Opinions
Gavin Graham
Alimentation Couche-Tard (B)
ATD.B-T
HOLD
Mar 18, 2016
Stock price when the opinion was issued
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Very strong business - founder led & owned. Exception creator of wealth the past ~20 years. Has owned shares since 2014. Very good consolidator of convenience stores. High quality capital allocation skills. Recent 7-Eleven M&A is interesting, but depends on the final price that is settled on. Would recommend holding and/or buying.
EPS of 68c matched estimates; sales of $20.90B missed estimates of $21.21B. EBITDA of $1.64B beat estimates by 3%. Supply-chain optimization could let Couche-Tard maintain fuel profitability across its key markets for the rest of the fiscal year. US fuel margins declined sequentially (down 3.9%), but increased 2.5% compared with last year, an inflection point for the metric. If the company can keep this cadence of growth for 4Q, it's likely that US fuel margins may remain around mid-40 cents per gallon for the year. Canada might remain in the low-teen cents and high-single digits in Europe. Better control management allowed US inside-the-store margins to expand. As for M&A, recent acquisitions seem to remain on track, with the company reiterating its ambition for a friendly merger with Seven Eleven now that the possibility of a management buyout is gone. The stock is up, but this is likely more due to ongoing discussions with Seven Eleven rather than the quarter. But we are comfortable with the results.
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Have made the transformational acquisition they have been looking for, for the last decade. Got all the Shell stations in Eastern Canada for $2.4 billion. Oil and gas companies don’t really want to be in the business of running thousands of retail gas stations in the country. The fact that they have done a really big deal and there is some pressure on the share price at the moment does not take away from the fact that this is the one Canadian retailer that has been an enormous success in the US and now in Europe.