AUBURN, Calif. --Flyers Energy will exit the retail business with the sale of its 39 convenience stores to Andeavor Corp.
Established in 1979, Flyers is a third-generation family-owned business with stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Managing Partner Walt Dwelle said the time was right for he and his brothers and other family to narrow the scope of the company's business, but he didn’t rule out a return to c-stores someday.
"Refiners are looking for strategies to distribute their products, so the business climate was right for us to sell our retail stores," Dwelle said. "We continue to grow in commercial products, including renewable energy, and are still acquiring other companies when the deal is right. That may include companies with retail stores in the future."
Flyers Energy sold all of its 39 c-stores and gas-station locations to the newly renamed Andeavor Corp., formerly Tesoro Corp., as reported in a CSP Daily News Flash.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Andeavor will change some of the locations to new fuel brands, including Mobil, Exxon, Arco or Shell. The agreement allows the buyer up to 12 months to rename the newly acquired stations.
"This [deal] will further strengthen our integrated business by expanding our retail presence in Northern California by adding approximately 6,000 barrels per day of branded sales," Andeavor Chairman and CEO Greg Goff said during the company's second-quarter earnings conference call. "We expect the sites to contribute $10 million of annual net earnings and about $25 million of annual EBITDA."
Auburn, Calif.-based Flyers started with the purchase of seven independent gas stations in Northern California. “Retail is where we began and it was a difficult decision to give it up, but it’s a relatively small part of our business today,” said Dwelle.
In July, Flyers completed the acquisition of lubricants operations in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., from Western Refining, which also was recently acquired by Andeavor. Flyers Energy expects to increase its volume of lubricants sold from 1 million gallons in 2010 to nearly 19 million gallons next year with the help of an exclusive deal with ExxonMobil and through a series of acquisitions of petroleum distributors in California, Nevada and Arizona, the company said.
Newly renamed, San Antonio-based Andeavor is an integrated marketing, logistics and refining company with more than 3,200 gas stations and convenience stores under multiple fuel brands, including Arco, SuperAmerica, Shell, Exxon, Mobil, Tesoro, USA Gasoline and Giant.
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