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Sunoco LP (SUN)

Q1 2014 Earnings Call· Mon, May 12, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Susser Holdings, Susser Petroleum Partners' First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. For today's presentation all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be opened for questions. (Operator Instructions). This conference is being recorded today, Wednesday, May 7, 2014. I would now like to turn the call over to Chip Bonner, Executive Vice President. Please go ahead, sir.

Chip Bonner

Management

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. This morning we released our first quarter 2014 earnings for both Susser Holdings Corporation and for Susser Petroleum Partners. A reminder that today's call will contain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's beliefs, expectations and assumptions and include the company's objectives, targets, plans, strategies, costs and anticipated capital expenditures. They are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially as described more fully in the company’s filings with the SEC. During today’s call, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are helpful for a full understanding of our financial performance. Please refer to our news release for reconciliation of each financial measure. With me on the call today are Sam L. Susser, Susser Holdings' CEO; Rocky Dewbre, CEO of Susser Petroleum Partners, Sid Keswani, our Senior Vice President for Retail Operation; and Mary Sullivan, our CFO, and other members of our leadership team. As you are probably aware, last week, Susser Holdings agreed to be acquired by Dallas based Energy Transfer Partners in a cash and units transaction valued at about $1.8 billion. We expect to close in the third quarter pending approval by Susser Holdings shareholders and other regulatory clearance. On today's call, we won't be able to comment on additional details of the transaction, the timing of the integration or the drop downs to SUSP, executive staffing changes and the like. Beyond that what was disclosed in the news release, subsequent 8-K filings and joint conference call we held on April 28, so please keep that in mind as we enter the Q&A portion in a few minutes. We have rescinded full year 2014 guidance for SUSS and as is customary for publicly traded companies that are being acquired. Given that Energy Transfer has stated that its plans to begin dropping down Susser Holdings and Sunoco operations in to SUSP shortly after closing, we have also rescinded our original full year 2014 guidance for SUSP because we don’t have a clear line of sight of as to what SUSP will look like in the latter half of the year. After closing, any future drop downs are subject to market conditions and approval of the SUSP Conflicts Committee. A remainder that the information reported on this call speaks only to the company's view as of today, May 7, 2014. So time sensitive information may no longer be accurate at the time of any replay. Now I’ll turn the call over to Sid Keswani, Senior Vice President of Operations at Stripes.

Sid Keswani

Management

Thanks, Chip, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on this call. Let me begin with a brief look at our Q1 results for retail operations. We delivered solid performance on the merchandize side of the business during the first quarter despite the fact that it was much colder and wetter than normal including the March spring break period. Same stores sales increased 1.9% over last year or 6.1% on a two-year stack basis. Easter fell in the second quarter versus the first quarter last year. So if you normalize the impact of the calendar change we estimate it would have increased our same-store sales growth by about 50 basis points. We have already realized the benefit of this in the second quarter. Merchandise margin was a very solid 33.9%, versus 33.1% a year earlier. This is primarily due to the favorable mix changes driven by our solid growth in food service and some improvements in shortage control. Average fuel gallon sold per store increased 2% versus 4.1% a year ago. This metric includes all stores and is up 4.2% excluding the Sac-N-Pac stores which have average fuel volumes there are currently 60% of Stripes level. Overall personnel expenses were 21% of merchandize sales versus 20.6% a year ago. The overall increase in Q1 is due to several factors including a shift towards more food service, which requires about two to three times the labor as a percent of sales versus traditional convenience store merchandize, lower than expected topline growth due in large part to the cold wet weather, labor inefficiencies related to ramping up new Stripes Stores we have opened over the last six months, extra labor and travel cost for our store managers and area managers that mentored the new teams at the Sac-N-Pac stores that…

Rocky Dewbre

CEO

Thanks, Sid. Good morning, everyone. Our wholesale fuel business continues to perform very well last quarter. As a result, we are pleased to announce the fourth consecutive increase in our quarterly distribution at Susser Petroleum Partners, an increase of 3.5% versus the prior quarter to $0.502 per unit or $2.01 on an annualized basis. $0.502 is a $0.65 and 14.8% increase over the distribution we played last May. Based upon distributable cash flow of $14 million this reflects a coverage ratio of approximately 1.27 times for the first quarter, and coverage of 1.22 for the trailing four quarters. Susser Petroleum Partners delivered robust first quarter performance with an 18% year-over-year growth in fuel gallons sold and a 42% increase in gross profit. The partnership continues to generate solid growth in fuel volumes and rental income through our existing and acquired sites, resulting in an increased distributable cash flow and distributions. An important part of the year-over-year growth was driven by the Gainesville Fuels and 3W Warren Fuels acquisition that we completed over the last nine months. For the Sac-N-Pac, 3W Warren Fuels acquisitions, we increased our third party volume with the addition of 19 new dealer sites and our volume sold to affiliates increased through the addition of 47 Sac-N-Pac stores that are operated by Stripes. Volume sold by the partnership to affiliates which includes volume sold by the partnership to Susser Holdings for resale at Stripes and Sac-N-Pac stores and independently operated consignment sites increased 11% year-over-year to 278 million gallons. This reflects very strong volume at new Stripes Stores, healthy growth trend at existing Stripes Stores, and in our dealer operated consignment locations. Volume sold to third parties including independent dealers and commercial customers increased 34% to 156 million gallons. Gross profit on these third party sales increased…

Mary Sullivan

CFO

Thanks, Rocky. Good morning, everyone. To summarize the consolidated financial results for Susser Holdings, this morning we reported a first quarter net loss of $1.8 million or $0.09 per diluted share versus a net loss of about $230,000 or $0.01 a share for the first quarter of last year. As Sid mentioned earlier, the warm weather quarters are our strongest and the cool weather quarters are out weakest year in and year out both for merchandize sales and for fuel margins. The first quarter was no exception and we are comping up against strong numbers for last couple of years. Adjusted EBITDA totaled $29 million, which was down 8.8% from a year ago. EBITDA performance was significantly impacted by lower retail fuel margins, which were $0.036 lower than a year ago when we experienced record first quarter retail fuel margins of $0.166 per gallon. However, our first quarter retail fuel margin was still $0.018 higher than the average margin for the previous five years of $0.112 per gallon. As a reminder, we post our historical quarterly fuel margins on our website. We did mitigate this quarter's retail fuel margin decline with higher inside gross profit and maturation of our new store basis. Fuel margins will also be volatile on a quarter basis while merchandize gross profits are more stable. For the LTM period, non-fuel gross profit represents 65% of our retail division gross profit. Looking at some of the key expense lines, most of the increases were related to the growth in our retail and wholesale business over the last four quarters. G&A expense was up $3.4 million year-over-year. About half of that increase represents higher non-cash stock compensation expense that is driven by our strong stock price performance. Other increases generally were related to additional cost of supporting our…

Sam Susser

Management

Thanks, Mary. And I want to thank you to for being with us this morning and for being such an important part of our company's growth since we became a publicly traded company 7.5 years ago. Before we take questions, I want to reiterate this is a very bitter sweet moment for the Susser family. We consider ourselves incredibly blessed to be a part of a team that has grown this business from a couple of stores that my grandmother inherited over 76 years ago to a Fortune 500 operation. Personally and selfishly, my wife Catherine and I really love the way things are today and would have been very, very happy with the status quo. That said, Energy Transfer presented a compelling proposal for our shareholders at SUSS, our unitholders at SUSP, as well as for our leadership team. Pairing Stripes and Laredo Taco Company with Sunoco, one of the great fuel brands in the United States with the capability and resources of the Sunoco and ETP family tees up our company for a tremendous future. We have been dedicated to developing a team that is truly a leader amongst our peers, strives to respect each and every individual team member, runs every store on a one at a time basis and is built on a robust, scalable, low cost, technology platform. Combined with Sunoco's brand, logistics, credit card and geographic reach, this company has the potential to be a truly major player, a juggernaut in the years ahead. Operator, we’re now ready for any questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. We will now begin the questions-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from the line of Irene Nattel with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Irene Nattel - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Good morning, everyone. And mindful of Chip's comments I will keep my questions to the quarter of the results.

Chip Bonner

Management

Than you, Irene.

Irene Nattel - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Thank you for quantifying the impact of the shift in Easter. When you look at the weather impact, is there any way for you to quantify that?

Sam Susser

Management

Irene, this is Sam. Good morning. I would say that based on what we are seeing in a more normal weather pattern that the weather is worth about 250 basis points, the impact of the weather on the quarter.

Irene Nattel - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Okay. That's a big number, Sam.

Sam Susser

Management

It’s a very unusual quarter.

Irene Nattel - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Clearly. So taking that into consideration how would you describe the competitive dynamic in your key market, and was there any real intensification say sequentially or quarter over quarter?

Sam Susser

Management

I want to reflect on the number if I am off on the 250, maybe it's 200, I shouldn’t imply so much precision, but weather is worth 2%. And I would not say that there has been any meaningful change in the intensity of the competition from prior quarters. It is competitive, it is intense. We have got great competitors that we respect and there is lots of new growth in Texas but not in a different pace than three or four months ago.

Irene Nattel - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead

That's great. Thank you.

Sam Susser

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Bonnie Herzog with Wells Fargo.

Bonnie Herzog - Wells Fargo Securities

Analyst · Bonnie Herzog with Wells Fargo

Good morning.

Sam Susser

Management

Hi Bonnie, good morning to you.

Bonnie Herzog - Wells Fargo Securities

Analyst · Bonnie Herzog with Wells Fargo

I just have a question on your packaged drinks. You called it out as having driven your strong merchandize margin. So I was hoping you could talk about some of the trends you are seeing in packaged beverages, and then how that help to drive your strong margin. And then could you also touch on some of the trends you are seeing in the broad tobacco category especially in e-cig or e-vapor?

Sam Susser

Management

Sure, thank you. Bonnie, on the packaged drink side, the real trend line is growth and single serve immediate consumption for us especially in energy drinks especially water (inaudible) which are higher margin items, and travel with great frequency inside our Laredo Taco Company basket. So we have had some help there. The take home multi-pack business. So 12 packs remain under a lot of competitive pressure. We are holding our own but it's competitive land cape for those larger packages which are very price sensitive for most consumers. In this particular quarter, I would also add that our coffee business was really strong. That's not necessarily a good thing that's kind of another weather report, but we hope to see a much stronger trend in frozen beverage hopefully in the coming quarters with just a average kind of weather pattern. With respect to the electronic cigarette business in the new packages, still some growth but it's of a tiny base, very, very, very small base, but we would see it incremental to the category but it's so small it's really hard to measure. We are seeing growth in moist or smokeless. And our trends in the traditional cigarette category, it's not a growth business for us but we are growing our market share because there is a decline in that market that's much greater than what we are experiencing. So we're paying a lot of attention to the category it remains an important traffic driver for us. Cigarette gross profit is 7% of the total inside gross profit. So it is at a place where we think it is pretty manageable force.

Bonnie Herzog - Wells Fargo Securities

Analyst · Bonnie Herzog with Wells Fargo

Okay. Thanks for that, Sam. I just had a quick follow up on the energy category because certainly that's been the trend I have been seeing for a while, and I am hearing from some of the (inaudible) that they are allocating more space to energy drinks possibly taking space away from CFEs which have been under pressure. Is that something you have done in your stores as well?

Sam Susser

Management

Short answer is yes. It's not a enormous shift but it as we are going through reset that would be kind of the trend line as we are trying to be sure we stay in stock on what customer want now.

Bonnie Herzog - Wells Fargo Securities

Analyst · Bonnie Herzog with Wells Fargo

And what really, like you said driving margins. Okay. Thank you so much, Sam.

Sam Susser

Management

Thank you, Bonnie, very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Dan Leone with Macquarie.

Dan Leone - Macquarie

Analyst · Dan Leone with Macquarie

Hi, good morning. Thank you very much and a big congratulations to you, Sam, and the rest of the team.

Sam Susser

Management

Thank you.

Dan Leone - Macquarie

Analyst · Dan Leone with Macquarie

The one question keeping in mind that the rescinding of the guidance and everything else, we have our questions just about how you thought about transfers and that the MLP asset and the short history that it's existed. Is there any color you can provide in terms of the thought process of the payment or the payment terms I guess maybe from Gainesville or any other transactions that you guys are considering where Susser would drop down assets into the MLP?

Sam Susser

Management

Susser during this next few months is going to operate on to basis consistent with what we have done in past practice. And we are going to continue to drop down our newly built Stripes Stores and just operate on the steady state basis. So we don’t have any significant plans to deviate from what has been our operating plan since going public at Susser Partners.

Dan Leone - Macquarie

Analyst · Dan Leone with Macquarie

Yes, I guess the question more specifically was if you look at Gainesville transaction right, Susser was issued $2 million in Susser petroleum common units for the --

Sam Susser

Management

No.

Dan Leone - Macquarie

Analyst · Dan Leone with Macquarie

The addition of the assets? Is there kind of a ROI target that you are using I guess how is that the right number.

Sam Susser

Management

We used I think about $2 million of value of SUSP units --

Chip Bonner

Management

Correct.

Sam Susser

Management

Which was part of the overall tax structuring of the transaction. It was a structure that was complicated for a small deal but it saved us -- a lot of work for the team, but it saved the company some important taxes. So there is only $2 million worth of SUSP units. And with respect of return, that was a business that we expected to acquire at a very attractive kind of mid high single digit EBITDA multiple. And our team has done an outstanding job there and we are ahead of our targets little bit with a great outlook for the business.

Dan Leone - Macquarie

Analyst · Dan Leone with Macquarie

Okay. Well again, congratulations on everything and I think that does it.

Sam Susser

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question come from the line of John Lawrence with Stephens.

John Lawrence - Stephens

Analyst · Stephens

Good morning, everyone.

Sam Susser

Management

Hi, John, good morning.

John Lawrence - Stephens

Analyst · Stephens

Sam, would you start off just a little bit on the expense side and I guess from a broad stand point, the experience with the Sac-N-Pac stores from acquisition date and inauguration date, are you seeing anything different in those markets than you expected or marketplace competitive pressure or anything, just dive into that a little bit if you will?

Sam Susser

Management

e :

Sid Keswani

Management

Yes.

Sam Susser

Management

We will have all the vaults done by May 30. So we are feeling very good about the outlook there and, no, there hasn’t been a meaningful change in the competitive environment or the labor market. It's a challenging market but our team has a lot of new tools and it is managing labor much better today than we were just six months ago.

John Lawrence - Stephens

Analyst · Stephens

Great, thanks. Let me offer congratulations to all the team and all the help you have given me since the start. Thanks.

Sam Susser

Management

Thank you, John, we appreciate it so much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Sharon Lu with Wells Fargo.

Sharon Lu - Wells Fargo

Analyst · Sharon Lu with Wells Fargo

Hi, good morning. Just following up I guess on John's question about Sac-N-Pac. Since I guess the deal was closed for about a month now is there I guess an update on how you plan to optimize the portfolio, meaning potentially how many stores could be converted to Stripes and potentially drop down to SUSP?

Rocky Dewbre

CEO

Sharon, this is Rocky. As Sam mentioned, we've spent the last couple of months resetting the merchandize in all of the Sac-N-Pac stores and we are going to run those stores for a while to determine exactly what the volumes you will give to and after that time make a decision as to whether we would continue to operate on long-term under Stripes brand or do something else. So based on that, really no change to our original plan. We will evaluate them after running them for a while and at that time make a decision as to how many we might drop. There is 47 total sites. Some of them are smaller footprint stores that may not make sense for the Stripes brand but there is many in the package that are much larger that we think will be great. But as far as giving you a precise number, we don't have a laser dot on that at this point.

Sharon Lu - Wells Fargo

Analyst · Sharon Lu with Wells Fargo

Okay. No, that's helpful. And then, I guess just following-up on the improvement in the fuel margins for third party. Do you expect that to continue to trend higher given I guess higher commercial margins?

Rocky Dewbre

CEO

We had a fabulous quarter last quarter. As we mentioned in our comments earlier that the Gainesville volume has grown over what we expected and just higher margin than our average commercial gallon. So that has been very positive and will hopefully continue. Separate from that, our other commercial business, we had a great quarter as well. So is that sustainable? I would hope so, but I would be less confident in that. This was a great quarter. Up as you can recall from the each quarter, the last two or three have grown and I don't know that we can sustain that growth. But we've been --

Sam Susser

Management

The outlook is great for the Permian Basin which drives a lot of that activity, as you know, Sharon. But we've come to believe that trees don't grow to the sky even in the great state of Texas. So well, we try to be realistic too. But there is a good positive trend. Our customers are growing, they need our services and we feel good about it. But we wouldn't extrapolate that forever.

Sharon Lu - Wells Fargo

Analyst · Sharon Lu with Wells Fargo

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from line of Scott Mushkin with Wolfe Research.

Scott Mushkin - Wolfe Research

Analyst · Scott Mushkin with Wolfe Research

Hey. Thanks. And I really just don't have a question. I just really want to say thank you. You guys are some of the finest people I know and do an incredible job running that business. And personally, I'm going to miss being on these conference calls. And hope to see everybody resurface and make a people lot more money. Sam and (inaudible). Thank you.

Sam Susser

Management

Scott, you're kind to say it. And thanks for your kind words. And we're going to keep swinging and hopefully keep driving growth here with our new partners.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ben Brownlow with Raymond James.

Ben Brownlow - Raymond James

Analyst · Ben Brownlow with Raymond James

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. On the new builds, can you give some color around what the company's capacity is for annual new builds? And just comment on how permits and community approvals would limit that acceleration?

Sam Susser

Management

Ben, we are continuing to plan for 28 to 35 or so new stores a year. I think with the land bank that we have and the properties under advance negotiations, I think we despite the permitting challenges we could move towards the high end of that and keep bumping it up over next couple of years from a permitting standpoint. We are certainly getting better at the people development side, but we're having to add over 1,000 net new jobs to support our current level of growth, and that's very challenging. So we feel that people development side and getting the food service culture and the customer culture right at the pace of growth is also a bit of a challenge. And I think we -- in terms of organic growth, we need to be thinking about stepping that up incrementally as a pose to our giant step change. And of course, all of this is contingent on the continued recovery strength of the economy and population growth in the markets that we serve. And it's very strong right now and we're feeling better about the outlook as more and more these industrial plants are breaking ground and getting permitted. There is -- the outlook is very bright over the next three, four, five years. And I think we'll keep creeping up in the store growth.

Ben Brownlow - Raymond James

Analyst · Ben Brownlow with Raymond James

Okay. Thank you. And I'll add my congratulations on the deal.

Sam Susser

Management

Ben, thanks a lot. It's been quite a journey.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions). And our next question comes from the line of Ronald Bookbinder with The Benchmark Company.

Ronald Bookbinder - The Benchmark Company

Analyst · Ronald Bookbinder with The Benchmark Company

Yes. Good morning. And offer my congratulations in there also. I was wondering, have the cigarette margin stabilized?

Sam Susser

Management

Yes. They have really. We've seen cash decline for about 10 years, just a little bit each year. And for us, they've gotten so low they seem to have stabilized and I don't see a return to yesteryear. I think it's going to be probably pretty flattish going forward. But we're not feeling the same with downward pressure. And that's part of the merchandise margin strength that we were blessed to report here in Q1.

Ronald Bookbinder - The Benchmark Company

Analyst · Ronald Bookbinder with The Benchmark Company

And you all talked about the fuel volumes at Sac-N-Pac being 60% of Stripes. But how was their operating margin compared to a Stripes?

Sam Susser

Management

Ronald Bookbinder - The Benchmark Company

Analyst · Ronald Bookbinder with The Benchmark Company

And with the merchandize resets, while it's only been a very short period, is Sac-N-Pacing a really nice comp kick, and could you talk about that?

Sam Susser

Management

The data that we have is so short, I mean we only have really a week's worth of data since the stores were reset. But the trend was up 8 or 10 points pre versus post in that first week. So -- and we have -- so we feel real good about that. But more work to be done, its so very early, wouldn't want to extrapolate anything from a week's to worth a data.

Ronald Bookbinder - The Benchmark Company

Analyst · Ronald Bookbinder with The Benchmark Company

And lastly, on that $0.057 wholesale fuel margin, while it's being driven by the Permian Basin producers, is there a higher cost involved, SG&A involved in delivering it to the Permian Basin?

Rocky Dewbre

CEO

Ronald Bookbinder - The Benchmark Company

Analyst · Ronald Bookbinder with The Benchmark Company

Okay. Great. Thank you. And congratulations once again.

Sam Susser

Management

Ronald, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

And Mr. Susser, we have no additional questions. Please continue with any closing remarks.

Sam Susser

Management

Thank you very much. I am very grateful for the opportunity continued to serve our unit holders and our team members as chairman of the board of SUSP as we move forward post closing. I also look forward to supporting Bob Owens. And hopefully helping drive growth as this new chapter on our company's history develops. It's been pleasure to get to know so many of you. I count a number as you as true friends. For a few of you have been with Susser Holdings since our IPL in October of '06, you've seen an increase in value of nearly five-fold. We are very proud of our record creating strong value for our shareholders, our unit holders and our bond holders over the years. I usually end these calls with an invitation to come to Texas to our stores and taste our hot fresh delicious tacos. Our doors are always open. And Stripes/Laredo Taco Company is ready to serve you today and in the future. Operator, thank you very much. This concludes our call.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Susser Holdings, Susser Petroleum Partners' first quarter earnings conference call. If you would like to listen to a replay of today's conference call, please refer to the press release. AT&T would like to thank you for your participation. You many now disconnect.