Yesway reached its store-count goal in 2022, boosting the Fort Worth, Texas-based chain to No. 18 on this year’s Top 202 list with 425 stores. That’s an increase of 22 total stores from 2021. While the chain’s biggest growth spurt came from the acquisition of 304 Allsup’s stores in 2019, the focus now is on new builds rather than inorganic growth.
“We pivoted from acquisition-focused growth to construction-focused growth in 2022 due to the advantages of consistent store footprints and the added flexibility of site selection and choosing our own store, canopy and parking lot layouts as opposed to having to fit our operations into someone else’s existing real estate,” Yesway Chairman and CEO Tom Trkla says.
BW Gas & Convenience Holdings LLC, which owns Yesway, raised $190 million in new equity in the second half of 2022 to fund its new-store construction program. It plans to build 28 new stores in 2023 with this new investment, most of which comes from HPS Investment Partners, New York.
Yesway even created a new position—chief real estate officer—to help drive its new-to-market construction activities. Thomas Brown, president of Brookwood Financial Partners, which founded Yesway, will take on the position.
That’s not to say it’s done acquiring, though. It picked up nine Tres Amigos convenience stores in September 2022 and five Ranglers c-stores in February, both located in Texas.
“While Yesway continues to evaluate acquisition opportunities, ongoing uncertainty caused by the war in Europe and higher interest rates add systemic risk and negatively impact every company’s cost of capital,” Trkla says. “As a result, the return hurdles and risk profiles of acquisitions generally exceeds those of Yesway’s construction projects.”
Financial buyers and public companies have experienced the same constraints Yesway has in terms of higher cost of capital and higher risk, he says. Yesway plans on refiling its registration document to become a publicly traded company later this year but has not yet due to continued volatility in the equity capital markets, Trkla says.