Casey's General Stores, Inc. (CASY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and thank you for joining us today for our Investor Day. It's great to see both new and familiar faces in the crowd, and we are very excited to share our strategic plan. I'm Brian Johnson, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development. Before we begin, I'll remind you that today's presentation includes forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including those related to the expectations for future periods, possible or assumed future results of operations, financial conditions, liquidity and related sources or needs, business and/or integration strategies, plans and synergies, supply chain, growth opportunities and performance at our stores. There are a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our results to differ materially from any results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Including, but not limited to, the execution of our strategic plan, the integration and financial performance of our acquired stores, wholesale fuel, inventory and ingredient costs, distribution challenges and disruptions. The impact and duration of conflicts in oil-producing regions or other geopolitical disruptions as well as other risks, uncertainties and factors, which are described in the company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on our website. Any forward-looking statements contained in this presentation represent our current views as of the date of this presentation. with respect to future events, and Casey's disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements in the presentation, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. A reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures referred to in this presentation are included in the appendix at the end of the presentation and can be found with the rest of the presentation and on our website at www.caseys.com under the Investor Relations link. So today, you'll hear from several members of our leadership team who both delivered on our most recent plan and will lay out how we plan to execute on another compelling 3-year strategic plan. First, we have Darren Rebelez here to speak about Casey's, highlight our most recent 3-year performance and discuss the evolution of our strategy. Next, Steve Bramlage will address the financials and the path to achieving our growth algorithm. Following Steve will be Tom Brennan and Brad Haga, who will discuss our plan to accelerate inside sales, particularly with food and beverage. We will then take a short break, followed by Ena Williams, laying out the strategy for growing units and enhancing operational efficiency. Nathaniel Doddridge will then join Ena to shed light on our scalable foundation. Subsequent to Nathaniel, Chad Frazell will take the stage to chat on how the team member value proposition fits into our strategy. Lastly, Darren will provide some closing remarks, but that will really end with the star of the show, Casey's pizza for lunch. Following lunch, we'll have a Q&A session around 12:30. We are extremely excited to share our next 3-year plan with you today. And now I will turn it over to Darren.

All right. Good morning. Thanks, Brian. I'm Darren Rebelez, Chairman, President and CEO of Casey's. On behalf of the entire Casey's organization, I'd like to welcome you to our Investor Day. We're really excited to share with you our vision for the next 3 years. I'll let you hear from the leaders that are going to make it happen. So over the course of the day, we'll highlight our strong say-do ratio as proven by delivering on our commitments over the previous 3 years, discuss our clear competitive advantages, show how Casey's stands alone in the public marketplace as the only convenience QSR and show the advantage flywheel that, that creates and share with you our confidence that this proven and resilient model has a long runway for compounding growth that will continue to generate even more shareholder value in the years to come. Now you see the word evolving here, and that word is intentional. What you will not see today is a radical departure from a strategy that's been clearly working. But rather, we'll share with you how we intend to amplify our strengths and points of differences to further drive shareholder value. But before we get into the specifics of our strategy, first, I want to introduce you to who Casey's is. We're an S&P 500 company that has an enterprise value of over $30 billion, operating in 19 states, primarily in the Midwest. We operate nearly 3,000 convenience stores, making Casey's the third largest convenience store chain in the United States. Our delicious pizza has helped make us the fifth largest pizza chain in the U.S. We also have the fourth most liquor licenses of any retailer in the U.S. It's this combination of restaurant quality food, inside offering and fuel capability within one convenience box that makes Casey's truly unique. We sit at the intersection of convenience and QSR. And throughout today, we'll show you how Casey's differentiates itself from both the convenience store and QSR industries with the result being industry-leading growth for the organization and market-leading shareholder returns. Now I couldn't be more proud of what we've built and are continuing to build and we have some unique advantages that set us apart from the convenience and QSR industries. First, roughly 2/3 of Casey's stores are in towns of 20,000 people are fewer, giving us a strong market position in rural areas. Secondly, our prepared food program is unmatched within the convenience space with restaurant-quality food across all dayparts. We support an advanced AI-enabled technology platform, coupled with our nearly 11 million rewards members driving higher spend, increased visit frequency and more personalized guest engagement. Our business is vertically integrated, distributing both inside products and fuel giving us positive control over the value chain and the ability to support our rural footprint. Lastly, this is all supported by our consolidated scale and amplified by our 100% company-owned and operated retail stores, where we have end-to-end control over the upstream partnerships with vendors enabling quicker speed to market for in-store execution. Now these unique advantages create an operating model that's unmatched in the public marketplace. What makes our model so powerful is the flywheel it creates, a 3-legged stool with prepared food and dispensed beverages, grocery and general merchandise and fuel all operating under 1 cost structure. Our guests can visit our stores and simultaneously get a hot meal or cool beverage and fuel their vehicle all with 1 trip. And unlike traditional convenience in QSR operating models, we can do that for any meal or snack as we have a relevant offering across all dayparts. This helps drive consistent visits and creates a loyal guest base that's coming to our stores throughout the day for a one-stop shop across categories. With growing traffic, our operating leverage improves, while also increasing resiliency and reducing earnings volatility as we're not overly reliant on any one line of business. This creates a flywheel of leveraging shared fixed costs across 3 lines of business that generate diversified resilient cash flows to reinvest back in our value proposition, driving more traffic to our stores and continuing to compound earnings growth over time. Now the success of this flywheel has led to strong financial results and has been doing so for a long time. But recently, those results have accelerated. Consistent store count growth, coupled with robust inside sales is proof that the Casey's model is working. Now this proven algorithm has led to compounding EBITDA growth and improving returns on invested capital. Now recently, we've only gotten stronger, posting a 16% EBITDA CAGR over our most recent 3-year strategic plan. This acceleration has also been noted by the markets. As we were named a [indiscernible] to the S&P 500 in April. This is a big milestone for our company and shows our play delivers shareholder for value over the long term. Now one of the things that we take pride on Casey's is what we call our say-do ratio. In other words, when we make a commitment, it's our expectation that we made good on that commitment. With the commitments we laid out at our Investor Day. [indiscernible] our operating expenses grew by approximately 600 basis points less than our EBITDA. Now reducing same-store labor hours through continuous improvement was a major contributor to our efficiency gains and Ena will review our [indiscernible] in detail, our plans to continue these efforts later today. Our enabling foundation is stronger than ever as we made great strides in leveraging technology, with one example being an AI demand-driven forecasting tool that's helped us reduce distribution center working capital by 33% and improved order fulfillment at our stores. And a robust team member value proposition delivered better, more rewarding experiences, leading to significant reduction in team member turnover, industry-leading overall engagement scores and a growing talent pipeline. That executed more than 23,000 promotions over this time period. Now look, I'm so proud of what we [indiscernible] Cost pressures have forced menu prices higher, which has created a vicious spiral as higher menu prices are pressuring restaurant traffic. The combination of increased costs and declining traffic is pressuring earnings and reducing operating leverage, forcing menu prices even higher. Even with 42% increase in the food [indiscernible] Profits are down 20 basis points from 2019 levels. Not only the earnings being pressured, but customers are prioritizing rising flexibility and convenience over the dine-in restaurant experience. Customers are moving away from on-premise dining and shifting towards off-premise and the younger generations are doing so at a more [indiscernible] rate. In Casey's is perfectly positioned to benefit from this shift as younger generations are only accelerating that trend. So as the QSRs are dealing with some structural challenges in their industry, convenience stores are experiencing changing dynamics as well. The industry, again, is generally resilient, but customer preferences are shifting, and the food forward operators are separating themselves from the rest of the industry, resulting in fragmentation and consolidation. All -- this results in scale matter now more than ever. Convenience store industry has historically proven itself to be resilient over the long run. But the number of total of convenience stores and total fuel gallons sold in the United States have been remarkably steady while inside sales have continued to grow. Casey's has also proven resilient as our advantaged operating model outpaces the industry and continues to gain share. While traditional convenience store operators have one more leg of the stool than the QSRs do, they, too, are facing increased operating pressures. Like the QSRs average hourly earnings have grown twice as fast as in the past. The combination of increased cost pressures, the secular decline in cigarettes in the lack of a prepared food program as many of convenience store operators increasingly reliant on higher fuel margins to make ends meet. The result has been declining traffic and declining traffic, combined with increased costs is pressuring earnings and reducing operating leverage creating a vicious downward spiral effect on their business. Now as the industry is shifting away from cigarettes and towards prepared foods, earnings are shifting with it. As compared to the bottom 7 deciles of the National Association of Convenience stores, Casey's inside sales skew 11 percentage points higher in Prepared Foods and 5 percentage points lower in cigarettes. This favorable mix leads to approximately double the EBITDA per store versus the industry. So the trend is clear. Food forward operators like Casey's are winning and Casey's has 40-plus years of experience in the food business. And despite the convenience industry maintaining a steady store count, it remains very fragmented. Nearly 2/3 of the stores in the industry of the 150,000 convenient stores in the industry are operated by chains of 10 stores or fewer. As we've discussed, those smaller operators are struggling to keep up with inflation and other costs. And most don't have the scale, technology or capital to make the necessary investment in food to thrive. So as such, the industry is consolidating. In the larger, more sophisticated players like Casey's can leverage our superior positioning to grow through M&A. Ena will speak more to our growth strategy later in the presentation. But these trends in the industry really represent a tailwind for Casey's, which really puts us in a position to win with our advantaged model. We have what we refer to as a unique convenience QSR profile that's differentiated from any public a competitor. Our rural footprint restaurant-quality food service allow us to operate in areas others do not with a prepared food offering that's a true differentiator. We also have a robust private label offer in sophisticated fuel capabilities but we don't rely on fuel as a sole traffic driver as 70% of our inside transactions aren't even tied to fuel. These advantages feed into our convenience QSR flywheel were our 3 lines of business under 1 operating cost structure provide maximum optionality to deliver value back to guests and thrive in really any operating environment. Now as our robust and competitively priced inside offer, including pizza and wings and private brands attract more guests to our stores, we continue to take fuel gallon share from the industry. Our competitive prices at the pump, combined with our sophisticated fuel capabilities, provide Casey's strong margin profile. Now this concept allows us to be flexible on where and how we're driving gross profit dollars. We're nimble to our evolving guest needs, and we can manage each business to complement the other. And we can do all of this in an efficient manner as we have one cost structure for the entire operation. And by being 100% company-owned and operated, we have the flexibility to make timely decisions that are in the best interest of Casey's, not an individual store or a franchisee. This creates compounding earnings growth and the flywheel continues to spin. But don't just take my word for it. You can see the flywheel in motion. Since we're not beholden to using menu price as our only lever to offset costs. Our prepared foods value proposition is widening. Over the past 3 years, food away from home prices have increased 14%. Over the same period, Casey's has increased the average prepared food selling price by only 5%, creating -- or while maintaining a strong margin rate. And the result is taking share from the QSR industry. With our high-quality food offering at a strong value, Casey's has driven prepared food and dispensed beverage traffic up 13% over the past 3 years. And we're doing that while the QSR traffic has declined 1% over the same period of time. And those guests that are coming for our food have also filled up at the pump. As our same-store gallons have increased by 2% while the Mid-Continent OPUS fuel demand has declined by 8% over the same period. And we're not sacrificing fuel margin to do that because our cents per gallon have been $0.39 or higher each of the past 3 fiscal years. The momentum continues as disciplined investment enhances guest value and operational efficiency. Now taking share and maintaining or improving margin has been achieved while also operating the business more efficiently. We're growing EBITDA more than we're growing operating expenses, which is a key component of our algorithm. Our competitive advantages, coupled with our advantaged convenience QSR flywheel have proven to be successful. As we continue to grow, leverage our scale even further, impress our advantages. We're entering the next 3 years in a position of strength. Our operating model of primarily small rural communities in suburbs with 100% company-owned and operated stores and positive control over the distribution network, combining the best of convenience and QSR at scale gives us confidence in our ability to meet or exceed our commitments over the next 3-year strategic plan. Now I love the hand we're holding and I'm excited to share the plans for the next 3 years. Our goal for the next years will look familiar to many of you, and that's by design. We prioritize ratable, consistent and industry-leading growth. Steve will discuss how we get there from a financial metric standpoint. And following Steve, we'll discuss how our unique insights into our guests a strong enabling foundation and an excellent team member value proposition will help support our growth drivers, which are: number one, accelerating the food and beverage business while growing the number of units and continuing to focus on enhancing operational efficiency throughout the organization. Now before I get into the details, I'd like to illustrate how our EBITDA growth algorithm stacks up against historical results of others in the industry. Growing earnings is hard enough by compounding growth over the short, medium and long term is rare. Only 20 of the 53 retailers and restaurants in the S&P 500 or 400 grew EBITDA by at least 8% over the past year. That number dwindles down to 10 when you add a 5-year requirement. And finally, over a 1, 5 and 10-year time frame, only 7 companies, including Casey's, have been able to achieve that ratable and consistent growth over a 10-year window. There's very few retailers or restaurants, the S&P 500 or 400 that have achieved that sustained growth that we have over the short, medium and long term. There are no public companies that are convenience QSR. Casey's is truly a category of 1 and a strong investment opportunity. So now I'm going to turn it over to Steve to discuss the financials.

Okay. Thank you, Darren, and good morning. Today, I'm going to discuss our financial expectations and the goals that we have for the next 3 years, and I hope to clearly reaffirm why we feel so confident in our ability to deliver against them. And I'm going to quickly cover 4 topics. First, we're going to revisit our actual results over the past 3 years. we're not aspiring to a performance level that is any different from what the company has already delivered over many, many years. And as Darren showed a couple of minutes ago, the past 3 years, they've simply been an acceleration of that historical success. Second, the achievement of our commitment has translated into accelerating free cash flow. It's an important determinant of increasing shareholder value. This also has further strengthened our balance sheet and it provides us with tremendous current and prospective financial flexibility. We're going to review the specific outlook for the next 3 years and the growth algorithm that continues to underpin it. Fourth and finally, I'll discuss our capital allocation strategy, along with our return on investment expectations when we invest shareholder money. With that, let's start with revisiting our performance vis-a-vis our aspirations from 3 years ago. So I see a lot of green on this slide, and it's a testament to the excellent work from our 50,000 team members in the stores in our distribution centers, our drivers, our leadership team and everyone in between. I mentioned this on our fourth quarter call recently in the context of our fiscal '26 results, but it's equally valid and it's even more germane for the past 3 years. Results like this are not easy to achieve. And we are really proud of what the team has been able to do. We grew EBITDA to 16% CAGR over the past 3 years and that exceeded the top quintile target of 8% to 10%. Now this was generated from both existing units or what we refer to as the mother ship and the 504 new stores that we built or that we acquired. That level of growth was well in excess of our initial 350 unit goal, aided in part by the [indiscernible] acquisition, the largest so far in the company's history. Inside the store, we grew same-store sales at 4% CAGR and same-store gallons at approximately 1%. These are especially impressive as we know that we're outperforming our geographic competition both inside and outside the store. From a margin standpoint, we saw expansion inside where we grew margin 230 basis points and at the pump where we averaged approximately $0.40 per gallon. We were able to successfully leverage our growing scale and continue to invest in our capabilities as we grew operating expenses on a CAGR basis, almost 600 basis points less than EBITDA. And the result was free cash flow expansion. We generated almost $1.7 billion in free cash flow over the course of the last 3 years, which was itself an acceleration of the approximate $1.2 billion that we generated over the previous 3-year planned strategic cycle. In fact, we generated more free cash flow from fiscal '24 to fiscal '26 than we did in the preceding 13 years. Free cash flow generation has been a priority area of focus for us in the past 2 strategic plans based on investor feedback and I think that it's developing as we hoped and as we expected as it would. This additional cash flow puts our balance sheet in an extremely strong position, and it enables our investment plans for the future. Simply put, we can invest capital as we need and choose to in order to expand our strategic and our operational advantages, both inside and outside the store, without compromising our ability to grow units EBITDA and ROIC. Our leverage ratio of 1.5x is currently a bit below our long-term target of 2x, and we have ample liquidity of $1.4 billion, along with a low cost of debt. If the right strategic opportunity comes along, we have the ability to take on several additional turns of leverage. Realistically, there's not a lot of potential deals of this size. But in the right circumstances, we would be willing to temporarily increase leverage, bundle it with a firm commitment to quickly work our way back towards our long-term target of 2x as we demonstrated with both the Buchanan and the Fikes acquisition. As you can see on the chart, we don't have any substantial near-term debt maturities that will be a strain on cash or expose us to unfavorable market dynamics in any material way. So let's transition from the past to the present and to the future. I know that I speak for the entire management team when I say again that we love the hand that we're holding and that we firmly believe that we control our own destiny. The play we're running is winning. And we have spent a long time pressure testing it to ensure the reality in the facts of our exogenous environment support our premise that this play is poised to continue to work far into the future. The strategic differentiators that make Casey's sui generis are stronger than they have ever been and our relative advantage in this industry that is highly fragmented and lacking scale is only growing. We hope that this page is not a surprise to any one in the room. It continues to represent a high level of performance for or anyone in the retail, in the restaurant space. not just the convenience industry. It also represents more of the same. We're not trying to do something that we have been unable to do in the past. We have consistently been able to achieve this level of performance across multiple economic cycles and against an ever-evolving consumer and competitive set. It's really difficult for our competition to replicate the flywheel effect of our business in the way that our prepared food business, our grocery business, our fuel business and our scale, all complement, supplement and ultimately reinforce each other. Now the rest of the day is meant to reaffirm for you with specific facts and examples why we believe the plan is achievable and to instill a new the same level of confidence that we already have in our ability to execute it. So specifically, the EBITDA growth target of an 8% to 10% CAGR over the next 3 years is still a top quintile growth, and it's consistent with our historical results. Now for transparency, we define top quintile growth as EBITDA growth on a multiyear CAGR basis for all of retail, excluding REITs, and restaurant companies that are within both the S&P 500 and the S&P 400 composites. Simply put, we intend to accomplish this by doing what we already do well and to continue to get better at it each and every day. We plan to grow the store base by at least 400 units. That's a CAGR of at least 4% over the next 3 years, and that will be through a mix of organic growth and acquisition. Now please note there are no large deals assumed in this number. We will be able to achieve this growth exclusively with smaller store and all -- or excuse me, with single store and smaller multiunit deals combined with new construction. For some perspective on the pipeline, we're currently land banking construction sites for opening in our fiscal 2030 and beyond. Hopefully, we've already demonstrated that we have the balance sheet and the integration experience to take on a larger deal that would help us exceed the goal if the opportunity were right. And financially, it would act very similarly to the way Fikes did in our last plan, which was really to serve as icing on the cake for these goals over that 3-year plan. We plan to grow inside same-store sales at a mid-single-digit pace, while also modestly expanding inside margin. This will be a combination of prepared food and dispensed beverage growth outpacing grocery and general merchandise growth mix shift within the grocery and the general merchandise category itself as well as continuing to leverage our scale and our relationships with vendors to optimize margin. Please note that our goal is not simply to harvest every margin expansion opportunity that we see. We're trying to drive more gross profit dollar velocity. And often, it makes sense for us to reinvest in promotion and price support inside the business to maintain our value abundance positioning and to drive more traffic to the store rather than simply drop through more margin. In fuel, we expect to be approximately flat on same-store gallons, which likely will mean that we're continuing to take share in our geography. Similar to FY '27, while we do not guide per se to fuel margin, to make the algorithm work, we would expect the plan to average approximately mid $0.40s per gallon. And over the course of the plan, we generally expect for margin to annually grow commensurate with CPI as it has done for many, many years. We have more opportunity in front of us to leverage our scale in the organization and our central capabilities to keep growing operating expenses at a rate it's lower than EBITDA, making the next store a little bit more efficient than the store that came before it. This level of performance should generate free cash flow of approximately $2 billion. Now just a quick reminder on a two pronged algorithm that about half of the growth will come from the existing business and the other half will come from the new unit growth we referenced earlier. Over the remainder of the day, Tom, Brad, Ena, Nathaniel and Chad will lay out the plan on how we will execute it. We've proven over the short the medium and the long term that we can ratably grow EBITDA, and we're simply better equipped now than we have ever been to execute this plan over the next 3 years. Everyone in Casey's leadership team is keenly aware of our role as a steward of the legacy, the culture, the communities, the guests and the team members that those who proceeded us have left to us. We're also stewards of shareholder money. The easiest way for me to describe capital allocation at Casey's is as stops on a bus. The first stop is always to reinvest into EBITDA and ROIC accretive growth via new store construction and M&A. And because our maintenance requirements are quite low, approximately 75% of our PP&E spend is -- has been and likely will continue to be growth oriented. The second stop on the bus -- we target a steady-state leverage ratio of 2x debt-to-EBITDA. And given our current leverage, you should expect no discretionary deleveraging from our current levels. The third stop, we have a long track record of returning cash to shareholders with 27 consecutive years of dividend growth, and we are really proud of the fact. I am keenly aware of the fact that our dividend yield has been declining over the past couple of years. And honestly, [indiscernible] one and totally okay with the reason that, that has happened. Our long-term philosophy on the dividend is to maintain an approximate 15% to 20% payout ratio and to increase the dividend consistent with the midterm EBITDA growth. And at the final stop, once we've met our first 3 priorities, we get to share repurchase. Now historically, this has not been a major part of our capital allocation plan. However, as we continue to grow and generate more and more cash, we have leaned into share repurchases. The reality is at the current scale of the company, we're going to generate more free cash flow in most years, then we have opportunities to reinvest it within a 12-month period of time, absent a large contemporaneous deal, with an above-trend investment and deleveraging need, we will become a more consistent and ratable repurchaser of shares. And as a reminder, we have a fresh $1 billion share repurchase authorization available to us. And I want to cover our return expectations when we invest shareholder funds. As a starting point, our current cost of capital is a touch above 7.25%. For the fiscal year of 2026 we had an ROIC of 12.7%, which is a 90 basis point expansion from our fiscal 2023 and represented our highest level since 2018. Our return expectations for a new unit are the same, whether we build it or whether we buy it. The expectation is double-digit after-tax returns by the second or the third year. and mid-teens by year 5 or 6. Mature markets tend to be on the early end and new markets a little bit later in that range. The difference is primarily a function of how quickly in new markets our prepared food takes off, think of buying pizza from a gas station relative to our core markets. And finally, I'd point out that our long-term incentive plans are fully aligned with EBITDA growth, ROIC improvement and TSR is the 3 performance metrics that determine our payouts. If I'm proud of the success we've had, both in growing the company and improving returns and at the same time over the past several 3-year cycles. Now as I wrap up, I want to leave you with a couple of key points. First, the ultimate expectation is the same as it's been to continue delivering top quintile EBITDA growth of 8% to 10%. Second, we are confident and our ability to execute on this goal is we've done it for a long period of time, and we just completed a plan where we grew EBITDA well in excess of that goal, and we were able to achieve all of those underlying metrics across the board. Third, we're able to support this growth with a really strong balance sheet that affords us ample liquidity to operate and grow the business while being ready for the next right large acquisition without compromising our small deal M&A and the building of new units. Our balanced algorithm has proven to be successful. We're generating EBITDA growth from both our existing stores and from the new and acquired stores. All of this gets funded with a capital allocation strategy that prioritizes driving EBITDA and ROIC growth and accretion while generating more free cash flow than we have ever had. In conclusion, we love the hand that we're holding. We have a proven strategy to ratably grow this business, and we've done that over the short, the medium and the long term. We continue to control our own destiny and our play is more effective and it's harder to replicate than it has ever been. I for one, I'm extremely excited for the next 3 years at Casey's. So let's start talking about specifically why we feel so good about that statement and how we're going to do it. It's my great pleasure that I'm going to turn it over to Tom Brennan, our Chief Merchandising Officer. Tom?

Thanks, Steve. My name is Tom Brennan, and I'm the Chief Merchandising Officer at Casey's. Let me start with the simple framework for how to think about the business. Everything we're going to show you today starts with the guest and how that translates into consistent and ratable growth for the long term. We serve a loyal high-value guest to a strong wallet share. And importantly, that base is getting younger, positioning us well for sustained success. We're also differentiated in how we serve that guest. Our category of one model spans both convenience and QSR, allowing us to capture more tripmissions in dayparts than traditional peers. Underneath that are 3 core structural advantages, disciplined dynamic category management, vertically integrated partnerships and exclusivity into a loyalty platform that's increasingly a real-time personalization engine. When you put those pieces together, what you'll see is an integrated system, one that drives frequency, increases basket and creates a flywheel of engagement, data and reinvestment. That system is what enables us to consistently drive traffic and that, in turn, gives us confidence in delivering mid-single-digit same-store sales increases year-over-year, with an overweight on unit growth supported by modest pricing. If you start with a guest, the data is compelling. We have a broad generational mix with increasing engagement from Gen Z, giving us both stability today and growth over time. While we skew more rural, our guests still value convenience. Roughly 70% of our rewards members earn over $50,000 annually and we operate in 6 of the top 10 and 13 of the top 20 lowest cost of living markets in the U.S., which strengthens disposable income. They're also highly loyal. On average, rewards members have visited more frequently and spent roughly 4x more than nonmembers. And importantly, satisfaction is at an all-time high. So when you put it all together, we have a guest base that is engaged, high value and increasingly digital exactly the profile that supports consistent repeatable performance. So what do our guests actually want? It comes down to 5 things, great taste, strong value, convenience, consistency and relevance. The key is that we designed our [indiscernible] deliver all 5 every day across our approximately 800 million annual transactions. That's why we invest in real Kitchens proprietary our innovation and a regionally relevant assortment while continuously removing friction and improving reliability because that combination, quality and value delivered with convenience is what drives repeat behavior and long-term loyalty. One of our most important structural advantages is the breadth of trip missions we serve. We're not just competing as a convenience store or a QSR. We're operating across both throughout the day. That gives guests more reasons to visit and engage with Casey's. You see that reflected in the business. Over 70% of guest visits are not [indiscernible] Dinner is a meaningful and growing daypart. And on-trend categories like energy drinks continue to grow at a strong pace. The result is a structurally advantaged model with more ways to win across dayparts and more opportunities to drive trips. The way we manage categories is a key driver of how we translate demand into returns. Every category has a defined role whether it's driving traffic, building baskets, enhancing margins or creating future growth optionality. That directly informs how we allocate space, capital and marketing investment across the business. What this enables is a more dynamic model where we can scale winning categories faster, exit underperformers more decisively and continuously improve returns on invested capital. The result is an assortment that stays aligned with the evolving guest demand and a system that drives stronger performance over time, both foundational elements for ratable mid-single-digit same-store sales growth. A great example of that framework in action is the energy drink category. I'd like to say the growth of energy drinks to FI's gravity, and we've responded by expanding cold vault space to support that increasing velocity. The speed at which we can adapt to changing categories is one of the big structural advantages of being 100% company-owned and operated giving more oxygen to a growing category in the form of visional facings, translated directly into results, helping to drive mid-teens growth in both sales and units over a 3-year period, truly gravity do fine. It's a good proof point of how we operate. We identify where the guest is moving and we reallocate space and capital quickly to capture that opportunity. Another Key traffic lever is being early and exclusive on new high-quality product launches. Our scale, strong vendor partnerships and vertically integrated model allow us to bring differentiated products to market quickly and with meaningful impact. These launches are high incremental for both Casey's and our partners, capturing guest attention and driving engagement at the shelf. For example, during our lead market launch of Monster's Ultra Red White and Blue as purchasers were new to the integrin category at Casey's, clear evidence of incremental trial. This isn't about shifting share. It's about driving new trips and expanding our guest base. Underpinning all of this is a highly integrated marketing engine. We operate seamlessly across social, loyalty, paid media, digital merchandising and our own channels. This isn't a set of disconnected functions. It's 1 coordinated system designed to acquire new guests, engage them across touch points and ultimately drive them back into the Casey's ecosystem. That level of integration is a real differentiator for us and a key driver of sustained traffic and engagement. And importantly, this creates a powerful flywheel. We invest in digital capabilities and personalization, thereby driving higher loyalty participation. That in turn, increases transactions and engagement which generates more data and unlocks new monetization opportunities. We then reinvest those gains back into the system, further strengthening the cycle. This flywheel is a key driver of our ability to deliver repeatable long-term growth. A critical enabler of that flywheel is our investment in the digital experience. We've rebuilt both the app and web platforms, giving us the ability to personalize at scale and accelerate our speed to market. From here, the focus is on continuing to simplify the guest experience, expanding rewards functionality and ensuring our back-end infrastructure can support continued growth. So this is both a near-term growth driver and a long-term capability unlock for the business. Where this really comes to life is in personalization. We're now dynamically segmenting guests and engaging them in real time across their life cycle. That allows us to drive frequency with active guests, prevent churn and reactivate lapsed users. And importantly, we're doing this in a highly automated, scalable way. We're moving from static campaign-driven marketing to always on data-driven engagement. And we're seeing that translate directly to loyalty performance. We've hit nearly 11 million members with strong growth in both enrollments and engagement. But what matters most is how those members behave. Personalized offers are driving cross-category trial and new capabilities like gamification are increasing engagement and frequency. Loyalty at Casey's is no longer just a program, it's a core growth engine for the business. In parallel, we're scaling our digital commerce delivery capabilities. We've significantly simplified the ordering experience removing friction and expanding the assortment available digitally. On delivery, we've now scaled over 2,000 locations and are seeing strong order growth. By bringing more of the store into our e-commerce experience and expanding delivery, we're driving incremental traffic accelerating sales and increasing Casey's relevance with our guests. Another piece of the model gaining real momentum is Casey's Access, our retail media network. We're seeing increasing vendor investment driven by strong returns, particularly when paired with our food-led activations. At the same time, we're expanding the inventory, giving partners more ways to engage across both digital and in-store touch points. Importantly, that revenue is reinvested back into our marketing engine, driving incremental traffic and sales. This creates another reinforcing loop within our ecosystem, further accelerating growth over time. When you step back and look at the results, the impact is clear. Digital sales are growing at a high teens rate on a multiyear basis, led by particularly strong growth in delivery. We're also seeing a meaningful shift toward digital in the ordering mix bringing in a more engaged higher-value guest. And that's the point. This isn't just digital for convenience. It's digital as a driver of frequency, basket growth and long-term compounding. From a broader perspective, what you've seen is a guest-led model where demand is broad and growing. We're reallocating capital dynamically to capture it and digital loyalty and marketing are amplifying that growth. Put together, this creates a reinforcing system that drives traffic, frequency and basket over time in a ratable repeatable fashion. From that foundation, we will transition next to Brad Haga who will share how Casey's will accelerate food and beverage growth as part of this next 3-year plan.

All right. Thanks, Tom. My name is Brad Haga, Senior Vice President of Prepared Food and dispensed beverages here at Casey's. As you just heard, we start everything with the guest, especially when it comes to our prepared food platform. The first key pillar of our strategy map, we'll talk about today. Today, we're going to cover the following ground. First, we've been serving pizza for a long time, and our innovation in pizza continues to pay dividends. Secondly, our goal is to make everything we do as good as the pizza. We'll also talk about winning another occasion with our wings platform. And finally, leveraging our proprietary food expertise to drive our private brand platform. KC serves many needs for our guests, as you saw on the mission trip scorecard that Tom shared. We think about our menu the same way. whether it's starting your day, grabbing a quick lunch, a fill-in trip or a family dinner. We have built a menu that serves occasions throughout all dayparts for our guests. Now we put a lot of effort into the rest of the menu, but make no mistake, the crown jewel is pizza, roughly half of our revenue in prepared food. And to execute Casey's delicious pizza, we make it by hand daily in our kitchens. What sets us further apart is our ability to drive the pizza business through innovation. A few years back, we sold a big gap in our assortment with Crest Innovation, Thin Crust. Another big differentiator for us is our specialty pizza assortment. There is nothing more unique and beloved than Casey's famous breakfast and Taco pizzas. We haven't stopped there. Within the past year, we've added 4 new everyday specialty pizzas and delivered a steady stream of exciting limited time offers. If you're in the room today, you're going to get to try some of our new specialty pizzas for lunch. One is a past cases favorite that our guests begged us to bring back. So we improved it and brought back our Bacon Cheeseburger pizza for this summer and celebration of America's 250th birthday. Quality and abundance are king for us. But we don't stop there when it comes to giving back to our guests. Each Saturday through the college football season last year, we offered our guests 40% off any whole pie. This effort drove 40% unit growth on our whole pie business on Saturdays, which also helped us to drive double-digit unit growth across the entire system for the whole fiscal year. That's winning in pizza. And to make sure that volume comes consistently delivering pizza that is Casey is great every time. As of today, we have pizza certified 15,000 of our team members to ensure our guests always get the best pizza from us. We are winning in Prepared Foods where the pizza QSR industry is struggling with accelerated growth over the past year, growing our prepared food business 16% over the 3-year period. That growth has shown up across our markets as well. 60% of our stores reside in DMAs where we own #1 pizza market share position. Even better, 40% of our stores grew Pizza units north of 10% this past fiscal year. Now let's dig into the rest of the menu. Our hot sandwich business has been on fire, we have put a tremendous amount of energy into our breakfast and lunch sandwich quality improvements and innovation over the past 3 years, incredible numbers, we have grown sandwich sales by 26% annually. Our bakery business also has shown aggressive growth, growing 8% per year since our last Investor Day. Once again, product innovation and building a more premium offer has delivered with a new delicious cookie program that features amazing collaborations with big brands like Reese's, Snickers and Hershey's. Another area that we've placed a ton of effort has been in our dispensed beverage platform. In just a few short years, we have launched our new coffee brand, darn good coffee. And more recently, we now have our own frozen carbonated beverage brand Frostbite by Casey's. We leverage our dispensed beverage businesses to drive traffic to our stores. And this summer, you can get any fountain or Frostbite for $0.89. And when you're in Casey's country, our Frostbite beverages are always free on Frostbite Fridays. As you've heard, we've been very busy driving quality improvements across our existing assortment and developing new and exciting products and program. The real key to our success is how we sustain growth quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year. Let's take a look at a short video that will give you some insight into how we get things done from lining on an opportunity all the way to commercializing and scaling across our stores. Let's take a look. [Presentation]

All right. So a little peak into the tent, covering some of the why and the how we went after the wing opportunity. Our approach with wings was to create a wing program that rivaled best-in-class wing purveyors. We don't want to just participate. We want to win with wings. And I know there have been a lot of questions about our plan to expand soft wings and how are we going to do it? So here you go. As of now, we have scaled the program across our Antony DC, about 850 stores. This fiscal year, we will roll the program to market served by our Terra DC as well as our Setco acquired sites. The following year, we will scale to the rest of the system. So essentially, from here on out, we'd be fully scaled in the next 24 months. A few other nuggets on wings so far at Casey's. Half our stores do not have a formalized large-scale pizza or wing competitor within 5 miles. Secondly, for our wing only basket guests, order frequency has grown by 30% since the initial trial. And lastly, and we don't mind selling wings with pizza. Thus far, guests who added wings to a pizza have a basket that is 50% bigger than whole pies alone, and we will take that all day. Now let's talk a little bit about private brands. We have had a lot of success with our private brands. We've closed in on about 10% of our grocery unit mix is private brands with about 350 SKUs. Private brands now for us is represented in almost in half the grocery categories. And when we look at Casey's proprietary products, that's combining prepared food and dispensed with private brands, Roughly 30% of our inside revenue comes from private brands and 40% of our inside gross profit comes from KC's proprietary items and we really see a bright future ahead for these items that truly differentiate Casey's. We're now leveraging all of our culinary resources and business process to optimize the Casey's private brand program. What you saw in the wing video will be applied to a private brand program development from here on out. And there's 3 areas of focus. We're going to start with the products themselves to ensure they stand tall from a quality and taste perspective. We will be looking at the value proposition to drive more volume to our products in a time where guests are looking for more value. And finally, we're working to ensure we have the right brand design framework to enable us to drive and build sustainable growth with our private brand platform. In summary, we are taking share versus QSRs. A strength of our business can clearly be seen in our differentiated traffic trends that start with delivering great food at a tremendous value. Away-from-home CPI would suggest we've taken far less retail than the QSR industry, passing more value to our Casey's guests has helped us grow prepared food and dispensed beverage 16% on a same-store basis over the past 3 years. While the QSR marketplace has seen continued pressure, we plan to continue to focus on delivering more value for our guests. Driving prepared foods is something that clearly QSRs and most convenient stores see us an important strategic initiative. But doing food well is hard. We have structural strategic advantages when it comes to winning with food. Starting with Darren talked about it, we've been doing this for 40 years. That's a lot of reps, making great food is not foreign to us. Our stage gate product development process and culinary expertise is not different than what you'd see in a sophisticated restaurant chain. And I can tell you, our Pantry is full. We have 60 items in the Pantry that we will launch over the next 24 months, essentially with food, 2 years of our next 3-year strategic plan is in the hopper already. Another advantage, controlling the supply chain. Casey's resources, it's our warehouses, our trucks, our drivers, making sure the stores get what they need. And maybe most importantly, it's just a restaurant mindset that shows up in our kitchens each and every day where our guests can enjoy handmade pizza throughout the footprint. When you put all this together in a mixing bull, you get a formula that is very difficult to copy. And that's why we would expect the gap between cases and whomever is across the street to widen. Thank you very much for your time today. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back with Ena Williams chatting about another key pillar of our strategic plan, growing units. [Break]

We are not changing our self-distribution strategy. However, if there is a highly strategic acquisition outside of our distribution area, we feel confident in our ability to leverage our new third-party relationships to service those stores until we have critical mass to expand our distribution network. This gives us even more flexibility we're looking for larger deals. And as proven with CEFCO, when we make an acquisition, we are not just changing out the signage. We build the stores the Casey's way. I am so proud of the team for how they have executed the plan to bring Casey's to life. See for yourself. [Presentation] All right. So now when we add new units into the Casey's store base, whether built or bought, we need to operate them efficiently. So next, I will discuss some of our successes from the last 3 years with continuous improvement, talk about expanding this approach from our store team members to the entire enterprise and how we will streamline our kitchen operations in the process. Over the past 3 years, we deliberately focused our continuous improvement efforts where we could drive the greatest impact our stores. Roughly half of our total operating expenses are at the store level. The approach was straightforward, but disciplined. The goal was to simplify operations, remove unnecessary complexity and enable our store teams to operate more efficiently. The financial goal was to grow operating expenses slower than EBITDA. During this time period, we implemented roughly 50 process improvements to reduce or eliminate nonvalue-added complexity within the store. Here are a few examples. We introduced a smart safe process, saving the store manager upwards of 2 hours a day closing the books. We added label makers in the kitchens to produce labels on demand, eliminating the need for roles and roles of item-specific labels, taking up space in our stores and our warehouses. We outsource laundry giving team members that time back to focus on execution and serving the guest. The results were clear as we reduced our same-store labor hours by approximately 5% over the 3-year period, and grew EBITDA almost 600 basis points more than operating expenses on a 3-year CAGR basis. And we did this the right way. How do we know this? -- team member engagement scores and guest OSAT reached all-time highs and turnover has improved by 70 percentage points. And building on that success within our stores, we are now expanding continuous improvement across the entire enterprise. The strategy is consistent, but the scope is broader, and we are applying the same disciplined approach of clearly defining business problems prioritizing the highest value opportunities and then scaling those solutions. We've organized this work into 5 core work streams. First, continuing our focus on store simplification, which remains foundational from the prior strategy. Some of these projects include prepared food packaging optimization such as bag cheese sauce and [indiscernible] cans. Digitize cigarette audits, reducing the time it takes to account inventory. Bulk windshield washer fluid for automatic refills at the pump island instead of team members refilling manually. Transforming our kitchen with improvements like installing dedicated hot water lines, I'll speak more about that project later. You know these all sound simple but add tremendous value. The second work stream focuses on optimizing nonstore labor and expenses. The third one is around streamlining merchandising and supply chain operations. The fourth on automating administrative and transactional work and the fifth work stream involves taking a hard look on how work gets done across the organization. The goal is simple. -- embed continuous improvement as a core enterprise capability. I mentioned a few of the improvements we made in our stores, and many of those were in the kitchen. Working in the Casey's kitchen is hard, and we owe it to our team members to continue looking for ways to make their jobs easier and more efficient. We have identified a few areas to make that happen. The first is around having the right equipment available to remove complexity. I'll give you an example using our crown jewel, our pizza and are made from scratch Dow. This is one of the important factors that sets us apart from our competition and adds to the quality our guests love and expect. What you may not know is that though making involves science with precise measurements and the hot water needs to be within the specific temperature range. So before, and I'll picture this, our team members have to run the wall until it got hot, then use the monitors to measure until the right temperature was achieved. If it was too cold, then more hot water had to be added. If it was too hot, then they have at cowater, back and forth, back and forth if you get the picture. So to make it easier, we install a dedicated spicket and tank system to dispense while they're at the right temperature every single time. This simple change not only sales water usage and time but also ensures consistency with the crest. In addition to removing tasks from the kitchen, we identified an opportunity to optimize the way the kitchen and equipment are laid out. We worked with the process engineer to help us change the kitchen configuration. By placing equipment and ingredients closer to the Make area that reduces the time team members are walking and crossing over each other. This new layout will help our team members handle increased unit volume. All these store builds will be specked with this new equipment and layout, and we will be determining how to scale these improvements across our existing store base. Another way we can support the kitchens is by leveraging technology in our AI tools, using technology to improve our ingredient ordering process for both accuracy and inventory management, is a priority for our strategic plan. In addition to improving our ordering processes, we will continue to leverage technology to improve production planning for our grab-and-go items as well as optimize our made-to-order systems to have items like our pizza ready when the guest expects them. We know our kitchens and our restaurant quality prepared food are a couple of our biggest differentiators and we are always working to make sure our team members and guests get the best food and experience they can. The simplification and optimization efforts I just spoke of will help us meet these goals. So I spent some time discussing how we are going to operate the business more efficiently. Now I want to talk about how we are laying a foundation that will be scalable as we grow the store base past 3,000. In this next segment, I will cover the importance of achieving a scalable foundation and how we will leverage our technology and AI tools to support this growth. Then that Daniel will take you through the ways our fuel business also helps facilitate our growth. Our prior 3-year strategy was primarily about building a foundation, centralizing capabilities modernizing systems and creating the infrastructure needed to support growth. As we look forward, the focus shifts to leveraging that foundation. Because of the investments we've made across our store support center, our fuel operations, field leadership and supply chain, we are now positioned to scale the business more efficiently. We also have a strong experienced leadership team to execute using these tools. In practical terms, that means growing our store footprint with proportionately lower incremental investment. We've built a platform that is centralized, scalable and future ready, allowing us to increase capacity, improve planning and drive productivity across the organization. As we scale the strategy, AI will be an important tool, but it will not be used, but it will be used in a targeted and specific way. We are looking for clearly defined opportunities where AI can help Casey's operate better. In some cases, AI enables us to move faster, whether that's improving throughput or modernizing systems and others, it helps us solve problems more effectively by identifying root causes or removing friction. The key point is discipline. AI is a tool that supports continuous improvement is not a substitute for it. We have already identified successful use cases. Earlier, Tom discussed our hyper personalized guest experience. I talked about how we're using AI in our real estate selection process. And later, Nathaniel will discuss how we are optimizing fuel. But now I want to highlight 2 other examples in which we have found success using AI. This first case study shows how we identified an opportunity to improve our demand forecasting and planning. We implemented relax as our inventory management and demand forecasted solution to stand up a fully integrated process as opposed to the fragmented manual model we had before. We had several goals when we started this journey. From improving store in-stock levels, to simplifying the store ordering process with the goal of reducing working capital in our distribution centers and increasing capacity. The results have been significant. A 550 basis point improvement in merchandise availability, a 94% reduction in manual order adjustments, a 33% reduction in warehouse inventory dollars. An increase of DC capacity by about 300 stores and a 4% decrease in average order size. So to date, we focused on general merchandise and grocery that is delivered to our stores through our distribution centers. And our next steps are to extend these capabilities further to include prepared foods kitchen ingredient forecasting, direct store delivery vendors and third-party distribution partners. This is a great example of how scalable systems, combined with continuous improvement create both immediate results and long-term value. This next example highlights how our field leadership team found value using AI-enabled tools as well. Now I will take you through a life -- a day in the life of a Casey's district manager, who has on average 12 stores in his or her territory. So previously, our district managers took almost a full day to pull reports and gather data from various sources in order to identify opportunities to address. This work informs that the district manager where they spend their time and how they map up the week ahead. Through our store insights capability, we can now automatically generate weekly summaries of key performance metrics across all other locations. Not only does this new tool eliminate the need for field leaders to manually pull data from multiple reports. It gives them time back to spend in stores, coaching and developing store managers and creating action plans alongside store leadership to close gaps. This is a game changer for our fuel team. Another clear example of how AI when applied thoughtfully can enhance productivity, improve decision-making and reinforce operational discipline. I'll now welcome Nathaniel to the stage to discuss our expensive fuel capabilities. Nathaniel?

Thanks, Ena. My name is Nathaniel Doddridge, I'm the Senior Vice President of Fuels at Casey's. As you've heard today, our scalable foundation gives us ability to grow while driving efficiency and leverage across our business model. Fuel is a very important part of that foundation. Not only is a meaningful business on its own, but as an enterprise capability at Casey's that strengthens our cost position, our resilience and our long-term growth. Over the last few years, we've invested heavily in the fuel business and the recent results highlight our ability to win. Our recent quarter is an example of what winning looks like as we grew fuel profit by over 29% and to $397 million in the quarter. Now let me walk you through how we'll continue to leverage our robust fuel capability as we maintain our winning track record. So our fuel strategy starts with an integrated supply chain built for cost advantage, flexibility and resilience. Our contracts with refiners, which cover 75% of our total demand have strong overlap with our retail footprint and provides access to over 300 fuel terminals that allows us to optimize our procurement costs and maintain the utmost flexibility. We pair that with our newest capability, our upstream self-supply and risk management capability, which helps us navigate volatility, create additional incremental value and add security of supply. As you would expect, this multipronged approach to supply has been really, really handy during the recent Iranian conflict. We execute our supply plan through our physical network, including our proprietary transportation fleet which spread out across 40 different markets includes over 450 fuel drivers and delivers over 60% of the fuel that we sell at our stores. We also have our growing terminal access, which includes our company-owned, company-operated fuel terminal in Waco, Texas, which gives us direct control over our delivery economics, keeping our buying benchmark below OPUS. This outcome of leveraging these capabilities is really, really simple. Lower cost per gallon delivered to our retail locations as well as our other business lines, greater control in these very volatile markets that we're experiencing in a system that becomes even more valuable as we continue to grow our gallons. And it's really the combination of all of these capabilities that I described not just one of the individual capabilities on their own, that really differentiates us from most of the convenience store industry. So our fuel capabilities don't operate in isolation. They really work together to create this compounding growth engine. As mentioned prior in the procurement and transportation side, we drop structurally advantaged cost and supply security -- at retail, our sophisticated pricing capability allows us to optimize our market positioning, while also maintaining a consistent, competitive and fair price for our guests. And as we grow, we're also extending these benefits and our capabilities into our business-to-business relationships, which includes our fleet business, our dealer business as well as our wholesale business. All of these benefits continue to compound as we're also improving our asset utilization all along the way. Due to our investments in our people, our processes and our technology, fuel has now become a very reliable and ratable M&A synergy for us, helping us to continue to create value for the enterprise as we scale. All of this, coupled with our in-store offering, which we've talked about heavily today, has allowed us to take market share. As Darren showed earlier, total gallons in the U.S. have been roughly flat. In the Midwest, we've seen mid-single-digit declines. However, when you look at our gallons over the last 3 fiscal years, we've grown gallons by over 30%, finishing FY '26 at just over 3.5 billion gallons sold. This is a combination, of course, of our growing store base, but we think even more importantly, is more gallons from our existing stores, which highlights and informs our ability to take market share. With our gallon growth, our cost advantages continue to grow, our returns grow with those as well. And with a strong foundation of capabilities in place, our primary focus over the next 3 years is the same as what we've said throughout the day, run the same play, scale what's already working. -- because the math for me is a fuel guy is pretty easy. Every penny that we add to our fuel results generates over $35 million in annual fuel gross profit. So over the next 3 years, our focus, like I said, is extending this advantage in a disciplined and repeatable way, and we're focused on 4 key areas: the first, optimizing our portfolio continuing to refine our supply economics by utilizing our internal data science team, also leveraging our modernized technology stack that's underpinned by AI. We're going to continue our relentless pursuit of pricing excellence, while also making sure that the products we sell to our stores, at our stores to our guests are continuing to evolve, like more premium and more higher ethanol blends. Scaling our physical supply chain will be the second item, leaning in on our newest self-supply capabilities. self-supply has grown substantially over the last 2 years, and it now makes up approximately 15% of of our total supply mix. But we know there's additional opportunities to continue to refine our supply mix. Scaling our supply chain will also be anchored by growing our transportation fleet. Both of these items, growing our fleet leaning in more on self-supply lowers our total cost of goods for our retail sites as well as our other businesses. We're also going to focus on expanding our integration benefits, continuing to refine our M&A playbook to accelerate synergy capture. We feel great about our progress in this space, especially post CFCO integration. And if you recall, fuel was one of the very first synergy opportunities we committed to. But we know there's still opportunities out there for us to reduce unnecessary costs and really delay some of these M&A synergies. And finally, growing gallons with discipline, not just growing gallons to grow, particularly as we think about our fleet business. That's a huge opportunity for us. But even more specifically, at our 300-plus locations that have commercial fueling lanes where diesel is actually the majority of the fuel that's sold at those stores. This is about scaling a model we believe works with clear line of sight on stronger economics an additional long-term value creation. So as I wrap up, our fuel capabilities have become an important part of our scalable foundation. Although fuel has always been a key component at Casey's. I'm not sure we've always said that it's a key growth enabler, but that's what we're saying today. The fuel foundation is now in place. And we have a strategy that's working and we're winning. Our robust capabilities enable favorable pricing and procurement, further enabling our growth, that growth then amplifies our advantages through scale and utilization, growing store count and in turn, growing gallons puts more volume back in our flywheel. Overall, fuel is a durable engine for value creation for the enterprise. And it's a very important part of our uniquely positioned, and I think everyone would agree are now well balanced 3-legged stool business model. I'll now turn the presentation over to Chad to talk about our team member value proposition.

Thanks, Nathaniel, good morning. My name is Chad Frazell, Chief Human Resources Officer. And today, I want to walk you through how our people strategy is supporting Casey's growth. And more importantly, while our talent and leadership strength is the reason to be confident in our long-term outlook. At Casey's, we anchor everything in our team member value proposition or TMBP. It's designed to deliver our Casey's culture, build a strong leadership pipeline, support engagement and well-being and ultimately, power sustainable growth for the business. Over the past 3 years, we've made meaningful progress. And as we look ahead to our next 3-year strategic horizon, we're doing so from a position of strength. Let's start with where we've been. Across the organization, our TMVP has driven tangible, measurable results. We've lowered overall turnover, maintained engagement levels above 80%, achieved our lowest store turnover rate since pre-pandemic levels and delivered all-time high guest OSAT scores, all while improving operational efficiency in our stores. That combination matters. It tells us we're running more efficiently, while improving both the team member and guest experience. The foundation behind these results is disciplined talent management. We've invested in store and district manager compensation to improve market competitiveness while strengthening performance management, succession planning and internal development with a particular focus on the field, where the majority of our workforce and future leaders come from. This has allowed us to create a strong internal pipeline and reduce reliance on external hiring for critical leadership roles. As we look forward, our strategic focus narrows to 1 critical pillar, career growth. We believe the ability to clearly see, assess and progress along a career path is 1 of the strongest drivers of performance, retention and leadership development. Over the next 3 years, our career growth strategy will focus on 2 areas that matter most to our long-term success: store leadership and the extended leadership team. There is no better example of this than our Division Vice President, Andy Oliva. She started her career in 2000, working part time in the kitchen and over 26 years later, having worked in nearly every store and multi-unit leader position She's leading 1/4 of our chain. In stores, clarity and consistency are key. First, we brought role clarity to the front line. We've clearly defined what success looks like at each leadership level and created a deliberate path to store manager, 1 that moves through the kitchen. That path ensures store leaders develop the operational people and financial skills required to lead high-performing stores. Second, centralized hiring continues to be a differentiator. Our plan is to continue to extend centralized hiring to the majority of our stores over the next 3 years. It's helping us lower both team member and store manager turnover, improve quality of hire and allow store leaders to focus on running great operations rather than constantly staffing vacancies. Third, we're increasing leadership readiness through a new district manager and training program, ensuring district leaders are fully equipped to coach, develop and sustain performance across their markets. Together, these efforts strengthen the talent bench responsible for leading the majority of our workforce and directly support consistency, execution and growth at the store level. Beyond the stores, our extended leadership team is a significant strategic strength and an important reason to be bullish on Casey's future. First, we make intentional leadership moves. These aren't about simply filling roles. They're about increasing enterprise capability. rotations, expanded scopes and targeted assignments help us to develop leaders who can operate across functions and scale with the business. Second, we leverage trusted external partners to accelerate development. These partners complement internal capabilities and allow us to expose leaders to best-in-class thinking faster. Third and critically, we benefit from strong leadership tenure, deep institutional knowledge drives better decision-making, stronger collaboration and stability during periods of growth and change. Over time, this compounds into stronger successors and smoother transitions. The result is exceptional leadership depth, high engagement, strong intent to stay metrics and an organization that's ready for what's next. The extended leadership team is fully aligned and all in. What ties all of this together is what we call building the talent machine. Our model integrates 3 gears culture grounded in Casey's Cares and engagement, compensation and well-being, ensuring we remain competitive and supportive, talent management with career growth at the center. When these elements work together, we create a self-reinforcing system, 1 that attracts, develops and retains the people who will drive performance for years to come. To close, we're starting this next 3-year strategic plan from a position of strength. I've spent the entirety of my 35-year career in retail, 10 years in store operations and 25 in human resources. I can confidently say I've never worked with the team that is more capable, experienced and engaged. Our leadership pipeline is deeper. Our processes are more disciplined and our commitment to developing leaders, especially in the field directly supports execution, stability and growth. Thank you. I'll now pass it back to Darren to close out.

All right. Thanks, Chad. Well, we hope you in the audience and those on the webcast have a greater appreciation for who Casey's is and why we remain a compelling investment opportunity. We operate as a category 1 in the public marketplace as the only convenience QSR. We're positioned at the intersection of convenience and QSR, our 3-legged stool operating model with prepared food and dispensed beverage, grocery and general merchandise, and fuel creates an unmatched flywheel for growth. We have clear competitive advantages, including our unique rural footprint, a restaurant-quality food program, which is vertically integrated at 100% company-owned and operated stores with consolidated scale. We have a loyal and growing guest base that prioritizes great products and a great value and Casey's Rewards now has nearly 11 million members, creating a sticky guest base that drives traffic. We have substantial white space to continue our proven track record of disciplined unit growth in either existing or new markets through both M&A and new stores. And all of this has resulted in durable ratable growth and long-term value to shareholders. We have an outstanding tenured leadership team with relevant experience and a proven track record of delivering results. To sum it all up, we have a growth algorithm that has proven to be successful over the long term, has grown even stronger in recent years and has tremendous white space for continued growth for the foreseeable future. So before I wrap things up, I just wanted to leave you with this. Today actually marks my seventh year anniversary with Casey's as a CEO. And when I reflect back on that 7 years, I couldn't be more proud of what this team has accomplished. And this is the beginning of my third 3-year planning cycle. And I can confidently say with 100% conviction that we have never been holding a better hand and never been better positioned the next 3 years than we are sitting right here today. So with that, I want to thank you for attending today, listening to our plan. And now for the star of the show, we're excited to share our lunch pizza. You got to have the breakfast pizza and earlier today. And so for those on the webcast, we'll be back at 12:30 Eastern for our Q&A session. Thank you. [This call length has exceeded streaming capabilities - Please refer to the preliminary transcript that will be posted shortly.]

We're going to start the Q&A process here in about 2 minutes. So if you could kind of get your last beverages, we'd appreciate it. All right. We're going to start the Q&A portion of [indiscernible] A couple of just quick one for us. [Operator Instructions]. And we've got two ladies here on the side that we walk around microphones that will help you out. They will pick who they will go to. So, go ahead.

Good morning or at this point, and thank you for having us Corey Tarlowe, Jefferies. Darren, one message I think that was very clear from your remarks that this is becoming a much more diversified business across fuel food. I think 1 pressing question on investors' minds today is what happens if or when CVG starts to come down, and we start to think about the lens into this 8% to 10% EBITDA growth target and the ability for the company to achieve that target amid a potentially declining CPG environment seen really strong results after the last quarter.

Well, I would first say that if you go back to the structure of the industry, the setup really doesn't lend itself to declining fuel margins. Now if we're talking about 1 quarter versus another, that's one thing. But -- and there's always going to be that volatility from quarter-to-quarter. But over the long term, we've seen is very consistent that CPG tends to rise commensurate with CPI. And we have a long history of of measuring that, and we don't have any reason to believe that, that wouldn't be the case going forward. And like we talked about earlier today, when you look at the composition of the industry, 2/3 of it nearly 90,000 of the 150,000 Canadian stores are in change of 10 stores or less. They don't have food. They don't have the technology, they don't have the scale. They're overexposed to cigarettes and cigarettes is a declining category. So they don't have a lot of levers to pull to survive, frankly. And so the lever they do have is on fuel price. And so they can extract more margin and that sets a baseline for the rest of us to compete off of. So we don't see anything structural that it will change the trajectory of the fuel margins over time.

Hi. Good afternoon, Krisztina Katai from Deutsche Bank. Thank you for today's presentation. So you spoke to a mid-single-digit it sales comp target. And I was hoping if you could speak to the drivers behind that acceleration in relation to this year 2% to 5% outlook. If you could touch on how much the incremental contribution you're expecting from wings as that rolls out over the next 2 years there? And then if you could contextualize for us just to increase personalization that nearly 11 million loyalty members. What is the role that is playing here?

Okay. Tom, do you want to take a first crack at that?

Yes, certainly. So as you heard earlier, we definitely plan to grow our prepared food dispensed beverage business faster than grocery general merchandise. Part of that is structural because cigarettes is obviously part of [indiscernible] general merchandise. But as we look outside of food and we look specifically at the package side of the business, and certainly, we have a private brand presence, but it's predominantly national brands. We're seeing a lot of acceleration in the energy drink category, a lot of acceleration in teen alternatives. And so we're very bullish on continued innovation, continued guest adoption there. There's definitely a trend for a lot more functionality. So guests expect protein, they expect energy, they expect fiber, collagen, right? There's all kinds of additives and beneficial ingredients that are becoming more prevalent in products. And so we're certainly position to capitalize well on that trend. And then from a personalization standpoint, as I discussed, we have it live and running today on our app, we'll continue to not only build even more data sets and a better understanding of our guests. But as we continue to enhance our overall digital platform, we'll be able to engage guests that much more impactfully and drive relevance in to that platform. And so we feel really good about how all of those working together will enable us to deliver that mid-single-digit growth.

And maybe I would just add specifically on wings. Clearly, it's in the mixing bowl, right, for the next couple of years. If you look back to what Brad said earlier, we're not really going to be at a full exit rate for wings across the business until the last year of this plan, right, coming into that. And so is it a positive contributor to the mid-single digits? Yes. Is it something that candidly, if we didn't have it? Would we still probably be confident we could get to mid-single digits? Yes. And so I think it's going to give us a nice positive contribution but it's going to be relatively nascent to our ability to generate mid-single digits here over the next couple of years just because of that ramp.

It's Brad Thomas with KeyBanc. Thank you for taking my questions, for doing this. The question is about the EBITDA guidance, the 8% to 10%. You have strongly outperformed these numbers over the last 5-plus years. And so the question is really how to think about any elements of conservatism that may be in this guidance, just how you make that take and the importance of consistency for you going forward?

Yes, I can go ahead and start, and I'll let Steve clean it up for me if I misspeak. But yes, on the 8% to 10% is the way we look at that, and we've shared this a lot with our growth algorithm. It's new units every year and 4% from what we call the mother ship, just running the base business better, and that's everything from operational efficiency, to merchandising efforts to marketing, rewards, et cetera, et cetera. That is 100% within our control, and we feel very good over a long track record of doing this, and we feel very confident that we deliver that and again, within our control. what can layer on top of that is a large deal M&A, which we don't make into any of our numbers. Those are more opportunistic that can accelerate it. And we're -- the fact of there is we're operating in a pretty volatile world. So I think a little bit of conservatism didn't do anybody any harm. And we're confident we can deliver the numbers that we've committed to. And as you point out, we do have a track record of beating that. And it is certainly our intention to try to beat it again. But what you can take to the bank is 8% to 10%, and we feel pretty good about is I think we -- the ratability of the company's performance really over decades. I think it served us well, right? And so Personally, I don't love giving aspirational targets that I'm not totally sure are going to come to pass. That usually doesn't end well. And so I feel super confident that we've got the track record and the plan to Darren's point, we can deliver these numbers. I feel very good about it. And some things can certainly go our way to give it more upside, but we'll start with what we thought that we control.

Bobby here from Raymond James. Darren and team, I was curious if you can just maybe talk a little bit about how you think about the price gaps today going forward? I guess in the context that you have established a pretty nice price gap versus your peer demonstrating in that slide, but then you have the AI tool for demand forecasting coming to the prepared food side of the business now, which in theory should open up, I would imagine some interesting opportunities on waste and things like could either be reinvested or drop down. So just kind of any talk around conceptualizing that and how you think about it on the go forward.

I can maybe start with that. I think in terms of that price gap, and we're talking about prepared foods, in particular, as we look at the landscape right now, the dynamics I talked about earlier with the QSRs aren't going away. If inflation continues at the rate has been going -- the QSR industry is under that pressure to do something with price. I mean, they have a few levers, right? You have price lever, you have the operating expense level and you have the product cost lever. So if you save money on ingredients, it's probably a bad outcome for your food. If you cut back your labor to months, it's probably a bad outcome for your service. And if you take prices up too high, that's a bad outcome for your sales. So -- they're not in a great spot. We don't have that problem. And so we would continue to maintain a more conservative pricing posture and let that gap widen out and drive more velocity to our stores. Now with the demand forecasting, that's really more on the supply chain side. So where it will help is just being more efficient with inventory, and we'll probably be able to take some costs out of working capital. would we reinvest that in even more price TBD, we have to see, but it gives us another lever to play with if we choose to use it that way. Maybe what I would just add to that, if you think about the two parts of the business inside of how we approach price. To Darren's point, on prepared food with an almost 60% margin business, right? Velocity is our brand, and we want more not less city. And so I think of pricing there is like a break class kind of a thing for us, right? It's a very commodity-oriented cost input business. We want to keep the gap. We know we certainly can price if we need to. We've not been able -- not needed to do that and it served as well are business, it's a little bit different. So there's a lot of structural tailwind to margin on the grocery side, like we talked about. Part of the reason the net momentum is accretive to margins, we will take enough price on grocery to preserve margins, right? Those are a packaged goods business, right? There's less kind of differentiation on coke is a 20-ounce coke for us and someone else. And so you should expect us to largely preserve margin and/or lean into promotional support to offset some of the cost pressure we might otherwise have we treated a little bit differently depending on which side of the house it's coming from.

Jacob Aiken-Phillips, Melius Research. I wanted to ask about Kasais. Can you just give a little bit more color on [indiscernible] you're doing? Is it through the app in-store activations, should we think of it as like a high margin of profit stream or funding for traffic? And then I know a lot of focus on food, but could you talk with that for nicotine promotion and personalization in that record?

Yes. So we have inventory both in-store and digitally. And so everything from push notifications, a takeovers to different messaging to our guests. Inside of our stores, we have digital menu boards, which are all part of the Access universe. We have activated the majority of our fuel pumps as well. so that while the guest is filling up on the forecourt, they can see different advertisements, both from us and our proprietary brands as well as obviously a lot of our national brand partners. We also have a number of stores that have digital screens on our fountain -- and so that's also part of the access inventory. And so we're constantly thinking about ways to bring more inventory to our partners. So they see a return for that investment. And so we've got a great flywheel working, where we've continually ramped the spend in access on a year-over-year basis, and that's being driven by the partners getting returns for that spend. And so we feel really good about how we're positioned today. We know there's opportunity to continue to grow inventory into the future. Certainly, as we grow unit count, right, that's going to grow that as well. But as I mentioned, we're on a journey of continually modernizing the digital experience and access plays a key part in that.

So the other thing I'd add to that is with our access program, we gained revenue. We have some costs associated at the margin, so to speak, from access. We reinvest in advertising for -- primarily for our prepared foods. So -- we're not using that as another P&L line. We're using that to drive more velocity in our highest-margin categories into the store.

Pooran Sharma with Stephens. I just wanted to ask about wings. And I wanted to ask you in the frame of your pizza business, you do hedge out commodity volatility the pizza business. So I'm thinking as you scale out wings in the next 24 months, how do you plan on reducing the volatility associated with wings, what type of instruments are there for you guys to use?

Do you want to touch on that?

Yes. I mean I'll start with that. What do we do today, maybe start with our biggest commodity exposure in the existing business is cheese. It's a pretty significant cost item for us, obviously. And so we do tend to buy forward block cheese. We'll go out for some 5 quarters. And I think we said on the last call, we're largely hedged for first 3 quarters of '27 and kind of halfway hedged in '28. We're not using derivatives per se when we do that, right, because we most of these commodities, right, it's a little bit different -- we actually are physically going to take possession of these. And so on the wing side, specifically as it grows, we're going to buy protein, right, as part of that, and we're going to consume that protein. And so our procurement organization, for sure, will look at how can we do that most effectively. Most of our protein buys under some form of a contract today will obviously be buying more chicken than we have historically. That's certainly the plan. But time will tell exactly how we do that, but we'll be very sensitive to making sure we're minimizing the volatility on the protein buy that we have that ramps up.

Mike Montani with Evercore. I was just going to ask for [indiscernible]. Actually, you mentioned about 4 different initiatives, I think, to help drive efficiency on the fuel side. You had the trucking fleet, for example, and then optimizing NIC for a couple of them. But could you give us some sense of quantification of how significant that could be in terms of cents per gallon. I think that 1 of the concern points is you all are kind of market takers on some per gallon, but there could be some opportunity there to control your own destiny as well. Just want to make sure I understand that.

Yes, I'm not sure I can commit to a since per gallon benefit. But I would say that I think that maybe the way to think about it is just as we to do in the study is what inning of the capability right? And so when you think about net new capabilities for us, I would say that we're in the latter innings of that. But when you think about the capabilities that we've actually initiated like we talked about today, with things like self-supply, trucking fleet, things like that. We're probably still middle innings on those things. And so as you think about layering those capabilities into the business, there's some incrementality there, right? But I think at the end of the day, I'm not sure we're in a position to commit to the CPG value, but I would maybe just categorize it as there's still some innings left in the ballgame for us to add that additional value to the cost per gallon. And I think the thing about it, too, to think of -- not all that falls through, right? At the end of the day, we're about a consistent competitive value every day. It's a very competitive market. We're the only category that day in and day out, there's a price on the street that changes pretty drastically. And so all those things, again, they'll always fall through to the bottom line. But I think we still got several earnings left -- and I would just add that you could probably assume that the benefit over the next couple of years as the thing continues to build out those capabilities is already embedded in our guidance for the next few years. We know we're going to add more trucks we're going to add more drivers. We're going to increase the amount of self supply that we do. All of those things on that rental gallon are accretive to us. It's just, there's not a lot of incremental gallons at any moment in time from truck. And so it gradually works its way into [indiscernible] and do the math.

Phillip Blee for William Blair. Thanks for the question. So when you think about the core consumer, there's a lot of narrative around K-shaped economy, changing preferences across younger cohorts, GLP-1 usage. So just given your average customer, how do you think about your positioning call versus peers in this more dynamic backdrop? And then are there more specific strategies you're employing here to accelerate share gains just against a lot of these changing behaviors.

Maybe I'll start with that, and then Tom, you can add some more color. I would say that our guests are hanging in there from a consumption standpoint. And when we look at different income cohorts, about 50,000 a year and under or family income is low income. 50 to 100 is middle and upper income is 100 or more. And we see those upper 2 cohorts pretty much staying consistent with what they have been. All 3 income cohorts are growing. One of the things that really works in our favor here, we've talked about being concentrated in the Midwest and now to a certain extent in the South, you talked about the small town rural footprint. So if you think about that income level in the context of a small town and rural community, it's very different in that income level sitting here in Manhattan today. And so that spending power just is that much greater in those areas because of the cost of living. And so I think -- we're in 9 of the bottom 10 cost of living states in the country. And so very affordable. And so our guests have a little more discretionary income than perhaps others in different geographies. Any other color you want to add on the gas?

Yes. I would just say this is the power of our structural advantage from a model standpoint. So guests are definitely getting more discerning. And we can adapt with agility to that change. And that's -- we show that through our -- the way we manage categories, the way we expand space of categories that are winning in the store, the way we lean into them from a reward standpoint, a marketing standpoint, partnership standpoint with our supplier partners and then also how we exit others that are not performing are not relevant with our guests. I'd also highlight amazing work that our omnichannel marketing team is doing around our social presence and how we've been able to really grow awareness and brand love among the younger cohorts, which again positions us well for future growth.

Mark Carden from UBS. I wanted to ask on wings obviously making some really nice pressure on progress in that front. In your more mature markets, are you still seeing a lack of cannibalization between wins and your pizza business? Do you see any shifts in how customers are cases for wings, just whether it's being more of an add-on versus a new occasion. And then just what are you seeing with respect to bringing in new customers versus existing customers and in their baskets?

Yes. I think we're seeing a mix of both. And as I said earlier, I think we are seeing new guests, and we're seeing the frequency of those guests buying food grow. We're also seeing guests that buy pizza buy wings with pizza. So -- we see it as a win on both occasions as a new occasion for some guests, but then selling wings with pizza is surely beneficial for us.

Kelly Bania from BMO Capital. Thanks for all the pizza. So over the last 3 years, reduction in same-store labor hours has been one, really impressive, but I think also a major contributor to that gap of OpEx versus EBITDA. And I guess in light of all the prepared food innovation and coming there. Can that be similar in the next 3-year plan or some of the low-hanging fruit kind of captured in the last 3 years? I'm just trying to think about really putting some numbers. I know you gave some great examples some very specific things happening, but just trying to put kind of a range of what that could look like.

Do you want to take the shot? Listen, we didn't quantify in the new guidance, the degree to which we think we can keep operating expenses growing slower than EBITDA. There's going to be a positive for sure, to our benefit, will it turn out to be 600 or something different. We're not going to go there. I think we feel really good that most of the progress we've made heretofore has been in the stores. generally, right? The stores is the majority is in a shot of our OpEx, but it's not all of the OpEx. And we really actually -- if you go back to the last 2 strategic plan periods, we added quite a bit above store for a variety of reasons because we just didn't have capabilities, right? We didn't have asset protection. We didn't have strategic sourcing. They were just kind of basic blocking and tackling things we had to -- as we sit here today, we have those capabilities. We have a lot of traction from them. And frankly, we should be able to leverage those capabilities as the company grows and not need to make those kind of incremental investments that we've done historically that helps the math a lot by simply not building functions that we already have. But a lot of the continuous improvement work that I referenced that Somerton leads for us here A lot of that will be, I would say, more above-store oriented around process improvements around systems, et cetera. Now we're not done with the stores for sure. But I think we're much more inclined to reinvest time saved in the store back into the store to let them make wings, right? There are some things we're doing that are going to require more time to be spent store. So we're not going to build a net savings for that kind of stuff in the model because the savings comes from mid-single-digit growth driven by prepared food at 60% margin. That's how the math is going to help.

Yes. And I'll just say, like the previous 3 years, like you mentioned, Kelly, we're about taking complexity out of the store, and it resulted in a reduction in the labor. Now we're going to continue to focus on that. As Steve said, the store, we're not going to abandon that. But taking that complexity out is giving them more capacity to do more of wings and other food platforms that may come in the future. And so we're taking that same disciplined approach and moving it upstream, so we are growing the whole store base about growing the OpEx above store with it, right?

I'd just add one other thing that's maybe a little less appreciated in that simplicity work that Ian and her team are doing is that as the job gets simpler in the stores, the team members stick around longer, the turnover goes down, the turnover goes down, the training hours go down, the overtime goes down. And that's the gift that keeps on giving, even if we're not actually taking any more labor out of the schedule, OpEx is coming down just share by not turning people over as much.

Tom Palmer, JPMorgan. You introduced a 400-store growth over the next 3 years. Your prior target in the past 3 years was 500. I know the $400 million does not include larger scale M&A. And Steve, you did mention it at least a couple of times the possibility of something larger. So maybe some context to kind of why that lower growth versus the prior 3-year period? And to what extent you're kind of reserving room to layer on something bigger in that target?

I take you back to the beginning of the last 3-year point, the initial target was 350 odd stores, right? And I think at the time, that was about a 4% as well as memory serves. So we're continuing to -- back to the two-pronged algorithm, right? The mothership is going to give us, just pick 8, right? Half of the 8 its need to be 4 to make that math work. So that actually is unchanged from what we thought we were going to do. And [indiscernible] was icing on the cake, right? I didn't plan on it, didn't need it necessarily to get to that number. It came in. Obviously, we then raised the number of stores that we're going add on here. And so back to the conservatism comment, we want to be able to control our own destiny. We can control our own destiny at 8% to 10% with singles, right? There are prospects out there that would give us more units in 1 fell swoop, but we don't totally control when they come and how it plays out. And so for us to give the highest level of confidence, we can make that 8% to 10% work. with acquisitions we can control. We're just sticking with single A large deal like Fiege 2.0 for sure, would change that target. There's no doubt about that.

Bonnie Herzog, Goldman Sachs. Everything seems to be working very well. So congratulations on all of that. But I'm curious to hear from your perspective, maybe what's not working so well or maybe where you think you could be doing a little bit better. Darren, you and I talked about this the other day. So maybe specifically like to hear a little bit more color on sort of where you're up with your private label business and if you see further opportunities to expand there? And is there anything else?

Yes, sure. I'd say there's always something we can do better. And what I would say, I'm really proud of this team because nobody is ever satisfied with where we're at. And even though it would be pretty easy to get satisfied with some of the results we've posted over the last few years, but nobody is ever really satisfied. So if you look at some of those things, I would say, private label is a big opportunity for us. It's been a great program. We launched it about 5 years ago. And off to a really good start and kind of hit more of a flat spot, I would say, as it performed poorly. It just hasn't performed to our expectations. And so we're taking a fresh look at that and talk about that in a little bit. I think we still have some opportunity with dispense beverages. You've seen the work we did with Frostbite and branding that frozen beverage offer I'd say our coffee after still has some room to grow, quite a bit of room actually. So there are some areas that despite some of the top line numbers that I think we can still be better we are never going to be satisfied with the amount of pizza we sell. So we're always going to look to sell more of that. We'll never be satisfied with how well we run stores. We can always run stores better. So there's plenty of things to work on, Bonnie. And Brad, do you want to talk a little bit about private label and where we're at in that process. Yes. So we didn't hit a flat spot. Again, a ton of success over a handful of years. And I think when we went back and looked at it, I think we've got opportunity. First thing I talked about was we view every single thing we make and have and is it great? And is the quality and the taste of exitable, where we want it to be to our pizza standard. So that's the first thing we're doing right now. The second thing we're going to do is we're going to make sure there's a tremendous amount of value in everything we do. So we talked about the wider the gap is, making it easy math for a guest to choose one of our great products versus a potential national brand that's taken a bunch of cost or something like that. And the third thing we're going to do is build the right design framework and architecture to give us runway for years and years to come and a place to go. So that work is going on right now. I would expect by the time we see you guys talk to you a year from now or something, we'll probably be further down the road there.

Edward Kelly, Wells Fargo. I wanted to follow up on the growth in the 400 stores that you mentioned, independents are under increasing pressure today. Can you talk about what the pipeline looks like and how you think about the mix of sort of acquisitions, smaller acquisitions versus new store builds within that 400? And then specifically, I'm curious about geographic focus. So Texas is a newer market for you where you have [indiscernible]. Curious what you've learned from being there so far, and it's a big market, but a competitive market. How do you think about your ability to win in that market and the focus in terms of growth there moving forward?

Yes, I'll go ahead and take that. Every year, we enter into the year with a growth target this year, it's 120 stores. And we go in with the assumption that half of those are going to be small deal M&A and half of those are going to be organic new-to-industry builds. As Steve would say, that number is always precisely wrong. Although this past year, we actually stuck the landing, I think the first time, exactly 40 and 40. But we have the flexibility. We -- as Ina mentioned, I think we're -- right now, our real estate team is sourcing sites that we'll be building in fiscal year. And so we have a very deep pipeline, a very large land bank of sites. And then equally on the M&A side, our M&A team has a long list of folks that we are talking to or have spoken with and believe we can act on over time. So we'll just have to see timing and sequencing of where that lands, but that mix is, give or take, half and half. With respect to Texas, we love Texas. We've been very happy with what we're seeing in Texas so far. And when I think of growth prospects, this is the anecdote I'd like to give in Iowa or home state, we have 550 stores with a population of 3 million people. The population of Texas is 30 million people. So are we going to put 5,500 stores in Texas, probably not. But could we swing and see 1,000 stores, 2,000 stores Yes. I don't see any reason why not. And our brand has been really well received in Texas. And so yes, you're right. To a certain extent, it's competitive, but that's primarily in the big cities. So you got DFW in Austin, San Antonio, that's never been really our sweet spot of operating in the big cities. We go out in the suburbs and the smaller towns. That was one of the things that was really attractive about the SEPCO acquisition was they were -- both stores are really in Casey's country. And so it's a very natural fit for us. And we -- as we go look at those types of towns as towns of 20,000 people or less, it's wide open from our perspective. So we're really happy with that. Let me ask you guys something. This is fun. I got 25 minutes left. So what about the pizza I mean you -- a lot of you are in New Yorkers. All right. Cheese where you have the chefs are saying that you guys blew out of the cheeseburgers. So yes, we're pretty proud of that pizza. And I know New Yorkers are proud of their pizza, and that's interesting, but we think ours is pretty good. Okay. Well, again, thank you, everybody, for coming in. I appreciate your interest in Casey's, and enjoy the rest of your day. All right. Thank you. Thank you.