Where Will Couche-Tard Expand Next?
By Greg Lindenberg on May 22, 2017LAVAL, Quebec -- Since its launch in 1980, convenience-store retailer Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. has executed a regular series of acquisitions that has seen the chain grow from its Canadian roots to the United States and to Europe.
Most of these deals were the result of growth goals that co-founder and executive chairman Alain Bouchard set for the company—and, with very few exceptions, he has met those goals.
Now Bouchard is planning where the global company’s next expansion push will occur.
Click through for details. …
History of acquisitions
Couche-Tard has a history of large acquisitions (click here for the full timeline):
- 1997: Acquired C-Corp from Provigo, owner of 245 Provi-Soir stores in Quebec and 50 Wink’s in Ontario and western Canada.
- 1999: Acquired Silcorp, owner of 980 Mac’s, Mike’s Mart and Beckers stores in Ontario and western Canada.
- 2001: Acquired Johnson Oil, owner of 225 Bigfoot stores in the U.S. Midwest.
- 2003: Acquired Circle K from ConocoPhillips, which operated 1,663 stores in 16 states.
- 2012: Acquired Statoil Fuel & Retail, which operates approximately 2,300 stores in Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Denmark), Poland, the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and Russia.
- 2015: Acquired The Pantry, which operates approximately 1,500 Kangaroo Express stores in 13 Southeastern states.
- 2016: Acquired Topaz Energy Group in Ireland, with a network of 444 stations.
- 2016: Acquired A/S Dansk Shell in Denmark, consisting of 131 sites.
- 2016: Acquired 279 Esso-branded stores in Ontario and Quebec from Imperial Oil.
- 2017 (pending): Acquiring CST Brands, with about 2,000 stores in the United States and Canada.
Bouchard’s dream
As of July 17, 2016, Laval, Quebec-based Couche-Tard’s network comprised 7,863 stores throughout North America in 15 business units, including 11 in the United States covering 41 states and four in Canada covering all 10 provinces, as well as 2,708 stores in a retail network across Scandinavia, Ireland, Poland, the Baltic States and Russia through 10 business units.
Jon Erlichman, of Canadian business and financial network BNN, talked with Bouchard at the Canadian Business Hall of Fame awards in mid-May. He asked Bouchard whether he thought the company could ever get as big as it is.
“Actually, I dream a lot, but I didn’t dream that something as big as we’ve become with the last acquisition that we will take over next month,” Bouchard said, referring to CST Brands. “We will have 14,500 stores, 115,000 employees and $50 billion in sales. That’s quite bigger than I thought at the beginning, but I’m not done.”
Next target market
So where does Bouchard plan to go next with Couche-Tard?
“There is a lot of movement right now in many parts of the world,” he told BNN. “Obviously, we would like to be in Asia with our own equity, which is not the case right now. We have licensees in Asia. So our goal in the next five years is to be in Asia with our own equity on the ground with one of our actual partners, or others or buy something there. But we’re prudent, we’re careful, but we see big opportunities in some Asian countries right now.”
Licensees operate more than 1,500 stores under the Circle K banner in 13 countries and territories worldwide: China, Costa Rica, Egypt, Guam, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam.