Is a priority for Couche-Tard. We hope that we will complete a virtual meeting was necessary under these circumstances. We thank you for your flexibility and for being with us today. I now declare the meeting open in accordance with the company's bylaws. As Executive Chairman of the Board, I shall chair this meeting. Madame Valéry Zamuner, Corporate Secretary, will serve as secretary for the meeting. Valéry?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Since the assembly is being held virtually through live audio webcast, we believe it is necessary to set a few rules for it to run smoothly. The agenda of this meeting includes, one, the election of directors, two, the appointment of auditors, three, an advisory vote on our executive approach compensation policy, as well as voting on three proposals from shareholders. Details of these matters are outlined in the management proxy circular. The chairman will present all the proposals. They will not need to be seconded. Only the holders of record as of July 20, 2020, or their duly appointed proxies who are registered with our transfer agent and having obtained a control number prior to the meeting may participate, ask questions, or vote at the meeting. All other persons may attend the meeting as guests.
At the appropriate time, the shareholders or their duly appointed proxies will be asked to vote on the virtual meeting platform after all the points on the agenda have been presented. You will have only a limited time to do this. Registered shareholders and duly registered proxies who wish to communicate with members of the executive team or board or who wish to ask a question-
Your name and your if any. Thank you. I appoint a Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs, represented today by Mr. Bertrand Gely. I've received confirmation from the company that it has sent the documents regarding of record on the books 2020. I ask the Secretary to keep a copy in the company's records with the effectiveness on the of company confirming that they have been sent to shareholder. This was submitted to me that it corresponds as being. I ask that the Secretary to have this presentation reported to the minutes of this . I declare this meeting to conduct the business for which it was called.
First item on the agenda concerns the receipts of the company's financial statement. I now submit for receipt the consolidated financial statement of Alimentation Couche-Tard.
The receipt of the company's financial statement. I now submit for receipt the consolidated financial statement of Alimentation Couche-Tard for the fiscal year ending April 26, 2020, as well as the auditor's report.
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By our financial office. We will answer questions at that time. As indicated in the circular, the board of directors has set to be elected today as. Biographical notes on the candidates are included in the management made available to our shareholders. Before moving to the election, I will take a moment to offer sincere thanks to Mrs. Nathalie Bourque, who is leaving the Alimentation Couche-Tard Board of Directors today after eight years of service. Your contribution has helped our company's success and prosperity. Thank you. I shall now introduce the 13 persons who have been nominated since 2006, and Lead Director, Jean Bernier, Board Director since 2019. Eric Boyko, Board Member since 2017. Jacques D'Amours, Co-founder and Board Member since 1988. Janice L. Fields, candidate to the position of Director. Richard Fortin, Co-founder and Board Member since 1988.
Brian Hannasch, board member and President and Chief Executive Officer of Alimentation Couche-Tard since 2014. Marie-Josée Lamothe, board member since 2019. F. Leroux, board member since 2015. Réal Plourde, co-founder and board member since 1988. Daniel Rabinowicz, board member since 2013. Luc Rhéaume, board member since 2018, and myself, Alain Bouchard, co-founder, board member since 1986, 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. Today is through a single electronic ballot after the items on the agenda have been presented. We will continue with the next item on the agenda.
You will be asked to vote on the election of each director and afterwards on all other matters to be voted upon. We now proceed with the next point of the agenda, the appointment of the auditor for the current fiscal year, and the authorization provided to the board of directors to set their compensation. As indicated in the circular, the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers, a firm of chartered professionals until the next annual meeting of Alimentation Couche-Tard. I propose that PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, the appointed auditor to the company, that the board of directors be authorized to set auditors' compensation. Our compensation policy is pleased to offer our shareholders the chance to express their views on compensation, given that we are committed to maintaining an active and continuous communication process with you.
We are confident that you will judge the company's executive compensation program based on a performance-based approach aligned with our shareholders' long-term interests. The result of the vote will not be binding on the board. However, when examining the approach to compensation in the future, it will take note of this vote and of other comments from shareholders. The full text of the advisory resolution appears in the proxy. I propose adopting the advisory resolution concerning the company's executive compensation practices as outlined in the management proxy circular. Next on the agenda are the proposals submitted to the board by MÉDAC, the Mouvement d'éducation et de défense des actionnaires, represented by Mr. Willy Gagnon.
These proposals concern disclosure by the company in the report and annual activities of its company, as well as a report on the importance given to environmental, social, and governance criteria in assessing the performance of executive officers and in setting their compensation. The second motion is disclosure of management proxy circular. While information leads the board to whether or not a director is independent pursuant to the regulations, and the third motion, the adoption by the board of directors of a responsible employment policy to ensure that its employees receive a living wage. The company has reviewed and its proxy circular text of the proposal and of the present sent by the shareholder, MÉDAC. The text was not altered, it had to be translated since it was provided only in French. Appendix B of the management proxy circular also contains the company's to MÉDAC's argument.
Although the company says MÉDAC, this regarding the importance matters and of disclosure by the company of its approach to them, the company believes that its practices in these regards and their disclosure already meets all regulatory requirements, and it urges shareholders to vote against both motions. We will now vote.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. We will now proceed with a vote using a single electronic ballot. I remind you that the items on the agenda are, one, the election of directors, two, the appointment of the auditor, three, the advisory resolution on the company's executive compensation relative to compensation practices, and four, the two shareholder proposals submitted to the meeting for consideration. You will now be asked to vote on each of the four items on the agenda.
You are asked to go to the voting page and first press the for or abstain button next to the name of each candidate of the directors. Secondly, you will also press for or against button next to the resolution to appoint Pricewaterhouse as the company's auditor. Third, press for or against button next to the advisory resolution on practices. And finally, fourth, press the for or against button next to each of the three shareholders' proposals submitted for consideration. Once the electronic voting is completed, the voting page will display your vote will automatically be . You will now have a few moments to fill out the electronic ballot, and we will resume the meeting once the voting has ended.
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Members of the company. I'm also pleased to announce that the resolution on the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, and the advisory resolution on the company's executive compensation practices have been adopted. The three proposals submitted for consideration by shareholders at this meeting have been rejected. Details of the results will be available shortly on the SEDAR website and on the company's website. With the legal formalities now completed, it's time to close the meeting and move on to the corporate presentation. I therefore declare the meeting closed. What a year it has been so far. In 2020, we are celebrating Couche-Tard's 40th anniversary, and 2020 is also the dark year of COVID-19. It's a strange year, to say the least. There's nothing we can do. First, I hope that you all are well and that your loved ones are well.
We are in the convenience store business. That's what we do. Our customers are also our neighbors. We've experienced the pandemic up close, and it looks as though it's not over yet. It's confirmed that it's not over yet. At this time, early in the 2021 fiscal year, I'm feeling a deep sense of pride in this company that I founded in 1980. Above all, pride in our people, the more than 130,000 devoted men and women in our 14,500 stores in 26 countries and territories. Our presence is global, but the recipe that has defined us since the start hasn't changed. Like my close collaborators, Jacques, Réal, Richard, who have contributed to building our network, and later, Brian Hannasch, who rounded out the core of our team of builders, and it's now our big family.
All those people who have joined us over the years for enabling us to grow together. Our people are a pillar of the company and have always been a major factor of our success. Together, we've built a solid foundation that enables us to keep investing in our growth. We are always on the lookout for acquisition opportunities that may arise, but we remain disciplined, as shown by our experience with Speedway in the United States. As you know, Couche-Tard isn't looking for flashy deals. We're investing our shareholders' money, and we have to provide them with good return on investment. Up to now, our patience and rigor have served us well. We listen to our investors who have also asked us to achieve greater organic growth. Many initiatives in our strategic plan leading in this direction are underway.
Customer experience that stands out, products and services that fit the needs of new generations. All of this to make life a little easier each day for our customers. The results speak for themselves. The pandemic affected our revenues, obviously, but not our performance. We're showing record net earnings of $2.4 billion. All of this in US dollars. Our debt is down substantially. We also increased our return on capital compared to the 2019 fiscal year, and our annual dividend has gone from CAD 0.225-CAD 0.265, up 18%. Couche-Tard continues to inspire confidence. Since the end of fiscal 2019, our valuation has risen by nearly 15%, with markets barely recovering from a major decline during the same period. In 2020, we laid the foundations for an even better and stronger company. Like it or not, our 40th birthday will always be associated with COVID-19.
It's one of the greatest challenges we've ever faced. Fortunately, our company is on solid footing. Our discipline. We are in an advantageous fiscal position to weather the storm well. At the height of the crisis, lockdown measures caused our sales to plummet. Our decentralized business model and our agility enabled us to make quick decisions to protect our employees and customers, and to make sure we had essential products available in our stores. The measures taken suited to each of our regions. I will leave it to Brian to tell you about our frontline heroes. What I wish to emphasize, however, is the extent to which this crisis has brought out the best in us. At every level of the organization, I have seen people work with extraordinary efficiency to identify needs, recognize opportunities, and find effective solutions. The entrepreneurial spirit is impressive.
It has enabled us to ensure our company's success through periods of volatility over the last 40 years. It has also helped us get through a global pandemic. I wish to thank employees for the initiative and leadership they have shown. COVID-19 had also provided an opportunity to expedite innovative products, from home delivery to contactless payments. These initiatives will continue to enhance customer experience. Couche-Tard success lies in never thinking the peak has been reached. It's always believing we can do better. Doing better today means acting with a deep sense of social responsibility to be certain of a better future. We therefore take pride this summer in launching our second sustainability report. I invite you to take a look at it on our website.
This year, we'll be turning sustainable development into a priority criteria that will apply to all our business decisions, to all our strategic projects. We have outlined our ambitions and set high goals for ourselves. Brian can tell you more about this. We have also appointed executive sponsors who will supervise our progress. One area we are focusing our sustainability efforts on is engagement with our communities. This is fundamental for Couche-Tard. During the pandemic, our teams have worked relentlessly to keep our stores open and provide an essential service to our community. I thank them sincerely. An important phenomenon occurred this year with respect to social relationships around the world, and it concerns all of us. I'm referring here to the protests that broke out following the senseless death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and to the Black Lives Matter that has spread far beyond the U.S.
We are a company that runs neighborhood stores. The notion of inclusion is a key value for us. At the local level, our stores clearly reflect the diversity of the communities where we work and live. We shall continue our efforts aimed at ensuring that inclusion and diversity become values upheld and promoted at every level of our company. I am encouraged by the initiatives taken in the last few months by Brian and the executive committee. We are firmly committed to continuing along this path in ensuring every community is valued and flourishing at Couche-Tard. We are now preparing the future of Couche-Tard. Teams devoted to innovation are continuously seeking better products, better approaches, and better, more efficient processes. Our vision is to become the world's preferred destination for convenience and around the world. Customer experience is the cornerstone of this vision.
To attract new generations, we're using new technologies that enable home delivery and a frictionless customer process, among other things. We are adapting our products to different markets. We are adding more gamification to our marketing campaigns. This is a constant effort of innovation and adaptation. The size and scope of our company are assets. We can test and evaluate before introducing something new on a large scale. The Fresh Food, Fast program, always fresh, always ready, is a good example of this. After pilots that worked well in many markets, we are aiming to introduce it to 1,500 stores by the end of 2020. The pandemic is not over. This first virtual meeting in our history offers proof of this. Plenty of uncertainties remain in health, economic, and social matters.
The best we can do is to stay the course, keep advancing towards our goals, continue meaning something to our customers, and creating value for everyone. I'm confident that we will be able to adapt to the new normal. Thank you for your support and trust. Speaking for myself and on behalf of the Board and the shareholders, I express my deepest gratitude to all our people in our stores and support offices, as well as the management teams. I now hand the microphone over to Brian, President and CEO, who will present a review of the past year.
[Non-English content ] Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This year clearly was one we'll always remember. It was a year that even during the most troubling of times, we became a better, stronger company, and it was a year that I've never been prouder to be CEO of Couche-Tard. This year, we had record earnings and made significant progress on our strategic vision, and we improved our customer experience both inside the store and at the forecourt. We also relied on our customary financial discipline as well as the advancements we've made in operational excellence to help us face the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 crisis. I have no doubt, even with the challenges ahead with the global economy and the persistence of the virus, that we will become an even better and stronger company in the year ahead.
Before I continue, I want to extend my gratitude to all of you, our shareholders, our partners, our suppliers, our customers, and our employees for the trust and commitment you've shown us during this unforgettable year. I also want to pause and wish our team members and customers well as they face Hurricane Sally, which made landfall this morning in one of our core markets in Louisiana. This year when COVID-19 first emerged, Couche-Tard had powerful tools to face it. An experienced team that's faced many natural disasters and business threats in the past, an agile, decentralized model that allowed us to react quickly to local conditions, as well as a healthy balance sheet, and most importantly, a long-term mindset to weather the economic turbulence of the pandemic.
Starting in February, as the virus started spreading from Asia to Europe, we mobilized the network to ensure the health and safety of our employees and our customers. Travel was quickly restricted and remote work procedures were created. At our stores, preventive measures were established very early in the pandemic, including extensive sanitation procedures, the installation of plexiglass dividers at our checkouts, floor markings to ensure proper distancing, and the supply of masks for our team members and customers where permitted or required. We also took critical steps around food safety, enforcing the strict cleaning in food preparation areas and suspending the use of refillable mugs and cups. Within weeks, our store members became frontline heroes in the pandemic, which is really a period of tremendous uncertainty at the beginning.
They courageously took care of each other, our customers, and our business, and we quickly implemented additional measures to support them and ensure their well-being, especially in North America with our hourly employees who do not have the same government safety nets as in other regions where the company operates. These included an emergency appreciation pay premium as well as emergency sick care plans for anyone who had either been diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed under mandatory quarantine. We focused on remaining open and operating and committing ourselves to being part of the solution in the communities in where we work and live. We were among the first retailers to offer free dispensed beverages for all healthcare workers across the globe, giving away over 3 million drinks in the first months of the pandemic.
We donated over 40 million meals to Feeding America through local food banks and pledged 5 million more meals in Canada. Our meaningful initiatives took place across the network, including little thank yous, digital gift coupons, and home delivery to the elderly and the frail in many markets. I'm proud to say that during the pandemic, even as we prioritized health and safety, we stayed the course with our strategic goals. At every level of the company, we remained focused on transforming and improving our customer experience through our work on operational excellence, branding, pricing, promotions, loyalty, and innovation. First, in growing our global Circle K brand, we completed the conversion of our entire European network and pushed forward in North America. We now have close to 90% of our stores across the network with a new global brand.
Over the course of the year, we also continued to expand the Circle K fuel across North America with now more than 2,300 Circle K branded fuel sites. In every way, our actions are bearing fruit as brand awareness has never been higher with our brand trackers in both Europe and North America outperforming the industry in terms of growth and awareness. Throughout the global network, our customers can easily identify our Circle K brands. We're seeing increased loyalty to that brand. Importantly, our rebranding allows us to speak with a clear voice and a unified message, which has been especially meaningful as we've navigated the COVID-19 pandemic and provided support for our employees, our customers, and our communities. To build on that brand loyalty, we pressed the accelerator on several basket and traffic-building loyalty initiatives.
Lift, our digital point of sale platform, is now deployed across our North American network, and we're preparing to bring it to Europe. This digital platform gives us the ability to understand our customers' purchase histories and offer them very personalized discounts based on the composition of the basket. We've also expanded several other loyalty and promotional programs, which create savings, award point for fuel, food, and beverages, and give everyday fuel discounts to our most loyal customers. This year, we also made great strides in a state-of-the-art data-driven pricing approach that customizes our merchandise prices to meet the needs of our local markets. As we start to roll out this initiative, it's clear that being more responsive to local needs is a beneficial solution to our neighborhood, customers, and our business.
As Alain mentioned, innovation is one of the characteristic strengths of the company, and this year we doubled down to better respond to the changing needs of our customers. We've expanded our home delivery to almost 1,000 locations across the network and developed new frictionless and touchless solutions, such as Click and Collect, which we also have in about 1,000 stores in the U.S. and Europe. We're leveraging our Circle K app to provide ordering and payment capabilities, as well as license plate recognition for fuel payment in Norway. We also just announced a partnership to pilot autonomous checkout solutions. This is an exciting development as emerging technology aims to make our checkout experience as easy as just walking in and walking out. It's also uniquely designed to work with our existing store layouts.
Throughout the year, we built a strong success with our gamification initiatives in Europe and rolled out several mobile-centric games and promotions to our customers in the U.S. and Canada with great success. As we look to constantly improving our offering, we use our scale, our agility to share best practices and learnings across our global network. This year, one of our key priorities has been expanding our fresh food program from our Holiday network across the U.S. We launched Fresh Food, Fast early this year, testing a variety of formats to identify what worked best. While training and food sampling was put on hold during the pandemic, we continued with the structural rollout, now have the program deployed in over 1,000 U.S. sites.
We're opening dozens of stores a week with the goal of hitting 1,500 locations by the end of the calendar year, and we feel very confident in achieving that. I'm happy to report that we're seeing positive results and customer enthusiasm, especially for our breakfast sandwich assortment, our hot and ready pizza, and our fresh-baked in-store cookies. This initiative is already boosting traffic and basket across our locations, and we're excited by its simple preparation and speed of service, as well as the ability to adapt it to local tastes. Turning to coffee, we deployed our Coffee On Demand program in 95% of the U.S. network, with approximately 13,500 bean-to-cup machines. Customer reaction remains very positive to on-demand brewing, which delivers the freshest coffee possible while also reducing waste and maintenance costs.
In Europe, we introduced Circle K Certified Blends with new equipment that delivers a barista-quality beverage in less than 90 seconds. In Quebec, we rolled out a new coffee blend driven from our customer focus groups. In cold dispense, we expanded the Polar Pop program to our northern tier sites in an additional 130 stores in Canada, launching exclusive and first-to-flavor markets to help us drive engagement and sales. In Ireland and the Baltics, Froster, our frozen beverage, is now not only a big hit, it's a social media phenomenon, and we'll roll it out to more sites in Europe in the coming year. On age-restricted products, which continue to represent an important portion of our sales, as an experienced and responsible retailer, we continue to rigorously comply with laws and regulations in each of our markets.
In the U.S., where we've seen increased tightening of legislation and restrictions, we benefited from the growing demand for smokeless tobacco and other alternative tobacco products, particularly modern white nicotine. In Canada, we've had strong traction from premier vaping products. We also continue to explore the cannabis opportunity with our strategic agreements and investments in Canopy Growth and Fire & Flower, allowing us to learn more about this space and its future potential. Fuel remains one of the prime movers of our business, and this year, I mentioned earlier, we expanded our Circle K fuel brand through increased presence on our forecourts and dedicated promotional and loyalty tactics to drive higher traffic and volumes. We also introduced dynamic pricing to this category, and we've been testing it at 2,400 sites with encouraging results.
Our Norway market remains the clear leader and pioneer in electric vehicle adoption, and we currently have installed more than 450 chargers at 81 sites across the country. We've also developed a Circle K branded home charging solution and have installed thousands of chargers in partnership with residential complexes and office buildings. Our store managers face some of the greatest challenges in our business, which is why we've listened carefully to their feedback and have made significant strides this year in improving our operational access tools, making it easier for our store employees to better serve our customers by reducing administration and labor challenges. In North America, we rolled out a best-in-class labor model that adapts to individual store needs and determines our needs based on key metrics. With that, a new scheduling tool automates the creation of schedules and permits easy shift swapping.
In this past year alone, over 5,000 stores underwent a refresh of back rooms, offices, cash register storage, and cooler areas as part of our Easy Visit to create a more positive work environment for our team members. In Europe, administrative-oriented hours in the stores have been cut 20% since the beginning of our five-year strategy. Coming to fiscal 2020, we accelerated the pace of new store construction after a significant effort to grow our project pipeline. We had good momentum with the builds until the pandemic caused a necessary pause. We've also introduced a new design for our North American sites that mirrors, in many ways, the Holiday store format that improves the customer flow through the site. We continued the rollout of our new store concepts to all nine of our countries in Europe, with enhanced food and merchandising, fuel charging, Wi-Fi, washrooms, and parking.
We now have hundreds of these truly attractive stores, which have led to improved profitability and sales in our European market. As Alain said, we continue to watch carefully for M&A opportunities in the U.S. in particular, a market we know well, and where we can achieve significant synergies due to our scale. We also remain interested in expanding to the Asia-Pacific markets, where we see attractive demographic trends and solid economic growth potential. Our solid financial foundation, healthy balance sheet, as well as our historically disciplined approach, puts us in a great position to move on opportunities when they represent strong value for our shareholders. By far, our greatest strength in this company is our people, and we made progress this year in solutions that improve communications, facilitate recruitment and training, strengthen employee engagement.
Digitization has been key to these efforts. We now fully implemented our digital HR resources platform to all North American employees and are preparing to start it in Europe. We also launched gamified training in all of our European divisions, which focuses on sales techniques and food, and that have achieved a 90% completion rate and led to an increase in basket size where we deployed it. This is now being successfully piloted in designated U.S. business units. I'm very excited by the potential of this training. It's engaging and lets people train where they want, when they want, on their mobile devices. In terms of diversity and inclusion, this year I proudly signed the CEO Action Pledge, making us the first convenience store retailer to join the largest CEO-driven business commitment to advancing diversity and inclusion within the workplace.
This effort was championed by our Women's Council, which celebrated its first year of formation with many milestones, including a training initiative to increase both awareness of unconscious bias and inclusivity across the company. In the summer, following increased passion in the U.S. against systemic racism, we began encouraging conversations, courageous conversations, across the organization and pledged to listen, learn, and work toward meaningful changes so that our company better reflects the diversity of our customers and our store employees. Sustainability, as Alain discussed, has been integral to our business, and we've committed ourselves to creating a more responsible future. We started to carve out our sustainability goals in our first global report last year in 2019. This year, in our second report launched in July, we set our sights even higher with ambitious targets focused on four key areas where we believe we can really make a difference.
Fuel, energy consumption, food packaging and waste, and then finally, workplace safety. While we have far to go, I'm truly proud of the promise and progress we're making for our customers, our employees, and our stakeholders as we work toward a better and safer world. As we enter this new fiscal year and a future where the continued threat of the virus and the global economy is uncertain, we've taken the learnings from the pandemic to position our people and business to thrive and grow in the long term. We will maintain the extensive sanitation measures at our stores and offices and expect our customers to choose the ease and safety of our locations more than ever over the big box sites. We will continue to supply products which became important, from masks, emergency goods, alcohol and tobacco, to fresh food items and more.
We will continue to innovate and plan for a more frictionless future that meets our customers' rapidly changing needs. We will push toward the strategic growth potential of our business as we make our customers' lives a little bit easier every day. In closing, I want to once again thank all of you, as well as our team members, our partners, and our customers for your support during this memorable year. Throughout, we have shown ourselves to be one team. We're in this together. I'm truly proud that in the midst of an unprecedented global crisis, we maintained our characteristic financial discipline. We stayed the course on our Double Again strategy. We've remained committed to improving our customer journey. Putting all that together, I truly believe we're a better, stronger company.
With that, I'll turn it over to our CFO, Claude Tessier, to provide further financial details. Thank you.
In the past 10 years, how could we go ahead in doing year after year? As you could notice, our EBIT has increased by more than 15% and more than 6% in the past year at 9.7 demand increase. We could see all of the challenges that went through with the pandemic. Since 2011, our EBITDA have increased by 22% for more than CAD 4 billion, increasing our operational. What shows the creation of value actually increased by 20% and 30% in the past year in order to reach almost CAD 50 billion. There was another good stock exchange performance since 2019. Class B shares actually increased by 13%, and this corresponds to the benchmark reference.
In the last 10 years, the value of our Couche-Tard Class B shares increased by more than 1,000%, exceeding greatly the main benchmark indexes in North America. As we underline our 40th anniversary, I believe it is worth mentioning that a CAD 1,000 investment made in Alimentation Couche-Tard-
It is our 40th anniversary, and the time has come to thank all of our shareholders who, 34 years ago, actually invested more than CAD 1,000 each within the company, and now they can see the return of CAD 950,000 without counting the dividends that were received. As we have discussed recently with the investors in the past year, we have the five-year plan that foresees a balance. With two years into it, we realized more than one-fourth of our goals, actually, and it is certainly not a position that is considered as being a negative one. Multiple initiatives that were attached to it and excellent work by our teams. Since we have not gone beyond what was accomplished with Holiday 2019, we will always remain on the look for new opportunities.
According to service and merchandise, actually, all of the betterment brought into our offer as the consequence of traffic in our stores, for example, it has increased by 0.1% to 0.5%, excluding the CAPL activities, which we sold during the fiscal year and excluding the negative impact from currency variation. The increases would have been approximately 2.2% to 1.5% respectively. As for same-store sales, they grew 2.1% in the U.S., 0.1% in Europe, and 2.8% in Canada. These results are even more impressive when you consider that we cycled very strong comparable sales in 2019 and given the impact from the pandemic at the end of the year. On that last point, at the end of the third quarter, prior to the impact from COVID-19, same-store sales growth was 2.9% in the U.S., 2.1% in Europe, 2.3% in Canada.
In our road transportation fuel category, we saw a volume decline of 4.5% in 2020. That said, due to the strong fuel margin, our gross profit margin for fuel growth, 13.5% during the year. The decrease in fuel volumes was due to the part of the divestiture of portions of our wholesale network, as well as the sale of CAPL. Excluding these two factors, fuel volumes would have declined 3.9%. This notably includes the negative impact of confinement measures that were enacted in the month of March and April. In the U.S., our fuel market for the year was $0.312 per gallon and very solid performance as a third consecutive year of improvement. In Europe and Canada, while margins were slightly lower year-over-year, they remain healthy nonetheless.
The changes we have been bringing to our business model in Canada, combined with wage increase in a number of regions across North America, had a meaningful impact on our operating expenses in fiscal 2020, as well, in order to support the launch of our new five-year strategy plan. To accompany our numerous growth activity, we invested towards the promotional activities and Omega-3 plan throughout most of the year. These investments were planned in advance, we have worked hard, as we always do, to mitigate their impact. We also dealt with the pandemic-related cost increase in all regions we operate our network. While operating expenses grew by 2.8% last year, we're seeing many benefits stemming from a strategy to optimize costs and have doubled our efforts to adjust expenses the fourth quarter in order to align our business with a decrease in traffic induced by the pandemic.
We remain determined to maintain long-term OpEX growth below the inflation rate and are already seeing some meaningful progress on that front. As seen in our first quarter results published on September 1st, which show the decline in cost year-over-year. We once again saw last year the strength of our business. The overall performance allowed us to conclude this year by $2.2 billion, an increase of 18.5% over the prior year. We once again saw last year the strength of our business model as the company generated significant cash flow. Our EBIT increased 26% compared to the previous year, reaching $4.5 billion. In the same period, we generated cash flow of more than $2 billion, up approximately 11%.
In order to maintain our leadership position in the global convenience industry, we aim to reinvest 35%-40% of our EBITDA towards capital expenditures, with about 20% of that amount allocated towards the maintenance of the stores and the remainder earmarked for growth initiatives, such as new stores and the rollout of our commercial programs. Finally, we took advantage of the exceptional results for a promising future to raise the quarterly dividend by 12% in the third quarter for CAD 0.0621 per share to CAD 0.07. Notably, we have now increased our dividend by 14 consecutive years since instituting our first dividend payment on November 15, 2005. This demonstrates our commitment to rewarding our shareholders. Additionally, we continue to execute on our share repurchase program, which was announced at the end of the fiscal 2019 and represented 4% of our Class B sub-voting share float.
During fiscal 2020, we spent more than CAD 417 million to buy back 16.4 million shares. In total, we returned more than CAD 685 million to our shareholders last year after having invested fully in our growth initiative and in the maintenance of our operations. As we have historically done, we continue to pay down our mortgage, with some amounts having come due during the fiscal year. By keeping ear to ground in regards to movement in debt market, we have been able to benefit favorable environment and raise CAD 1.5 billion to further strengthen the balance sheet. That said, due to our strong organic growth, we saw our leverage rate to 1.6, a level that is well below our target 2.25. Fiscal year 2020 has allowed us to improve our return on capital employment, a metric that is practically important to us in evaluating our operational efficiency.
As demonstrated over time, as we integrate acquisitions and drive organic growth, we are able to get more out of our assets. We have repeatedly proven our ability to increase our returns following the integration of large acquisitions, and fiscal 2020 was not an exception. A strong operating performance, combined with efficient capital allocation strategies, have allowed us to drive a return on capital employment of 15% in the past year. Now, the highlights. We now show our most recent trends. As reported in Q1 results on September 1st, merchandise same-store sales growth was positive across our three geographies as many markets took steps towards gradually relaunching their economies in May and June following widespread confinement. Importantly, this performance demonstrated resilience of our business model and the key role that we play in our communities.
As for fuel volumes, they decreased across our network as restrictive social measures and work from home had a negative impact on miles driven. That said, we saw stabilization of the volumes during the quarter and a gradual increase since having touched bottom of the spring. As mentioned, we are pleased our efforts continue and reduced costs as operating expenses declined by 0.3%, thanks in large part to the hard work and discipline of our teams towards that goal. This cost optimization is especially impressive, we could see that the performance allowed us to generate adjusted net earnings of $777.1 million, an increase of 44.2% over the prior year, and an increase of 47.9% on an adjusted diluted earnings per share basis. From an acquisition standpoint, our balance-
Our balance sheet is a great position with more than CAD 6 billion in total liquidity.
There's a great position with more than CAD 6 billion in total liquidity at the end of the first quarter.
A leverage ratio of 1.26 and balance sheet capacity to invest more than $9 billion should a worthwhile opportunity present itself.
A leverage ratio of 1.26 and balance sheet capacity to invest more than CAD 9 billion should a worthwhile opportunity present itself. Lastly, our shareholders can rest assured that we will continue to adhere to our strict financial discipline in the execution of our strategy, whether in our investments to drive organic growth and while evaluating acquisition opportunities. With that, the floor is yours, Alain.
Thank you, Claude. We will now move on to the question period. Only registered shareholders and duly appointed proxies may ask questions. You may do so by using the instant messaging service provided on the virtual meeting platform.
Messaging that is offered on the virtual meeting platform. Indicate which member of the board of directors you would like to ask your question. Redundant questions will not be answered. Are there any questions?
Did we wait or there are no other questions, Jean Marc?
No. We had time to compile questions and nothing came in.
That ends the question period. On behalf of the members of the board of directors and on my own name, I wish to congratulate management for the excellent work they have accomplished. Believe me, it was quite the job they did during this pandemic. Thank you all for your presence today.