One, two?
Yeah, there you are.
Working?
Yeah.
Okay, good. Good morning, everybody. What a nice crowd. We are going to present ARKO this morning. Please feel free to jump in with any question that you might have. I'd like to make it interesting. As you can see over here, ARKO Corp., it's actually our company, a Fortune 500 company. We are one of the largest retail operator in the country. We also one of the largest wholesale and fleet distributor in the U.S. What you see in front of you over here, this is a new to industry stores that we just opened at the beginning of this year. I'll let you guys read the disclaimer if you want. No, I'll pass.
As I said, my name is Arie Kotler. I'm the Chairman and CEO of ARKO Corp. I'm also the Chairman CEO of ARKO Petroleum, our subsidiary that we just took public three weeks ago. We'll elaborate about that later on. I have 23 years experience in this industry. I'm also one of the largest shareholder of ARKO Corp, and been running public companies over the past 20 years. You know, just a little bit about the company. Since we become public on Nasdaq since 2020, our cumulative adjusted EBITDA was approximately $1.5 billion. We have around 3,500 location under our belt, and as I mentioned, 2.1 billion gallons of fuel distributed in 2025, and we operate in more than 30 states. For everybody's benefit, we did 26 acquisition.
That's how we grew our business since 2013 all the way to 2024. Aggregate purchase price of 1.8 billion gallon. Just for everybody's benefit, we did 26 acquisition. We probably pass on 300. I mean, there is many opportunities. I mean, we concentrate on return on investments at the end of the day, and we don't do acquisition just for the sake of doing acquisition, even though we have over $1 billion in liquidity. You know, it's all about return on invested capital at the end of the day. A little about our strength. You know, we operate today on our retail business. We operate in 27 states. We have brand equity. Every acquisition that we did, we bought companies actually that have more than 50 years existing in the marketplace.
I think, you know, one of the other thing that was very important for us and we are able to achieve, just three weeks ago, was taking our subsidiary, ARKO Petroleum, public. This is a carve-out IPO. We own 75% of the industry over here. We have a very, very nice track record. Management, experienced management team. At the end of the day, like I said, Return on Invested Capital , that's our focus. I can tell you that over the past five years, the lowest Return on Invested Capital was 25%. We will show you later in the presentation over 100% Return on Invested Capita l in an acquisition that we did, just three years ago.
Again, you can't do all of that unless you have such a handsome man in front of you right now and a very, very experienced management team. I have a very, very experienced management team that have over 25 years of experience. I can tell you that most of those guys have been with the company since I joined in 2011. I don't know if they like me or they just like what they're doing, but at least, you know, we don't have, you know, a lot of turnover in basically in management team. This is a little bit about the areas that we concentrate. As you can see, we are in 30-plus states. We have a lot of white space that I'm gonna talk a little bit later in the presentation.
you know, we have a retail segment with over 1,100 stores, on APC, we've 3,500 sites. I mean, we cover 30-plus state. There is a lot of white space for us to continue to grow. From a cardlock standpoint, this is, actually the purple dot or the blue dot you see or the purple dot that you see over here. We are one of the largest cardlock operator in the Mid-Atlantic states, and we have a lot of location in West Texas. Other than that, you know, very fragmented industry and, like I said, an area that we're planning on growing in the future, and I will elaborate a little bit about that later in the presentation. Just a little bit about ARKO Retail, some of the things to touch.
Up until 2024, we had over 1,540 location. Today, we have around 1,100 location. We are targeting dealerizing another 120 location, and I will explain what's the benefit of that. The one other thing to pick out of that $1.5 billion merchandise sale, as you can see from, you know, very diversified gross profit mix, and as you can see, 59% come from inside sales and other income. In terms of our stores, as I mentioned, we grew through acquisitions, and since we grew through acquisition, we bought basically businesses that were family-oriented, most of them. And as you can see, the average history of those stores, it's around 50-plus years. We concentrate on market that the brand have a lot of equity.
Other than diversified over 27 states, we have a centralized procurement and merchandise, basically a network. We are buying everything from one location from our headquarters in Richmond, Virginia, we just spread, you know, all of this economy of scale across, basically all of those states that we operate. The one thing that we have, we have a common loyalty program. Loyalty, it's a very important role within our company. I will elaborate about that in a minute, we have a common loyalty program. If you are right now in Texarkana and you open a loyalty program, you will actually find the E-Z Mart location. If you're in Virginia, you'll find the fas mart location, and if you are in the Carolina, it will be between Scotchman and ND Mart.
As I said, many, many years of experience with those, and they have a lot of customers that coming through the door on a regular basis. I don't know, some of you guys may not be familiar with the industry. I'm assuming most of you are, but just for the benefit of, you know, speaking about the industry, this is a very, very fragmented industry. When I ask people how many, you know, c-store or gas station are in the country, everybody throw different guesses. There are 152,000 convenience stores, gas stations. I can tell you since I got involved in 2003, used to be 60%, 65%, 70% mom- and- pop. Today, with all of the large acquisition that we hear about, it's still 63% of the industry, it's being handled by mom- and- pop.
Remember this number, 63%. When I'll talk a little bit about ARKO Petroleum, you'll understand how big is the opportunity for ARKO Petroleum standpoint as well because of that. Again, 63%, 96,000 location are handled by mom- and- pop, and those guys are very entrepreneurial. You know, in 2024, after 11 years of acquisition, as I said, 26 acquisition, $1.8 billion, we decided, given that we enter into other, basically segment, which is the wholesale segment in 2020, cardlock business in 2022, which I will elaborate later in the presentation, we have decided to pause for a second. It was a good time. The economy, we saw some slowdown in the economy, at the end, at the end of 2023, beginning of 2024.
We have decided in 2024 to pause for a second and said, "You know what? We've been growing our EBITDA tremendously. We've been doing all of those accretive acquisition. The market don't give us the value. What is going on? What's the reason for that?" What we learn is that given that up until 2020, the market view us as a retail company did not give us any credit as one of the largest wholesaler in the country, and later on, one of the largest cardlock operator in the country.
We said, "Let's make sure that we take all of those acquisition and all of those location and put them at the right segment." What we decided to do in 2024, we decided to dealerize some of the retail location in areas that we did not have a large economy of scale, we didn't have a large concentration. We decided to dealerize some of those location, move them from retail to wholesale by signing a 10-year agreement with those dealers, as we call them mom- and- pop, very entrepreneurial, and at the same time, they pay us rent. We converted up until December 2025. We converted 410 locations, and we have another 120 location. Again, the idea is right now to concentrate on the core asset.
You know, we're gonna reduce our retail business from 1,540 to 1,000, we're gonna concentrate in areas that we can win, in areas that we can actually compete with basically the competition in the market. You know, we're gonna build stores around those areas, and we're gonna grow in those basically markets. Some of the initiatives, as I said, that we actually did over the last 12 months going into 2026. What we saw in 2024, we saw a huge decline in gallons company-wide. Everybody follow up is, 2025, gallons continue to decline. What we did, we decided that we need to help the consumers. The consumer was struggling, you know, all the way until I call it the fourth quarter of 2025. Consumer kept struggling.
We came up with a campaign called Fueling America's Future. Almost every item in the store that you purchase was attached to a discount in cents per gallon at the pump. At the beginning, we started with you buy two Gatorade for $5.55, you get $0.50 off per gallon, up to 20 gallons. You pay $5.55 for two items, and you get $10 discount at the pump. Today, with Fueling America's Future, we actually give $2.50 off per gallon. Almost every item in the store is attached to cents off per gallon, and all of that is being supported by our vendors partners. We have great relationship with them. The same thing go to nicotine. You know, we saw a decline in cigarettes. We see decline in cigarettes year over year over year.
We decided to invest in OTP, other tobacco product, which is the vapes, you know, and chewing nicotine, et cetera, et cetera. We were able actually to grow our nicotine business. We gain market share. We grow our other tobacco product in 2025 by 4% from 2024. The idea is that cigarette margin, it's around 12%-14%. Other tobacco product margin, it's around 30%+. We concentrated on categories that actually have a high margin. With that, it was very important for us to actually increase our loyal members. We have today 2.4 million loyal members that carry our cards across all of those banners. Loyal members in Q4 came and actually purchased 48% more than the non-enrolled member. They're coming more often to the store. We will continue to invest in them.
We will continue to grow it because those are customers that come in very, very often, that's how we started all of those campaigns. In order to win the customers and get traffic back in areas that we wanna actually grow, food service development, it's a very, very big initiative. We launch a brand called fas craves back in 2025, middle of 2025. With actually fas craves, we continue to invest in food service, remodeling the stores, building new to industry stores. As you can see over here, this is a store that just opened a month ago. The idea is that with food, you are able to grow other categories, that's how you're able to actually grow margin.
This is just an example of the remodel store, the first pilot store that we actually started in June 2025. It's in Virginia, in Ashland, Virginia, store 14. As you can see at the top before, the bottom after. As you can see, the average daily results so far show a double-digit increase, 14% inside the stores and 12% in gallons on a daily basis. I mean, very, very encouraging so far for what we see. As I mentioned, economy of scale, concentrating on the core categories. It's not that we grew sell. We were actually able to grow sells with the right product, with the right mix. As I said, cigarettes decline, other categories actually increase over here.
As you can see, we were able to grow, basically margin, inside the store by 330 basis points since 2022. The same thing goes to, basically CPG. Over the last, you know, few years, we see an increase in cents per gallon given that we saw some decline in consumption. Again, given that Q4 start to turn the other way around, I believe that, if fuel will be at $2.50, that's what we saw in Q4, I believe that we're gonna start to see consumption going in, basically in a positive direction. I mentioned dealerization, why we started. We converted 410 stores. We have another 120 stores to finish this year.
You know, the whole idea was really to increase profit and monetize some stores that we don't have economy of scale. Because of that, we basically going to see an increase in profitability on an annual basis of $20 million just from the conversion that we're talking about. We're also gonna see a $10 million decrease in G&A. Not to mention that all of those stores that we dealerize, we don't invest in Maintenance CapEx. On the top of it, we're probably gonna save around $10 million-$15 million on Maintenance CapEx on those stores.
Again, we are moving some of those assets to basically to another segment that we just opened, but the goal is really to have around 1,000 stores, the best of the best of the best that actually we're gonna continue to invest and grow basically profitability on them. ARKO Petroleum. You know, as I said, we took the company public in 2020, and EBITDA go in one direction, stock goes in another direction. We kept asking investors, "What is the reason for that? I mean, why you guys don't pay attention?" What we learned is that a lot of investors didn't pay attention to all of the other segment. We started as a retail company. Almost 100% of the EBITDA was retail.
If you're looking right now at the end of 2025, around 50%-55% of the EBITDA come from wholesale and fleet fueling business. What we decided to take those two segments and actually take this company public. We launched ARKO Petroleum 3 weeks ago. We went public. The company's trading right now for approximately $900 million valuation. We raised $200 million. We reduced debt by $184 million. It was all primary. We still own 76% of the company, but that's enhanced value to our shareholders. At the same time, we gave an opportunity to investors that looking just for yield and dividend. This is the opportunity. This is, by the way, a C corp.
You know, we look on that and we said, if we are going public, we have to make sure that every yield investors will invest in our stock. I can tell you that, you know, we went public three weeks ago. We have some guys from Raymond James that were involved in our successful story, and we've chosen the best of the best of the best investor that actually got into this stock. I mean, this offering was oversubscribed. As I said, that's a great story for us, and we start to see it, to feel it, and that's gonna be a great opportunity for the future for the company. A little bit about APC, just ARKO Petroleum. We are selling fuel to 2,053, I'll call it dealer location, mom-and-pop location. Remember, 96,000 mom-and-pop in the U.S.
We believe there is a huge opportunity for us to continue to increase the amount of the location and amount of gallons. The good thing about that, those gallons are being sold at cost-plus. We have 288 cardlock location. That's what we call fleet fueling. The GPMP segment, those are the retail stores. We sell fuel to the retail store at $0.06 per gallon fixed. We just signed this agreement at the beginning of January for 10 years. Some highlights related to the business. As I mentioned, beside having long-term relationship with all of the major oil companies, we have great relationship with those dealers. We typically sign a 10-year agreement with those dealers when we bring them on board. With the 10-year agreement, it's all on cost-plus.
We buy from rack minus, we sell for rack plus, and we make the margin in between. The average margin over the past three years was around $0.09, a little bit over $0.09, $0.095. Which means that we are generating stable cash flow because of that. It's very, very predictable. We're gonna continue to actually to grow cash flow just by increasing gallon. Very, very simple story to understand. As I mentioned earlier, we are concentrating on return on capital, especially in this business. You know, we have, you know, we have very low debt. In a minute, I'll show you. We are below 2.5x net debt-to-adjusted EBITDA , and we have a lot of liquidity.
We have around $650 million liquidity in ARKO Petroleum at a very attractive cost of capital. It's around 6.5%-6.75%. If we were able to continue to do those transaction, accretive M&A at, I'll call it at a high double-digit returns when your cost of capital is 6.5%, 6.75%, you understand what will happen to Discretionary Cash Flow and dividend in the future. Again, all of that 26 acquisition under our belt, we believe that with our track record, and being disciplined, we're gonna be able to continue to do that. This is a very, very fragmented industry. Before I talk about 63% is mom-and-pop, in this industry, we sell 2.1 billion gallon and probably number 6 or 7 in the country.
This is an industry of 195 billion gallons between gasoline and diesel, around 195 billion. We only represent 1% market share. I mean, the opportunity, it's huge. Again, with the right team in place, we have an experienced team that have over 25 years experience in this business. One thing to mention which is very, very important, it's the cost-plus. 86% of basically of our contract over here are at cost-plus. As I said, we buy for rack minus, we sell at rack plus, we make around $0.095 in between. Very easy to predict, very easy to do the math. Even I can do that.
When we decided to go public, it was very important for us that we will lead against the comps out there. When we actually gonna talk to public investors, we're gonna be able to show them and prove them that we are the best of the best of the best. As you can see over here, those are the comps. The conversion from adjusted EBITDA to Discretionary Cash Flow at ARKO Petroleum, it's 70%, given that this is a very asset-light business, very low labor, very little CapEx. Discretionary Cash Flow of 70%. If you look on the comps, anywhere from 49-65, so we will win on this metrics. The same thing goes to leverage. After IPO, and not that we were actually leveraged before, we are around 3.4 x.
After IPO, being that the IPO was primary, we actually reduced leverage below 2.5x net debt-to-adjusted EBITD A. As you can see from a comp standpoint, anywhere between 3.2%-5.4%. Again, we will win from a leverage standpoint, and we have a lot of liquidity. Like I said, $650 million of liquidity to continue to grow. This is just an example, and it's a great example, but I'm not sure we can actually repeat it every time, but we will try to get very close to it. We purchased Quarles basically in 2022, July 2022. Quarles had 184 cardlock and 46 dealer location. When we purchased Quarles, the cost of the acquisition was $173 million.
As you can see, this is cardlock location. Cardlock, it's a location outside of industrial park, airports, not any desirable location, you know, most of those gallons that are being sold to fleet customers. More than 80% of the gallons are diesel gallons, which tend to have margin of over $0.40-$0.45. Unmanned, we paid $173 million. We sold the underlying fee simple property to Blue Owl for $130 million, we pay rent of $7.8 million. We brought $43 million of our own cash to complete this acquisition. I'm very, you know, proud to say that a year later, 12 months later, we brought back $43 million.
Everybody said, "You got lucky. Probably, you know, we are missing something. I can tell you today that three years later, we still generate over $40 million cash year- over- year- over- year. We brought on a $43 million investment three years ago, $120 million in cash. Again, this is just an example. Great business opportunity present itself. We're gonna continue to invest in this business. As I said, we are probably the second or third largest in the country. We're gonna continue to invest and grow. To build a cardlock, it's between $1 million-$2 million, and we target basically mid to high teens returns. Unmanned, no labor, very, very little CapEx. As I said, I mean, we're gonna continue to build them. Which bring me to the next page.
As I said, between 2024 all the way to 2025, we decided to pause for a second. Let's organize all of those boxes. We went public. We dealerized a substantial amount of stores. We are back in business right now. We have already 2 acquisitions that we are in preliminary due diligence right now. As I said, 2.1 billion gallons, total gallons sold. We already have two acquisitions, be almost 400 million gallons together that we are working on at the moment. In the same time, we already have, you know, we put a target for 2026 to build at least 20 cardlock, given that this is an unbelievable business. We already identified 10 of them. We are starting to add another 10 already. This is only March.
Again, a lot of accretive opportunities for us to continue to actually grow this business. Going back again, about how attractive this industry, like I said, as you can see over here, you know, we're sitting over there probably number 5 in the country in terms of size. I mean, look how much opportunities. I believe that 75% of this industry of 195 billion gallons, which we own 1%, I believe there is a lot of opportunities actually to increase this business. You know, when I say increase this business, you know, it's very important for us to continue to be disciplined, continue to do accretive M&A. With this accretive M&A, we're gonna be able to convert it directly to Discretionary Cash Flow and all the way to dividend.
Our dividend is very, very attractive rate at the moment. I think, you know, the most important thing from this page is that not only that we have a lot of opportunities to grow, we also created a currency right now for business that want to understand the business, which mean that we're gonna be able, beside using our, you know, low cost of capital, we're gonna be able to use our currency to continue to actually grow, basically those businesses. Before I turn it to Gallagher, just, you know, very, very quick over here. Beside acquisition, I kept talking about acquisition and opportunities how to grow our petroleum. There are some, you know, organic and inorganic grow opportunities for us. As I mentioned, the fleet fueling, we're gonna continue to build them. We're targeting 20 in 2026.
As I said, we already have 10 in the pipeline that we identified and we are actually planning to add in 2026. We're gonna add another 10 in 2026. I'm very certain about that. ARKO Retail, as I mentioned earlier, as we continue to grow in the market that we grow our business, we're gonna continue to build new to industry stores. We built 3 in 2025, already opened another 2 in 2026, and this is just the beginning. Every time we add retail stores to our mix, we continue to sell them fuel at the $0.06 per gallon. That's just, you know, the opportunity that it continue to give. On the wholesale M&A, Beside the major acquisition or the medium-size acquisition, we have 50 salespeople out there as we speak right now. Let's go back to the 96,000 mom-and-pop location.
Those 50 salespeople are knocking on doors as we speak right now and getting new businesses. The way we incentivize them, we incentivize them with a commission that they get for every deal that they bring in. Our target ROI, it's at least 20%. Again, this is how we continue to grow it. I mean, we're targeting mid-single digit annual growth in total gallons in 2026. As you saw already, we have close to 20% increase, assuming we were able to complete those two acquisitions that we are in the midst of due diligence right now. I'll let Galagher go from here. Thank you. Jump in.
Perfect. Thank you, Arie.
Okay.
Yeah. I just wanna wrap us up with just a few numbers to talk about what the strategy is doing and show it's working. Next slide. Thank you. Two things I want you to remember here. One is momentum. Just last week, we released our Q4 and full year 2025 earnings. The other is dry powder for growth and execute strategy. Talking through the numbers, $249 million in adjusted EBITDA in FY 2025. $9.1 million net income, up 9.1%, sorry. Retail OpEx down 13.3%. Our stores are getting more efficient. Some of that's due to dealerization. Same stores were basically flat. Q4, EBITDA up 16%. Retail CPG up $0.058 per gallon. Merchandise Margin up 140 basis points.
Every single metric that we care about was up in Q4 versus the full year. That's the momentum. A lot of that's continued into Q1. The strategies that Arie talked about are working. They're driving a better business. On the right side of the page is dry powder to execute our strategy. We finished the year with $305 million in cash on hand, sitting on $300 million of cash. We also have access to $760 million of liquidity for over $1 billion that we can leverage to continue this growth, to continue the strategy, continue executing in the stores. As we exited 2025 into 2026, seeing momentum, almost every metric is better in Q4 than it was for the full year and has continued to strengthen.
We have a lot of opportunity, a lot of liquidity to drive growth, look for M&A opportunities to revitalize our retail stores. That's what we'd like you to remember. This presentation is gonna be online. It should be online now. The details are there. That is about it, I think, before we move to Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you, Galagher.
Thank you, Arie. Thank you, Galagher. We probably have.
You can pass sort of coffee.
Yeah, we probably would. We have like two minutes, I'm guessing. Perfect. Yeah. Right. We got two minutes for questions. We can move to the breakout. Arie, I'll just go ahead and start. A lot to unpack there. Maybe can you talk a little bit about the remodel opportunity on the retail side? You know, obviously still early, some of the early results look pretty promising. What do you think the ability is or, I guess the better way to say, the opportunity is to scale some of those remodels across the fleet?
Yeah. Just for your benefit, as you can see over here, this is something that we started in 2024. When I kept talking about the transformation plan, this is not something that we just, you know, woke up in the morning. You know, in terms of food service, we've been working for more than one year to develop the right concept. We did consumer studies. We made sure that from a quality standpoint, I mean, this is the right product.
We made sure that to operate those stores, you know, we have the right, not only the right menu, also the right labor basically model over there. As you can see, double digit, actually double-digit increase already. We have seven of them that we are completing as we speak right now. We are working on another 25 already for 2026. You know, we're gonna move as fast as we can. Again, we wanna make sure that we, you know, we learn from actually from the first seven pilots that we did over here.
Very good. Then maybe let's hit on the wholesale fleet segment. Just you mentioned a large opportunity on both sides of it. When you kinda separate out wholesale versus fleet, do you think there's M&A opportunities on both? Is one more organic, you can build fleet card locations faster, you wanna acquire wholesale? Just anything to help us flesh out kind of the opportunity there.
Yeah. Like I mentioned, the opportunity that you guys saw in 2022, I think it's one of a kind that we were able to actually put together. It was a very, very complex transaction with 100% ROI. I think from a fleet standpoint, we're gonna continue to build them. It's probably much easier because people who own basically a cardlock, if they wanna sell it, I probably don't wanna buy it for the price that they wanna sell it. You know, usually, you know, those are actually opportunities.
A very, very fragmented industry. There is maybe couple companies that I know that actually have a large network of basically fleet fueling. One of them is World Fuel with Flyers, of course. Other than that, I think that the opportunity will be to continue to grow, basically the business through building them. In terms of the wholesale, let's just move to the page of the targets. Like I said, we are number five with two point... I'm sorry, one more back. No, sorry.
Other way.
Yep. Yeah. Thank you. As you can see, you know, Sunoco, which have 8% of market share today, we are only 1% of market share. If you think about that, I keep saying we are number five or number six in the country with only 2.1 billion gallon of 100 out of 195 billion gallons. I think the opportunity is tremendous. Listen, we did 26 acquisition, most of them retail. We can probably do double or triple in this side of the business.
Much more easier. I mean, don't tell my team that I say that, but it's a much more easy to integrate in wholesale business than to integrate the retail business. I mean, in 38 million gallons acquisition that I show you guys over there, we probably need to add one person. 38 million gallons, 40 location on retail, probably need to add 200 people. Again, it's all about economy of scale at the end of the day.
Very good. I think we're right on time, so we'll end there. I won't hold you to the 100% return on capital for the rest, but that one's-
I'll try to do our best. I'll try to do our best. Welcome. This is the best presentation. Welcome. We're selling tickets.