The Ankeny-based convenience store chain Casey’s reports a good first quarter. CEO Darren Rebelez talked about the results in a conference call for investors.
“Inside sales remain strong, driving inside gross profit dollars up over 10% to 556 million dollars,” he says. “The company generated 169 million dollars in net income, an increase of 11%.” He says the company saw gas sales increase slightly, while maintaining a gas margin of nearly 42 cents a gallon.
Rebelez has said in the past the company has been able to take advantage of big changes in gas prices, but he says they maintained their margin this quarter without that happening. “It was a relatively benign quarter from a wholesale cost perspective, and we believe this is a strong indicator that higher industry fuel margins are here to stay,” Rebelez said.
He says the amount of profit they make on gas has remained strong. “This quarter marks the ninth quarter in a row with fuel margins above 34.5 cents per gallon. And four the last five quarters have been over 40 cents per gallon,” he says.
Rebelez says in-store says were up more than 8%– driven by sales of their new thin crust pizza. “About 16% of those sales are by new buyers into the pizza category — so in other words people that weren’t buying pizza from us before,” he says. “About 12% were new guests entirely.” Rebelez says the results are what they expected as they found some people only want thin crust and the new pizza meets that demand.
He says the also benefited from a decrease in commodity costs, most notably cheese. The company says it now expects to add 150 new stores in this fiscal year after recently purchasing 63 stores from a chain in Kentucky and Tennessee. That’s up from the previously projection of 110 stores in the 2024 fiscal year as part of its overall plan to add 350 new stores by the end of the 2026 fiscal year.