations, the increases that would have been 7.6% and 6.2%, respectively. As for same-store sales, they grew by 5.6% in the U.S., 6.1% in Europe and in other regions, and 9.5% in Canada. These results were driven mainly by our organic initiatives. In 2021, we recorded a decrease in volumes of more than 14% in the fuel category for road transportation. However, despite the volume decline due to fuel margins, our gross profit for fuel grew by 3.8% over the course of the year. The decrease in fuel volumes was principally attributable to the negative impact of COVID-19 on fuel demand, as we all know.
In the U.S., our fuel margin for the year was $0.353 per gallon, a very strong and solid performance and a fourth consecutive year of improvement. In Europe and Canada, we saw improvements as well, as our European fuel margin was nearly CAD 0.11 per liter and in Canada, CAD 0.104 per liter in Canada, reflecting healthy margins across the segment. We have continued to work rigorously on initiatives to streamline and minimize our controllable expenses. While we have seen inflation and a high labor cost during the past year, we have also been able to lower our operating expenses by 1.2%. We are seeing many benefits stemming from our strategy to optimize costs. We remain determined to maintain long-term OpEx growth below the inflation rate and have made great progress this year based on this year-over-year decline.
Overall performance has allowed us to end the year with adjusted net earnings of CAD 2.7 billion, an increase of 23% compared to the previous year. Our adjusted net earnings.
Have benefited from the increase as it was driven by strong margins and good control of operating expenses, reflecting a CAGR of 21.8% since 2011. Last year, once again, we determined the strength of our business model, including the strength of the cash flow generated. Our EBITDA increased by 12% compared to the previous year, reaching CAD 5.1 billion. In the same period, we generated record free cash flow of CAD 2.3 billion, up over 12%. Over the years, we determined strong free cash flow growth with a CAGR of nearly 20% from 2011- 2021. We took advantage of our exceptional results and took advantage of our promising future to raise our quarterly dividend by 25% year-over-year. Notably, we've increased our dividend for 15 consecutive years since instituting the first dividend payment on November 16th, 2005. This demonstrates our commitment to renewing our shareholders as our profits grow.
Additionally, we continued to execute on our share repurchase program, which was announced during Fiscal 2020 and represented 4% of our Class B sub-voting share float. During Fiscal 2021, we allocated more than CAD 1.063 billion to buy back 33.3 million shares. At the beginning of the Fiscal 2020, we implemented a new share repurchase program, allowing us to repurchase up to 4% of our Class B sub-voting share float. Under this program, we already repurchased CAD 300 million worth of shares. Last year in total, we returned close to CAD 1.4 billion to our shareholders after having optimally invested in our growth initiatives and in the maintenance of our operations. Due to our strong organic growth, we saw our leverage ratio drop to 1.32, a level that is well below our target of 2.25.
We also issued this year our first green bond through a CAD 1 billion debt issuance, including CAD 350 million with a green bond status, a successful outcome and process for the first of its kind in the convenience store industry. The proceeds of this issuance will be used to accelerate our mobility journey to electrification and reduce energy consumption through the network. We have maintained a strong balance sheet. We have access to CAD 5.5 billion in liquidity at the end of the financial year. Let's now talk about capital allocation. Internally, we are disciplined in allocating capital.
We are allocating between 35% and 40% of EBITDA to capital expenditures, with the mix of approximately 35% on network development and with new industry stores and relocations, 30% on commercial programs like Fresh Food, Fast, development of our car wash network, and cold and hot dispense, 25`% also on stay-in- business capital, including IT, rebranding, and remodels, and finally, 10% on emerging businesses and innovations. This 35%-40% investment back into the business leaves, after interest and taxes, approximately 45% to free cash flow. We are also committed to continuing to regularly grow our dividend as we use excess free cash flow to reimburse debt if the adjusted leverage ratio exceeds the target leverage of 2.25%. We will use the remaining free cash flow for our mergers and acquisitions and repurchase shares opportunistically.
Over the past quarter in Fiscal 2021, free cash flow stood at CAD 2.3 billion, allowing us to continue to meet our financial obligations on our debt, but also to use it to increase the dividend by 25%, paying 33.25% per share for the fiscal year, repurchasing $1.1 billion of our shares. Fiscal year 2021 also allowed us to improve the return on capital employed, a metric that is perfectly and particularly important to us in evaluating our operational efficiency. As we saw over time, as we integrate acquisitions and drive organic growth, we are able to get more out of our assets. We have repeatedly shown over and over again our capacity to increase our return based on big acquisitions. A strong operating performance combined with efficient capital allocation strategies have allowed us to drive a return on capital employed of 15.9% this past year.
We're now going to show our most recent trends as reported in the Q1 results on August 31st. Merchandise same-store sales growth was negative in the U.S. and in Canada, given that they cycled against a very strong comparable quarter. If we look at the compound annual growth over two years, the sales performance in the U.S. and Canada was 3.7% and 4.2% respectively. In Europe and other regions, same-store merchandise sales increased by 5.9% and 4.9% over a two-year period. As for fuel volumes, we experienced a strong increase across our network as they rebounded from last year. Same-store road transportation fuel volumes increased by 11.8% in the U.S., 6.3% in Europe and in other regions, and 10.4% in Canada.
However, over a two-year basis, same-store road transportation fuel volumes decreased at a compound annual growth rate of 6.1% in the U.S., 9.4% in Canada, and 3.3% in Europe and other regions. Our adjusted operating expenses increased 3.5% during the quarter. As we noted previously, we implemented, over the course of the previous year, measures to control our expenses during COVID-19, and we have seen an increase in our expenses this year based on normal inflation. The labor market is volatile and investments in strategic initiatives as well. For the two-year period, our expenses grew at a compounded growth rate of 1.2%, continuing to reflect our cost discipline. This performance allows us to generate adjusted net earnings of CAD 758 million, CAD 0.71 per diluted earnings per share for the first quarter. We are in a good position to keep performing at a high level.
While our industry can often be volatile, especially during these uncertain times, we remain focused on our five-year plan and executing on our many organic growth initiatives. When it comes to the acquisition standpoint, our balance sheet is in a great position with close to CAD 6 billion in total liquidities at the end of the financial year, a leverage ratio of 1.3 and the balance sheet capacity to invest more than CAD 10 billion and all this should be noteworthy and worthwhile as all opportunities present themselves. As discussed with investors over the past three years, our five-year strategic plan to double the business anticipates contributions between organic growth initiatives and acquisitions that have shifted to 60% organic and 40% acquisitions.
After three years, we reached more than half of all our objectives without talking about the positive impact of our EBITDA and the new IFRS 16 accounting standards, and we are well-positioned compared to our initial plan. This growth, which was achieved entirely through organic growth, demonstrates the strength of our plan and the multiple levers that activated and especially highlights the excellent execution by our teams. Mergers and acquisitions will continue to play a substantial role in upcoming years, and we're still in a good position to be able to take full advantage of good opportunities, with a particular focus on the U.S. and Asia. In conclusion, we are confident that we will be hitting our Double-Again Strategy goal by doubling EBITDA between fiscal year 2018 and 2023.
Considering all the organic growth initiatives in flight today, the management team behind them, and the early results of our initiatives, we are confident to deliver strong organic growth in the future and we will be delivering on our goals and doubling our EBITDA. If we look at the original position reformulated to take into consideration the impact of IFRS 16, so CAD 3.3 billion in EBITDA, we need to achieve CAD 6.3 billion in EBITDA in Fiscal 2023. We are well-positioned to be able to remain a leader in our industry because of our geographic diversification, our solid financial position, and the possibility of being able to recover lower costs. We have a solid and disciplined approach to mergers and acquisitions.
All of this is based on a good culture of the business, and all of these assets will allow us to continue to stimulate EBITDA growth and to be able to continue on free cash flow and to be able to maximize all of our work. Finally, our shareholders can rest assured that we will continue to adhere to our strict financial discipline in our execution of our strategy, whether in our investments to drive organic growth or while evaluating acquisition opportunities. With that, I will turn the discussion back over to Mr. Alain Bouchard.
Thank you, Claude. Great presentation as usual. Let's now move on to question period. Only registered shareholders and duly appointed proxies may ask any questions. You may do so by using the instant messaging service provided on the virtual meeting platform. I would like to remind you to please indicate your name, the entity that you are representing, if any, and to which member of our leadership team you wish to address your question. No answers will be provided to repetitive questions. I now ask, are there any questions?
Hello, Mr. Chair. For the moment, we do not have any questions.
Thank you, Mathieu.
Thank you, Mathieu. 60 seconds to see if we get some questions from the assembly and if not, we will conclude. Mathieu, do we have any questions?
Mathieu, do we have any questions?
No, Mr. Chair, we do not have any questions.
Okay. I don't see any questions.
It seems that we have had quite a good presentation, so no questions.
No questions. It seems that our presentations were good. Thank you to all our shareholders and stakeholders. Thank you to all of our partners, our employees, and our clients, and have a great year. We will see you again next year, probably at about the same date. Thank you.