MONTREAL — Convenience store giant Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. said its profits rose in the fourth quarter as consumers travelled more and it continued to expand its global network.
The company has also seen sales rise as it buys up other operators. Just in the last six months Couche-Tard has signed deals to buy 45 retail sites from Big Red Stores, 112 fuel and convenience sites from Mapco Express Inc. and 65 car washes from True Blue Car Wash, with all three deals focused on the U.S., while it also made a roughly $4.5 billion deal to buy some 2,193 retail sites in Europe from TotalEnergies.
The company is keen on North America, but is also open to South America and Asia as opportunities arise, Hannasch said. Merchandise sales have been held back in part by softness in tobacco sales. Hannasch blamed this on the illicit market, which he said is approaching 40 per cent of total volume in Canada."So if you say, hey, tobacco is 30 per cent of sales and that there's zero or negative growth, you can do some math and say that the rest of the business is actually very strong."