Caseys General Stores Inc (CASY) 2026 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Caseys General Store's second quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode.

(Operator Instructions) entation, there will be a question-and-answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would like now to turn the conference over to Brian Johnson, Senior Vice President Investor Relations and Business Development. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you for joining us to discuss the results from our second quarter ended October 31, 2025. I'm Brian Johnson, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development. With me today are Darren Rebelez, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Steve Bramlage, Chief Financial Officer.

Before we begin, I'll remind you that certain statements made by us during this investor call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include any statements relating to the potential impact of the pikes transaction, expectations for future periods, possible or assumed future results of operations, financial conditions, liquidity, and related sources or needs, the company's supply chain, business and integration strategies, plans and synergies, growth opportunities, and performance at our stores.

There are a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by those forward-looking statements, including but not limited to the integration of the recent acquisitions, our ability to execute on our strategic plan or to realize benefits from the strategic plan.

The impact and duration of conflicts in oil producing regions and related governmental actions, as well as other risks, uncertainties, and factors which are described in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q as filed with the SEC and available on our website.

Any forward-looking statements made during this call reflect our current views as of today with respect to future events, and Caseys disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

A reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures referenced in this call, as well as a detailed breakdown of the operating expense increase for the second quarter, can be found at our website at caseys.com under the Investor Relations link. With that said, I'd like to turn the call over to Darren to discuss our second quarter results. Darren.

Thanks, Brandon. Good morning, everyone. Before we dive into our excellent second quarter performance, I'd like to congratulate the entire Caseys team for their hard work throughout the quarter to serve our guests and our communities.

In addition, I want to highlight the positive impact Caseys is making with veterans and their families. For more than a decade, Caseys has partnered with two veteran-focused nonprofits for our annual roundup campaign, Children of Fallen Patriots and Hope for the Warriors.

Each year, it's humbling to see the support from our guests, team members, and partners at PepsiCo, and I'm proud to share that this November, we raised $1.2 million for these two outstanding organizations. As a veteran myself, I'm grateful to those who stand with our military community and support them when shopping at Caseys.

Now let's discuss the results from the quarter. Diluted EPS finished at $5.53 per share, and net income was $206 million both of which are an increase of 14% from the prior year. The company generated $410 million in EBITDA, a 17.5% increase from the prior year.

Inside the store, the prepared food and dispensed beverage category saw guests responding well to our innovation and promotional activity within the category. We also saw margin expansion, which was primarily driven by the grocery and general merchandise category.

This was underpinned by increased guest traffic, as effective merchandizing, along with solid store-level execution, is leading to more guests shopping at our stores. Strong execution of our fuel strategy by the fuel team, coupled with our robust store offer resulted in our fourth consecutive quarter of fuel gallon growth. This was accomplished while also growing cents per gallon margin.

I would now like to go over our results and share some of the details in each of the categories. Inside, same store sales were up 3.3% for the second quarter, or 7.5% on a two-year stack basis, with an average margin of 42.4%. The two-year stack was an acceleration from the first quarter.

Same store of prepared food and dispensed beverage was quite strong, as sales were up 4.8% or 10.3% on a two-year stack basis, with an average margin of 58.6%. Whole pies and hot sandwiches and all day parts performed well in the quarter.

Breakfast performed exceptionally well, with our maple-waffle breakfast sandwich highlighting the innovation our culinary team is bringing to the category. Margin was down approximately 10 basis points from the prior year, as the lower margin from the CEO stores was nearly offset by improvement in waste and cost of goods management.

Same store grocery and general merchandise sales were up 2.7% or 6.4% on a two-year stack basis, with an average margin of 36%, an increase of approximately 40 basis points from the prior year, primarily due to a favorable mixed shift to higher margin items such as energy drinks and nicotine alternatives within their categories.

On the fuel side, same store gallons sold were up 0.8% with a fuel margin of [41.$0.06] per gallon. According to Opus fuel gallon sold data, the mid-continent region saw an approximate 2% decline this quarter, so we believe we are continuing to grow market share.

Fuel performance remained robust, supported by strong premium and mid-grade demand, stable diesel sales, consistent pricing discipline, and solid gains in fleet volumes. The organization remains mindful of effectively managing operating expenses while maintaining or improving team member engagement and guest satisfaction.

In the second quarter, same store operating expense, excluding credit card fees, increased 4.5%, lapping a 2.3% increase in the prior year. Same store labor hours were flat, even as we invested more labor hours to the kitchens appropriately to meet the strong pizza demand during the quarter. I would now like to turn the call over to Steve to discuss the financial results from the second quarter. Steve.

Thanks, Darren, and good morning. Before I begin, I also want to acknowledge the hard work and the great results from our team members. Total revenue for the quarter was $4.51 billion an increase of $559 million or 14.2% from the prior year due primarily to higher inside sales, as well as higher fuel gallons sold, partially offset by a lower retail fuel price.

Results were also favorably impacted by operating approximately 9% more stores on a year over year basis, total inside sales for the quarter. For $1.66 billion an increase of $190 million or 13% from the prior year. For the quarter, prepared food and dispensed beverage sales rose by $50 million to $468 million an increase of 12%.

And grocery and general merchandise sales increased by $141 million to $1.19 billion an increase of 13.4%. Retail fuel sales were up $273 million in the quarter as a 16.8% increase in fuel gallons sold was partially offset by a 4.8% decline in the average retail price.

The average retail price of fuel during the period was $2.96 a gallon, and that compares to $3.11 a year ago. We define gross profit as revenue less cost of goods sold, but excluding depreciation and amortization. Caseys had gross profit of $1.12 billion in the quarter, an increase of $163 million or 17% from the prior year. This is driven by both higher inside gross profit of $83.8 million or 13.5%.

As well as higher fuel gross profit of $65.1 million or 20.9%. Inside gross profit margin was 42.4%, and that's up 20 basis points from a year ago. Prepared food and dispensed beverage margin was 58.6%, down 10 basis points from prior year. Cheese was $2.11 per pound for the quarter, and that compares to $2.25 a pound last year, a decrease of 6%, or an approximately 35 basis point benefit to margin.

There was an approximate 130 basis point headwind from the [Sefco] stores that were partially offset by improved waste, the creative mix, and the favorable cheese cost comparison. The grocery and general merchandise margin was 36%, an increase of 40 basis points from the prior year. The change was impacted by a favorable mixed shift within the category, as well as cost of goods management, and that concludes manufacturer funded promotional activity associated with alternative nicotine products.

Fuel margin for the quarter was 41.$0.06 per gallon, that's up 1.$0.04 per gallon from prior year. This is inclusive of an approximately 1.$0.05 per gallon drag from the Sefco stores.

Other income was $40.9 million and that's an increase of $14.2 million or 53.4%. The increase primarily was due to wholesale fuel gross profit from the fike's acquisition, but it did also include a one-time 8 million dollarsar benefit, which is the result of a perspective change in the way that we will administer our gift card program.

Total operating expenses were up 16.7% or $101.9 million in the quarter. Approximately 10.5% of the increase is due to unit growth. Same store employee expense accounted for approximately 2% of the increase due to increases in labor rates which were offset by flat same store labor hours. Higher variable incentive compensation contributed to approximately 1% of the increase. Net interest expense was 24.7 million in the quarter, and that's up to 12.1 million versus the prior year, which is primarily from financing thefike's transaction.

Depreciation in the quarter was $109 million that's up $14.6 million versus prior year, primarily due to more stores. The effective tax rate for the quarter was 24.7%, nearly comparable to the prior year. Net income was up versus prior year to $206.3 million an increase of 14%. EBITDA for the quarter was $410.1 million compared to $348.9 million a year ago, and that's an increase of 17.5%. Our financial flexibility remains excellent. On October 31, we had total available liquidity of $1.4 billion.

Also, our credit facility debt EBITDA ratio was 1.7 times. For the quarter, net cash generated by operating activities of $347 million plus purchases of PPME of $171 million resulted in the company generating $176 million in free cash flow compared to $160 million in the prior year.

In December, the board of directors voted to maintain the quarterly dividend at $0.57 per share. During the second quarter, we repurchased approximately $31 million in shares, and we now expect to repurchase approximately $200 million.

In the in the fiscal year in total, up from our previous expectation of approximately 125 million, and that's due to stronger earnings and higher cash flows. Consistent with our normal second quarter call practice, we are updating certain full year financial metrics.

Fiscal 2026 EBITDA is now expected to increase 15% to 17%. The company now expects inside same store sales to increase between 3% to 4%. And we expect an inside margin of 41% to 42%. The tax rate is now expected to be 24% to 25%. The remainder of our annual guidance provided at the beginning of fiscal '26 remains unchanged.

Our results for November were as follows, same store volumes, both inside and outside the store were consistent with our revised annual guidance expectations. Fuel CPG was in the low 40s, and current cheese costs are slightly favorable versus the prior year.

As a reminder, we will now have lapsed the closing of the fike's acquisition, and therefore the 3rd quarter we'll have Fike's results in both periods. As such, we expect third quarter operating expense to be up mid-single-digits. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Darren.

Thanks Steve. Throughout the quarter, we built on the momentum from the summer months and our insidecoms accelerated on a two year sack basis. [Pole pies] are performing exceptionally well, as we saw a very strong response to our thin crust Thursdays and our College Football Saturdays promotions.

Whole pies grew faster than the prepared foods category, while the category also printed a strong margin, which shows we can be creative with our promotional activity and balanced margin performance. We also saw positive traffic to the stores, as guests continue to believe Caseys has a strong value proposition.

In the forecourt, we continue to gain market share as our same store gallons growth outpaced Opus data in our region again. Our ability to drive guests to the pump with our strong inside offering remains a strategic advantage for the company.

I would again like to express my gratitude to the entire Caseys team for an excellent quarter. As we look to close out our three year strategic plan, I cannot ask for a better team to execute the plan and deliver industry leading results. We will now take your questions.

(Operator Instructions) Ed Kelly, Wells Fargo.

Yeah, hi, good morning, everyone, and thank you for taking. Good morning. I wanted to, just start on fuel. I mean, obviously the backdrop has been challenging. You've been outperforming, can you just maybe talk a bit.

About the sustainability of that and then Q3 is off to a good start. I mean, it seems like rack prices have helped. Do you expect margins to just kind of revert back in short order and then stepping back on all this, has anything changed fundamentally either with your approach here, or the competitive backdrop that we should be aware of?

Yeah, hey, good morning. This is Steve. I'll maybe start on a couple of those, certainly nothing has changed, with our approach. Maybe start with that. I think some of the results that the team has had so much success delivering are directly related to how consistent we have been with our approach of trying to balance, profitability and volume to the pad. They've done an excellent job of having consistent offer available to guests and we firmly believe that contributes for sure to the to the success that we've had.

Our flytrap around our performance relative to the rest of the market, begins with the store, and so the fact that the vast majority of our guests are coming to the store to go inside the store, three out of four of our transactions, don't involve a pur don't involve the purchase of fuel, gives us a lot of stickiness with those guests.

Our guests we believe are a little less elastic. Than the average guest because they're already coming to the pad for the inside of the store offers so that has certainly helped our outperformance relative, to the market that that we're in.

As it relates to The seasonality of margins I guess is how I would address the question. Generally speaking, the winter, for us, the third and fourth quarters, we're going to have seasonally lower margins than we do in the first half of the year. That's been the case for a while. We don't have any reason to expect that would be significantly different, but beyond.

The recognition of what happens seasonally, we really don't, prognosticate around what's going to happen with forward-looking margins and beyond what the November experience has been.

And then maybe just a quick follow-up on OpEx up 4.5% on the same store basis, which is a little higher than maybe what we expected. Can you just maybe speak to that quickly and how we should be thinking about the back half?

Yeah, listen, our full year around expectations, full year expectations are unchanged, we did not change the 8% to 10%, expectation for full year total OpEx and so we are pretty much where we thought we would be exiting. The first half of the year related to OpEx, the timing of lapping the fikes transaction is going to naturally step down the year over year change, that we'll experience in OpEx in the second half of the year and we're trying to give some visibility into that with the third quarter expectation of mid-single-digits, we've been, we've had a very long success run here quarter-wise of, reducing same store labor hours, in the store they were flat this year or this quarter.

I'm sorry, that's very consistent with our expectations is eventually we were going to come to the end of that multi-year effort to literally drop. Hours to the bottom line with the promotions that we had in the store, especially the pizza promotions on Saturdays, we prudently added some labor back into the store and so it's kind of how we ended up flat, with the same store labor hours, but total OpEx, very consistent with our expectation beyond what.

We enumerated in the in the press release, there were some miscellaneous things, higher insurance costs, higher utility costs, legal was a little bit higher for us, advertising was a little bit higher, but by and large I think, total OpEx performance very consistent with expectations.

Thank you. Chuck Grom, Gordon Haskett.

Hey guys, this is Ryan Bolger on for Chuck here. Thanks for taking the question and good to talk to you today. My question, I'm sorry, my question was going to be on the mixed dynamic as you see these Cco stores roll into the base of the comp base next quarter. Obviously we've been talking about the impact on margins for a while, but I was just wondering if you could speak to anything you would expect to see in terms of how that would play out with.

Mixed differences there traffic and take, etc. And any impact that could have on comps as they roll into the base next quarter. Thanks.

Yeah, Ron, this is Darren. Clearly the CEO stores are carrying a lower margin than the Casey stores of both in prepared foods and in grocery and general merchandise, and that's because they're still CEO stores. They're not Casey stores yet. Now that effort in terms of rebranding will start to kick off in earnest, at the beginning of the calendar year. We'll start, converting the, their larger stores have kitchens in them already. Those are a little bit easier. From a conversion standpoint, and then we'll, once we get those done, then we'll start to convert the other stores, so we would expect that that trajectory will change a bit on the prepared food size in particular once we get those kitchens in and they're rebranded to Casey's and they get our full assortment with private label and all the rest.

So, we expect that margin to accrete over time, but as it stands right now. Their margin rate in prepared foods is about half of what, the Mothership Casey's prepared foods margin is, so it is going to have an impact. I was really proud of the team this quarter in terms of managing the rest of the business, whether it's through, cost of goods management, waste management.

And overall execution so that we mitigated that impact from. From the CEO stores onto the overall Casey's portfolio.

Yeah, no, I was just curious if there'd be anything on the comp side as they roll into the comp base, next quarter.

Well, as we roll through, I mean, we haven't done that math yet, but I mean there will, there will certainly be an impact. It's a, when they blend it in. It blended in and there was an impact to the margin so as we cycle over that, we'll see that it should blend up a little bit, but we'll have to see when we can get there. Okay.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you. Bonnie Herzog, Goldman Sachs.

All right, thank you. Good morning, everyone. I had a question on your guidance. You did update your EBITDA guidance for this fiscal year, which is great to see, especially considering, the strong results in the first half, but your guidance does still imply a sequential deceleration in.

Eva dog growth in the second half. So just hoping to hear some of the drivers of that. And then, as you mentioned, you lapped the fike's acquisition in November. But is there anything else contributing, I guess, to the implied deceleration in growth?

Thank you.

Yeah, hi, Bonnie, good morning. This is Steve. I mean, I'll just start with that. It, it's obviously been a very strong first half of the year for us, and that played played a part in this, but as it relates to the second half specifically, we've tried to be pretty clear with people just mechanically. The way the math has worked right, we're not going to, we do not expect the same absolute level of year over year ebtgrowth in the second half that we had in the first half just because we already have fikes sitting in the base now. There's really no change in expectation for us from the mothership performance per se, and the fike. Performance is generally on plan as well, and so I don't, we're not trying to message any different expectation for kind of second half experience vis a vis first half experience other than mechanically, but the math is naturally going to come down just because we have a higher number in the prior year, second half, period.

Okay, and then maybe just a quick follow-up just because y's acquisition, it's been a year. Can you just remind us, your M&A strategy, where you're at, and sort of what the market's like right now. Obviously, it's still very fragmented. Just any color there would be helpful in terms of what you're seeing and how actively you're potentially pursuing further M&A. Thanks.

Yeah, Bonnie, this is Darren. We're, we really haven't had any change in our strategy or our approach to M&A as we focus on a small deal kind of tucking acquisitions and that's sort of normal course we have our dedicated M&A team that is on that full time and and we're seeing good results from that group and very consistent with what we've expected the larger. Type of M&A is more opportunistic and those are fewer and further between typically and you know it for us it's not just a matter of buying something for the sake of buying it if we need the the right level of asset quality that we can we're we're able to put our kitchens into those stores and really run our play so. Well, we do see a lot more out there than we're willing to buy because they're just not the right quality for us. There is some activity out there we are.

We are participating in in some of those processes, but again we set a fairly high bar for ourselves in terms of the asset quality, so we'll probably say no to more things than we ever say yes to.

Thank you. Bobby Griffin, Raymond James.

Good Morning buddy. Thanks for taking the questions and congrats on a a solid first half.

Darren, I just wanted to maybe circle back on the OpEx side and, in particular the same store OpEx, and you guys, as you noted, have done, incredible work on the hours basis, but maybe that's in the later innings. So when we look at like the year-to-date same store OpEx of call it averaging out around high. Thres is that the right level for this business going forward, with the store growth plans and kind of the expansion opportunities you have across Texas and whatnot, or do you still think there are opportunities to maybe push that down to closer to 3 or high 2s on the same store basis?

Well, Bob, we haven't, guided beyond this year, so I'm not going to really try to forecast that right now. I would say that like I said the last couple of quarters, I think a lot of the hour reduction.

Work has largely been completed that now, having said that work is never done, to be clear, we have a team that's dedicated to looking at in-store processes and always striving to become more efficient, but I would say at this stage, a lot of that will be fine tuning and tweaking as opposed to larger, reductions in labor hours, the other thing I, I'd remind everybody about in this quarter in particular, our traffic was up.

1.5% our whole pie sales were up 8% in units and so as we grow the business on the same store basis there's natural, there's a natural inflection point where some more labor needs to get added into the stores to meet the demand, at the same time we've had the highest overall satisfaction scores from our guests that we've ever had in this most recent quarter, so.

I don't want to get overly fixated on the labor number or on the OpEx number per se. We certainly manage it and we keep it close, but I think the combination of driving traffic, delivering outsized growth in our highest margin categories, and having really great.

Overall satisfaction scores from our guests is a really winning combination and very hard to do in retail, and we're doing it right now and so, that's what we're really focused on and when our gross profit dollar growth is growing at the pace it is our EBITDA growth is growing at the pace it is, that's how we know we're doing it the right way. And so we're very comfortable with where we are at this point from an OpEx perspective.

Understand. Very helpful. And then maybe just as my follow-up on a different subject, alternate nicotine, there was some obvious manufacturer promotions during the quarter, but just curious, as you and the team have set out on the new calendar year, what are your expectations from promo activity in that category? Do you continue to expect it to be, growing from a promotional basis or, see higher promo potential going forward?

Yeah, I, I'm not sure about the promotional activity going forward. I'll, we'll still have more work to do with the manufacturers to understand how they're thinking about that as well. What I would say though is that overall that category has been growing really fast over the last few years as volumes in combustible cigarettes go down. And so we would expect that that trend that trend will continue.

And as combustibles continue to erode and more people seek other nicotine alternatives for them and right now that that business is working well for us, I think we shared a couple of quarters ago that we reset all of the back bars in our stores to reduce the space allocated to combustible cigarettes and increase the space available for those nicotine alternatives really to meet the guests. Need where they are, and that play is working well for us, so we would expect that longer-term trend to continue.

Thank you. Chuck Sarankkowski, North Coast Research.

Good morning everyone. Great quarter. Can you talk about the declining cost of a gallon of gasoline, and your customers' behavior in store? You said earlier that, 3 out of the 4 store visits, don't include gasoline, but is there an interplay, between declining cost of fuel and, say, more prepared. Food store visits and bigger prepared food purchases, and also, how about, The influence of lower gas prices on your in-store promotions.

Thank you.

Yeah, Chuck, clearly any time we have lower absolute fuel prices that leaves guests with more discretionary income and and dollars to spend. So we always like that scenario. But what I would say more broadly is that I think guests in general are just being a little more discerning about where they spend their money because there's a lot of other cost pressures outside of our stores that folks are dealing with right now and so what we're seeing. Is people are appreciating the value proposition that that they experience at Casey's and you know we see it in a couple of different areas when you look at our whole pie business as an example when we run promotions we get great uptake on the promotions which would speak to the value but we also see that people are trending more towards higher priced items, so specialty pizzas as opposed to single topping pizzas. So those are more expensive, but they're getting the right value equation, the quality of the product and the price.

Same with our bakery category where people are trading up to multi packs versus single items, those cost more but on a per unit basis those are less so we think that people are really picking and choosing where they're going to spend their money and where the the best intersection of quality and value come together is where people are really spending their money and so. Low fuel prices certainly help, and I think a more robust in-store offer and getting that value equation right is probably the bigger driver of the results inside the store.

Thank you. Good luck in the second half.

Thanks, Chuck.

Puran Sharma, Stephens.

Good morning and thanks for the question here. Maybe just wanted to, peer more into cheese. Could you maybe update us on how much you have hedge? I think last quarter, you said you were about 70% locked up for the year. Just wondering if there's any update to that.

Yeah, hey, good morning, this is Steve. We continue to chip away at locking in favorable rates, favorable prices for ourselves, but the team is really doing a good job of staying on top of that and being advantageous for us. So as we sit here today, we're about 80%, 80% locked for the next four quarters. So the second half of this fiscal year. In the first half of what would be our fiscal '27 and you know we only lock something in if it's either favorable on a year over year cost basis or neutral and so we're generally neutral or favorable on 80% of of what we think we need to buy here for the next 4 consecutive quarters.

Great. I appreciate the color there. I guess on my follow-up, maybe just wanted to peer into, to guidance here and understand that, seasonally second half does step down from first half, but just given your commentary earlier on how November is trending fuel margin wise, would it be fair to assume kind of more of a 3Q weighted split for the second half, so like maybe let's say like a 55-45 split in 3 and 4Q just given the favorability in fuel margins you've seen in November.

Listen, I think it would not be wise for me to go there. I think it's fair to assume that we were low 40s CPG for the month of November, and we'll probably leave it at that. I think historically you can look at kind of a waiting between Q3 and Q4, and that's probably as good of a, as good of a crystal ball as anybody would have around kind of how those quarters seasonally will behave.

Yeah, I would just add that you know there's a lot that can happen in the fuel market from a commodity standpoint that that's 100% out of our control. So you know what happens in November is really no indicator of what could happen in January.

So, we kind of play that, one month at a time.

Thank you. Benjamin Wood, BMO.

Good morning guys. This is Ben, on behalf of BMO and [Kellybana].

Thank you for taking our questions. First we just wanted to start with, could you give us an update on what the last 12 month, EBITDA contribution was from CEO and maybe how that came in relative to your internal plan and then following up on kind of Bonnie's question. As we think about the com the composition of new store growth over the next 12 months, is that more NTIs or acquisitions, and then can you just walk us through, how you're thinking about the potential returns more recently on your new industry builds versus your potential acquisitions?

Yeah, man, I'll go ahead and start with the store growth piece. I'll let Steve talk about Seth Kali but. The store growth we expect always a balance between new to industry and M&A and so typically when we set our new store goal for the year, well, we gotta go into it planning for a 5,050 split. Now acquisitions can be a little bit lumpy, so we, that number is usually wrong, but we go into it with that expectation and that plan and we have the ability to do that. If acquisitions run a little bit hot.

Then, we usually throttle back the new industry builds and, get to our target and then that allows us to land bank for, the situations where maybe acquisitions slow down a little bit then we have the ability to flex the other way and accelerate new to industry builds so we can maintain that consistent rateable growth.

So that's kind of how we we view store growth from a return standpoint, we're always looking to achieve that mid-teens return after a few years when the stores start to to mature. We have a long tracker track record of achieving that and we're really format agnostic meaning whether that's a new industry or an acquisition, we still have the same return expectations either way.

See, yeah, listen, I, what I would say on spikes, is we're right where we thought we would be, so their own plan for us. The plan is very consistent with kind of pro forma, assumptions that we had at the time we bought them. LTM is a little misleading. I'm not going to go there just because if you think of the first two quarters that we've done pikes, a lot of deal costs there, it was kind of a wash from an EBITDA basis the second half of last fiscal year.

But for this fiscal year, there, we said that would be EBITDAcretive, healthy EBITDA secretion it is, would not be EPS secretive because of the interest that is still the case, we continue to realize synergies, primarily from fuel and SG&A as we sit here at this point in time to Darren's earlier comment. The biggest group of of the 45 million of synergies we're we're ultimately trying to get is going to come from inside the stores and. You know that's dependent on the timing with which we can remodel the sources, so we won't, we will certainly not fully realize synergies this fiscal year and that was never the expectation, but, right where we thought it would be well on our way to ultimately, getting to $89 million to $90 million of kind of fully synergized EBITD, but we won't see all of that this fiscal year because of the timing of remodels.

Great, thank you. And then just as a follow-up, could you give us an update on what the latest is thinking around your wing test, and then, as you're thinking about timing a broader roll out, what are you guys looking for at this point? Are you still trying to refine the offering or the labor, or are there calendar events like the Super Bowl or or March Madness that might be a little bit more conducive to a broader launch?

Yeah, Ben, with the wings like we've talked about, we still had some menu refinements that we're working on some procedural, gaps we're trying to close. I think a lot of that work has been wrapped up. We're, we've got some new flavor profiles that we just literally in the last week got back into the test stores and we've broadened that that store base a little bit to.

To make sure we've got that right so we're, I'd say a lot of the development type work we think is largely done we're validating that as we speak and then we would proceed to start rolling out so we haven't really announced the timeline for that just yet but I think that that work is well underway and so I think we're getting closer to the finish line there.

Thank you. Brad Thomas, KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Good morning and thanks for taking my question and congrats on a strong quarter here. I wanted to first ask a big picture question about competition. You know this is something that comes up a lot in our conversations with investors about the growth of many of the private convenience stores. It seems like your results are clearly very insulated today, but I was wondering, Darren, if you could talk a little bit more about your confidence level in your insulation from some of that competition.

Yeah, Look, I think, from a competitive standpoint, we have a little bit of a mixed bag. I and what I mean by that is, yeah, there's certainly some rural areas where we don't face a lot of the larger regional players that you're referring to. We do have some of those larger regional players that we compete with every single day in some of our larger markets. I'll just use, our home market of Des Moines, Iowa as an example. It's probably one of the most competitive convenience store markets in the country.

And so we face three of those regional competitors as we speak in this market, and we perform exceptionally well here. We have that in a number of different markets Texas, in Missouri, in, Illinois, so.

I feel very comfortable in our ability to compete at the highest level with the regional players in the industry. And, we have a differentiated offer, they do well at what they do and we do well at what we do and those things aren't always the same, but, I think we can look market by market where we have that more intense competition and we do very well there.

That's helpful. And if I could ask a follow-up on the state of the consumer, this has been an unusual quarter with the government shutdown and an impact on Snap. Curious if there was anything that you've seen in your business from a consumer perspective.

I shared a little bit before about what we're seeing more broadly with the consumer with respect to Snap. Snap is a very low percentage of our business. It's a little bit less than 2% of our sales are SNAP eligible, so we really.

The government shutdown, while unfortunately it really didn't have much of an impact on our business at all that that we could discern from the numbers.

Thank you.(Operator Instructions) Mike Montani, Evercore.

Yes, hey, good morning, just wanted to ask if you could unpack a little bit further some color, Darren, on, state of the consumer and the case-shaped economy and, in particular I guess with guide, it seems to imply about 50 bits of DL for the back half of the year even though compares get a bit easier optically into the 4th quarter. And we thought you could have like 20 to 40 bits of tailwind from Sefco stores getting into the comp. So just wanted to understand maybe if you could break out, how the comp progressed over the quarter, a little more color about what you see in November, and then just some high level commentary about that consumer.

Yeah, I guess as we saw the the comp progress through the quarter, it was really, that that trajectory was more a reflection of the comps we're recycling, so it kind of stepped down.

August, September, October, but when you look at the two year stack, it really was the other way. It accelerated, so, we had a very, tough comp in, October, and we cycled that, and that was probably our lowest comp sales month of the quarter from an inside perspective, but like I said, on the 2 year stack basis we were about 6.5 last quarter, we were 7.5% this quarter. So I feel really good about the strength of the business and the trajectory it's on.

From a consumer perspective, again, I think, and we've done some research on this.

There's sentiment out there among consumers and then there's how they behave, and I think broadly speaking, if you look at different income cohorts, the middle and upper income cohorts are feeling fairly good about the economy, there's some.

That that have a negative view, but the majority would have either a neutral or positive view of the economy. The majority in those cohorts would feel at least neutral or more financially secure. The lower income is under more pressure from both of those perspectives, but.

They also say that they intend to maintain their visit frequency to convenience stores, so that's encouraging for us. And again, what the actual behavior we're seeing in the stores is that they're still coming as frequently as they were, as evidenced by our traffic increasing over the quarter. They're still buying, as evidenced by our same store sales performance relative to others in space.

But they are being more discerning about where they spend the money and how they spend it, and I think for us with our prepared food proposition in particular, it represents a really strong value relative to other alternatives out there, particularly in the QSR space. And so we're finding more people gravitate to us, because of that strong value proposition and. We continue to maintain that, so I feel very good about the spot we're in right now from a guest perspective.

We had just done a deep dive actually on your last point about the share gain potential for prepared meals where you all stood out positively and I was curious if there's anything you could add that helps to bridge us to the chicken wings in terms of LPOs or other innovations down the pipeline.

Well, we certainly think that the wings have the potential to create another occasion for the guests, and.

It would, I would expect that from a quality and pricing perspective to really represent a great value proposition for the guests and that's the feedback we're getting so far in the test market so I would expect that to perform well when we go to a broader roll out and again our pizza proposition has always been there we people are people recognize us for that and as they become more value conscious. They are, they're gravitating more towards us and so again relative to comparable quality products out there and we're, we compete more with QSR from a quality perspective, our value is much stronger than than most out there and it's resonating with the guests.

Great. Thank you and good luck.

Thank you. I show no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Darren for closing new remarks.

All right, thank you for taking the time today to join us on the call. Before we go, I want to thank our team members once again for all their hard work this quarter. We wish them and everyone on the call and listening in a happy holiday season.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating and you may now disconnect.