Couche-Tard Shares Surge on 4Q Fuel Margins, Profit Amid Oil-Market Turbulence

By Adriano Marchese

Alimentation Couche-Tard shares jumped Tuesday as the convenience-store operator rode a wave of war-driven oil volatility to one of its strongest fuel-margin performances in years.

Shares traded 11% higher in Toronto at 91.14 Canadian dollars.

"When volatility exists, we are well positioned to capture the advantages there and margin that becomes available without volatility," Chief Executive Alex Miller said in a call to investors Tuesday.

The war in Iran, which began on Feb. 28, sent crude prices sharply higher and kept them volatile throughout the fighting and subsequent peace talks between the U.S., Israel and Iran. That kind of whipsaw trading often widens fuel margins for retailers, and companies such as Couche-Tard benefited from the turbulence, reporting unusually strong U.S. gasoline margins during the quarter.

Fuel margins strengthened in the fourth quarter, with the company reporting late on Monday higher profitability on gasoline sales in the U.S. Margins also improved across Europe and other international markets, while Canada saw a more modest increase.

In the U.S. particularly, fuel gross margin of 52.44 cents a gallon was notable, representing a 9.17-cent rise over the prior year period. Stifel analysts Martin Landry and Jesse Kestenbaum said in a research note that those levels of margins are the highest in more than five years for Couche-Tard, and far above the 35-cents-per-gallon industry average in the period.

Along with strong same-store sales growth of 2.2%, the wider fuel margins supported a quarterly profit of $863.4 million, or 94 cents a share, up from $439.4 million, or 46 cents a share, a year earlier. Adjusted earnings, which strip out one-off costs and exceptional items, were 73 cents a share for the three months ended April 26, above the 54 cents expected by analysts, according to FactSet.

"The strong gasoline margins were a main contributor to the earnings beat," Landry and Kestenbaum said.

The lucrative fuel margins were driven by years of investing in the company's supply chain, Miller said in the call, which has given the company more flexibility to source its fuel when prices swing. "It's really about building optionality that gives us sourcing choices when the market becomes volatile and/or constrained," he said.

Road-transportation fuel revenue rose to $14.8 billion from $11.95 billion, while service and merchandise revenue grew to $4.51 billion from $4.19 billion a year earlier. In total, revenue rose nearly 20% to $19.49 billion, also above analyst forecasts.

Write to Adriano Marchese at adriano.marchese@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 23, 2026 11:03 ET (15:03 GMT)