On February 10, the company acquired seven company-operated stores in the Greensboro and Raleigh areas of North Carolina. The company leases the land of three of the properties and the buildings of two of these, [image-nocss] while owning the remaining two sites.
On February 2, as previously reported in CSP Daily News, the company signed an agreement to acquire 13 stores in Quebec from Exploitation Quali-T operating under the Petro-T brand. The land and buildings of all 13 sites will be leased.
Meanwhile, on January 30, following the sale by ConocoPhillips of 314 stores in the West they were operating under the Circle K banner, Couche-Tard signed, with the buyers-Convenience Retailers LLC and Pacific Convenience & Fuels (PetroSun West)-new franchise agreements for the same stores.
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In addition, on January 26, the company concluded another franchise agreement with Jump Oil Co., for the conversion of 45 of its stores in Missouri to the Circle K brand.
"We have worked on other opportunities during the quarter, even though we have not yet been successful," Couche-Tard president and CEO Alain Bouchard said during the company's earnings call. "Our biggest challenge is still the asking price. We believe that it is better to be patient and wait for the right opportunities at the right price in order to create real value for our stakeholders instead of focusing on adding sites for the wrong reasons. The actual economic situation and the credit constraints should facilitate some deals in the future."
In the course of fourth-quarter 2009, Couche-Tard will pursue its investments with caution in order to, amongst other things, deploy its IMPACT program. The company said that it believes that it may be able to realize acquisitions by seizing opportunities arising from the economic climate and from the attractive access to its credit facilities.
In view of current accessibility conditions to capital market and debt, the company said that it believes that it is in good position to create value; however, it said it will continue to exercise patience in order to benefit from a fair price in view of current market conditions.
Laval, Quebec-based Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. is the second largest independent convenience-store operator (whether integrated with a petroleum company or not) in North America in terms of number of stores. Couche-Tard currently has a network of 5,444 convenience stores, 3,607 of which include motor-fuel dispensing, located in 11 large geographic markets, including eight in the United States covering 33 states and three in Canada covering 10 provinces.
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