Circle K Announces Sale of 350-Plus Stores in North America
LAVAL, Quebec — Hundreds of Circle K convenience stores are hitting the market.
Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., parent company of the global c-store brand, tapped NRC Realty & Capital Advisors LLC to coordinate and manage the sale of 269 sites across 25 states in the United States and 37 sites across six provinces in Canada.
Of 306 sites, 122 are fee-owned and 184 are leased, while 238 properties sell fuel and 68 are convenience only. The stores average roughly 2,600 square feet and sit on an average lot size of 29,500 square feet.
"We are excited to assist Circle K in this sale, and we expect great interest from a wide range of retailers large and small, as well as other players who have expressed active interest in the convenience store industry," said Evan Gladstone, NRC's executive managing director. "These stores are being offered in packages, grouped primarily by geography, and provide many excellent opportunities for regional and local players to acquire attractive properties."
The packages are further subdivided into smaller pools. Offers will be considered for a single package, multiple or all packages, a single pool or any combination of pools. Offers on individual stores, or less than all of the stores in a pool, will not be considered, except for a small number of stores, which are offered as a single-site pool, according to NRC.
The stores are all offered with or without fuel supply and without convenience store brand. Expressions of interest on the stores will be due on or before May 7.
Couche-Tard & Casey's Deal
In addition to those planned divestures, Couche-Tard reached an agreement to sell 49 locations in Oklahoma to Casey's General Stores Inc. The $39-million transaction includes 46 leased properties and three owned properties.
These stores will be supplied by Casey's new distribution center in Joplin, Mo., according to the Ankeny, Iowa-based retailer.
Casey's operates more than 2,200 c-stores 16 states. It is set to add 94 retail stores and 79 dealer locations, as well as multiple parcels of real estate for future new store construction, when it seals its pending acquisition agreement for Buchanan Energy. Omaha, Neb.-based Buchanan Energy, parent company of Bucky's Convenience, operates c-stores primarily in Illinois and Nebraska.
Matrix Capital Markets Group Inc. acted as financial advisor to Couche-Tard on the transaction, which is expected to close by July 31.
"The decision to divest select stores fits within the company's network optimization strategy and follows a comprehensive and uniform network planning process that began in the Fall of 2020. Through this process, we have identified sites that no longer fit our strategic objectives, either from a brand perspective or from a regional scale perspective," said Couche-Tard President and CEO Brian Hannasch.
"Concurrently, we have identified many opportunities to expand our footprint through new store builds and will continue to allocate capital to upgrade the size and scale of our locations, improve store layouts, and allow for the best utilization of our Fresh Food, Fast program as well as other initiatives which improve the customer journey," he added.
Laval-based Couche-Tard operates in 26 countries and territories, with more than 14,200 stores.