Murphy USA nearly doubled its net income in 2022 compared to 2021, and it improved its fourth-quarter net income from the same quarter a year ago. During the company’s earnings call on Thursday, President Andrew Clyde highlighted the gains from the past year and looked ahead to new investments for the convenience-store chain in 2023 and beyond—including a digital transformation and store redesign.
“These results reflect a lot of hard work over the past decade, executing against the key elements of the strategies we established to spend to create a sustainable and advantage business,” Clyde said about the El Dorado, Arkansas-based company's 2022 performance.
- Murphy USA is No. 5 on CSP’s 2022 Top 202 ranking of U.S. c-store chains by store count.
Murphy USA operates approximately 1,700 stores under the Murphy USA, Murphy Express and QuickChek banners.
Clyde highlighted store growth—noting the chain has added more than 500 stores since 2012 and 36 new stores in 2022—along with the company’s enhanced employee engagement and customer satisfaction, investments in loyalty program Murphy Drive Rewards, its integration of QuickChek and more.
“Looking out over the next decade, we are poised to continue delivering results and making investments that we believe better prepare the company to compete and win in 2023 and beyond,” he said.
Those plans include preparing for new store growth, with up to 45 new stores expected to open in 2023, with nine on schedule to open in the first quarter. Murphy USA will also focus on improving same-store productivity, increasing efficiency across all aspects of the business and maintaining an ultra-low-cost structure, Clyde said.
Murphy USA will also embark on two significant campaigns: A digital transformation and a store redesign, he said.
“The first of these, digital transformation, will help evolve the reach and effectiveness of our Murphy Drive Rewards loyalty platform, leveraging customer shopping habits to customize more impactful offers at scale and trigger point-of-sale upselling opportunities,” Clyde said. “In addition to customer-facing opportunities, transaction data will help inform pricing and assortment optimization at the local and store level.”
These learnings will also be used to inform a redesign of the QuickChek loyalty program to increase brand awareness and attract new customers, he said.
The in-store experience campaign involves a comprehensive redesign of the inside of new and existing Murphy USA stores, leveraging critical insights from consumer research, QuickChek’s food and beverage expertise and an analysis of subcategory performance, Clyde said.
“This effort goes beyond routine category resets,” he said. “The resets represent a fundamentally different experience for customer that will better showcase the breadth and accessibility of our product offerings and drive higher in-store sales.”
This could include rethinking how a 2,800-square-foot Murphy USA store is laid out based on what customers want and what’s best for the employees. For example, the company may rethink its grab-and-go cooler or grab-and-go re-heatable products to reimagine how the customer wants to interact with that.
Murphy USA will design a store of the future, Clyde said, which it expects will enhance new store performance in returns over the next decade. Clyde did not go into detail about the store redesign or timeline of the campaigns.