Good evening. My name is Pam, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Parkland conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Valerie Roberts, Director of Investor Relations for Parkland. Please go ahead. Thank you, operator. With me today on the call are Bob Espey, President and CEO, Marcel Teunissen, Chief Financial Officer, Ian White, SVP, Strategic Marketing and Innovation, and Darren Smart, SVP, Strategy and Corporate Development. We are also joined by Andy O'Brien, President of M&M Food Market. This call is webcast, and I encourage listeners to follow along with the supporting slides. We will go through our prepared remarks and then open it up for questions from the investment community. Please limit yourself to one question and a follow-up as necessary. If you have any other questions, re-enter the queue. We would ask analysts to follow up directly with the capital markets team afterwards for any detailed modeling questions. During our call today, we may make forward-looking statements related to expected future performance. These statements are based on current views and assumptions and are subject to uncertainties which are difficult to predict. These uncertainties include, but are not limited to, expected operating results and industry conditions, among other factors. Risk factors applicable to our business are set out in our annual information form and management's discussion and analysis. We will also be discussing non-GAAP measures, which do not have any standardized meanings prescribed by GAAP. These measures are identified and defined in Parkland's continuous disclosure documents, which are available on our website or on SEDAR. Please refer to these documents as they identify factors which may cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements. Dollar amounts discussed in today's call are expressed in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted. I will now turn the call over to Bob. Great. Thanks, Val, and good evening, everyone. We appreciate you taking the time to join us today and trust that you are staying safe and healthy. The photo on the cover of our presentation showcases the pairing of high-quality proprietary food with our well-run On the Run convenience brand. These are core ingredients of our convenience destination strategy. This photo provides us a perfect backdrop to our acquisition of M&M Food Market, which creates an additional and exciting platform for Parkland's growth and is aligned with our strategy to grow our convenience business that was outlined at our Investor Day in November. M&M complements our existing food offering, significantly enhances our internal food capabilities, expands our proprietary brand portfolio, and advances our digital and loyalty strategy to bolster the connection we have with our customers. I'm excited to welcome the M&M team to the Parkland team. During this call, we will outline what we are buying and why M&M is well-positioned to support the growth of our food offer, including an exciting fresh from frozen opportunity, which can be efficiently deployed across many of our existing and future On the Run locations. I will provide a quick overview of the acquisition. Marcel will run through the acquisition details, and Ian will talk about M&M's operations and the runway of growth and expansion opportunities we see. Turning to slide three. M&M is a Canadian franchise business that serves restaurant-quality frozen food. It generates a ratable cash flow stream and has significant growth potential. We aim to expand and grow this business through our expansive retail network, not only in Canada but across the U.S. and international markets. In addition, M&M is a capital-light business. It leverages its innovation kitchen to develop exclusive menus in conjunction with best-in-class third-party food preparation and product delivery providers. This unique partnership structure has allowed M&M to create a high cash conversion model business. You will recall at our Investor Day in November, we spoke extensively about our food ambitions and how it is core to our destination model. You may also recall that we identified five key criteria for any food acquisition or strategic partnership. These were a trusted food brand, menu development capabilities, ability to track customer insights and trends, a high-quality food offering, and a capable management team. In addition to meeting each one of these criteria, M&M advances our retail diversification strategy and meaningfully contributes to our 2025 Adjusted EBITDA ambition of CAD 2 billion. Our acquisition of M&M brings many operational advantages. It will bolster our in-store e-commerce and home delivery offers and support our soon-to-be-launched standalone On the Run convenience stores. It will also enhance our digital connection to customers and grow our already successful Journie Rewards loyalty program. The combination of Journie and M&M's rewards programs will create one of Canada's largest loyalty platforms and then unlock extensive cross-promotional opportunities. Our acquisition of M&M also provides tremendous in-house capabilities to develop and grow our broader food strategy well beyond our existing frozen portfolio and help create convenience destinations that better serve our customers and help them make the most of every stop. I will now pass it over to Marcel to further discuss the details of this exciting transaction. Thank you, Bob, and good evening, everyone. On slide four, we have provided some additional highlights of the acquisition. The purchase price of approximately CAD 322 million represents a transaction multiple of just under 8.5x based on estimated 2021 Adjusted EBITDA. We believe this is highly attractive compared to other royalty-based convenience food businesses. We expect to grow M&M's annual Canadian run rate Adjusted EBITDA to approximately CAD 55 million in 3 years. This represents a compound annual growth rate of approximately 12%. Even further upside exists with our opportunity to grow M&M within our existing U.S. and international markets. This is a great deal that's immediately accretive and comes with the opportunity for continued growth as we leverage M&M within our retail platform. M&M has already more than 2,300 existing retail locations and provides a high free cash flow conversion. This is a result of its unique partnership with the best-in-class third-party food preparers and distributors. This means that M&M requires minimal capital investment. Slide five provides some of the key details of our retail diversification strategy that we outlined at our Investor Day in November. As a reminder, between now and 2025, we expect to invest around $1.5 billion in our retail diversification strategy. We anticipate this will deliver an incremental Adjusted EBITDA of $200 million a year, and that we will have 7 million Journie Rewards members. M&M significantly advances all three of these objectives. The M&M purchase price represents approximately 20% of our planned retail diversification capital investment. This acquisition is expected to generate approximately 30% of our targeted incremental run rate Adjusted EBITDA. In the near term, when we combine M&M's existing 2 million active loyalty members with our existing Journie Rewards, we will create a loyalty program with a runway of cross-promotion and growth opportunities. We are funding this acquisition with our existing credit capacity and are comfortable we will remain within our targeted range of 2-3.5 times credit facility leverage, and we expect to close this acquisition in the first quarter of 2022. I will now pass it over to Ian White, our SVP of Strategic Marketing and Innovation, to discuss M&M's operations and highlight additional benefits of the transaction. Thanks, Marcel. Good evening, everyone. You will recognize slide six from our November Investor Day. During that presentation, we discussed our focus on creating convenience destinations with a differentiated experience that better serves our customers. Delivering our strategy requires us to weave together three critical elements, and this acquisition contributes to each of them. First, with over 90% brand awareness, M&M is a recognized premium frozen food brand and retailer that grows our portfolio of trusted proprietary brands. Second, M&M expands our high-quality food offer and broadens our ability to meet the dining needs of our customers on-site, on the road, and at home through both standalone and express formats. Let me provide some more color on this. M&M's more than 300 standalone stores are the core element of the business. These stores are owned and operated by a dedicated network of franchisees, meaning M&M can focus on sourcing new locations and new franchisee partners. In addition, M&M develops new products and negotiates with its supply chain partners to create a unique and low-capital business model. In return, M&M earns a royalty fee on total sales in a standalone channel. The express format provides a branded M&M offer that is located within a partner store that has a dedicated freezers exclusively for M&M food. Almost a third of our current Canadian On the Run convenience stores feature the M&M Express concept. Other partners include drug, grocery, and convenience stores. M&M launched this concept in 2018 and have grown it to more than 2,000 sites today. Like the standalone model, M&M earns a royalty fee on sales through the express channel. Third, M&M bolsters our digital connection to our customers with a loyalty program and e-commerce capabilities that allow customers to shop online and have products delivered or ready for pickup at their convenience. M&M's artificial intelligence engine enables them to deliver personalized offers to their more than 2 million active members. This creates a tremendous opportunity, and we look forward to adding this capability to our Journie Rewards program. The combination of Journie and M&M's Rewards programs will create a premier loyalty program with a long runway for innovative and compelling cross-promotional opportunities. Finally, M&M and On the Run share common and growing customer segments, those that are focused on meeting the needs of their busy lifestyles without compromising on quality. Combined, the complementary attributes of the premium pit stopper and on-the-go refueler segments in the Parkland network, along with the busy kitchen enthusiast segment from the M&M network, provide a unique opportunity to build basket size, margin, and loyalty. Moving to slide 7, which we also discussed at our recent Investor Day. A high-quality food offering is core to our destination model and to ensuring our customers can make the most of every stop. This includes providing options across all day parts and in a variety of platforms. M&M offers a wide selection of premium frozen meals that can be finished and enjoyed at home. We also plan to develop a proprietary fresh from frozen offer for our convenience locations that can be finished in-store for on-site or on-the-go consumption. M&M complements our existing branded food offers while allowing us more options to provide customers high-quality meal choices that can be efficiently scaled regardless of store size, format, and location. We believe this capability will serve as an important differentiator for On the Run in the future. Turning to slide eight and to summarize, as we've highlighted throughout the call, this acquisition is all about growth. We will grow our food-related earnings along with the reach of the M&M brand by developing new integrated store concepts to leverage our existing extensive network, including our On the Run convenience locations across Canada. You can expect M&M to feature heavily in our soon-to-be-launched standalone On the Run stores beyond the existing Express format. We aim to incorporate M&M across our rapidly growing On the Run convenience store network in Canada, and you can expect us to expand M&M into our existing U.S. and international markets. M&M creates additional growth opportunities beyond their retail locations. As you previously heard, by combining M&M's rewards programs with Journie, we will enhance the digital experience for our customers, capturing and leveraging their insights and creating a powerful and seamless platform for cross-promotion across food, convenience, and fuel. Turning to slide 9, with the acquisition of M&M, we're also acquiring a strong and knowledgeable management team with a proven track record of growth and innovation. Today, we're joined by Andy O'Brien, who's sitting across from me here, who has over 30 years of experience with household names in the food industry and has successfully led and transformed the M&M business over the past 7 years. Andy and his talented team will join Parkland to continue to grow the M&M brand and play a leadership role in advancing our broader food strategy. With that, I'll turn it back to Bob for his final remarks. Great. Thanks, Ian. As you can see, we're all very excited about this deal. At an attractive price, M&M provides a ratable cash flow stream with significant growth potential. It is aligned with our widths and advances the retail diversification strategy laid out at our Investor Day and meaningfully contributes to our 2025 Adjusted EBITDA ambition of CAD 2 billion. M&M checks all the boxes of our food growth strategy. As a trusted Canadian brand with a capable team, this acquisition not only accelerates our food capabilities through menu development, scale distribution, and customer insights and loyalty, it also creates a key differentiator for our On the Run convenience brand and will ensure our customers can make the most of every stop. I can't wait to get started. At this time, I would usually turn the call back to the moderator for questions. However, I would like to ask Andy the first question. Andy, I would really like to welcome you and the M&M team to Parkland. A number of Canadians, myself included, may remember M&M Meat Shops from the past before you and your team repositioned the business to M&M Food Market with great success. Can you please describe the transformation that has taken place and what the future looks like for M&M? Over to you, Andy. Thanks, Bob. I would love to. This is a really big day for M&M and a really big day for our team members to be joining the Parkland team. Thank you. When we purchased the business back in 2014, we knew that M&M Meat Shops, as it was called then, had the underpinnings of a very strong consumer food brand. With over 40 years in Canada, being coast to coast, M&M has really become part of the Canadian fabric. We just knew it needed to be updated. We immediately began to build a new team, a team that was comprised of existing M&M-ers, as we call them. Plus, we added significant bench strength to complement the existing team. Repositioned the brand from M&M Meat Shops to M&M Food Market to really showcase the depth and breadth of our portfolio, which is comprised of over 450 M&M branded products across 10 different categories. We evolved the food portfolio to be more contemporary to meet the needs of today's consumers, launching hundreds of new products. Now, at the same time, we also removed all the artificial colors, flavors, and sweeteners from all of our products. We redesigned our shopping network, and as of today, we have over 70% of our network now with a new design. We launched a new AI-based loyalty program, M&M Rewards, that really allows us to have a one-to-one relationship with our customers. We launched a new AI-based adult learning system as well that allows us to communicate, engage, and train our frontline teams on a daily basis. We launched our Express program first with Rexall, which is, as Ian mentioned, a store-within-a-store concept, and this has exploded. Today we have actually over 2,300 locations, and we think that can be doubled in the next couple of years. We launched a new e-commerce platform that has accelerated our non-online sales. Over the last 7 years, we've been really focused on growing same-store sales, improving profitability, and improving our EBITDA, and we've been able to do that each and every year. We're ready for the next chapter. We believe we have significant growth in front of us, growth in our existing stores, growth in new stores in Canada, and as Ian mentioned, growth outside of Canada. This is a very exciting time, and we're really excited to be part of the M&M, the Parkland team and being able to scale our business for the foreseeable future. Thank you. Well, great. Thanks, Andy. It's remarkable what you and your team have done with the brand and repositioning it to M&M Food Market. We at Parkland are super excited to welcome you and your team and the capability that you bring to us. We really look forward to supporting our growth in the food segment. With that, we'll open it up to the moderator for questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request, and your questions will be pulled in the order they are received. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift your handset before pressing any keys. Your first question comes from Kevin Chiang with CIBC. Please go ahead. Thanks for taking my question and congrats on the transaction here. Maybe first off, you know, you do have a branded partnership with M&M already. Just wondering, you know, what does owning this brand do in terms of accelerating your growth that you couldn't have done through the existing partnership, maybe just outside of bolting on the earnings, you know, by acquiring this asset? It does sound like M&M Express has other branded partnerships. Do you assume that those will be maintained, or is there a risk that some of those partnerships may have to dissolve, if they feel that this brand is now being owned by a potential competitor of theirs? Yeah. Thanks, Kevin. Thanks for the question, and then certainly, you know, a very good question around the multiple channels that the business has. I will turn it over to Ian, because we put a lot of thought into that specifically to make sure that there is no risk there. Kevin, thanks for the question. A couple of comments. To your first comment, I think the question was why better in our hands? To a couple of key items for us, and we've highlighted in our remarks, but to reiterate, the M&M capability, from the innovation kitchen to Andy, who's sitting with me in this room, to the food-first culture and to the ability to, I would say, augment our existing food offer is a critical component of this for us. By you know, bringing that team into our team allows us the flexibility and freedom to, you know, create the menu items and the flexibility that we need to do so in new formats, particularly as we think about building out our standalone business and an integrated offer between On the Run and M&M. As it relates to the channels, as Andy alluded to, there's a very robust express channel that includes a number of partners. There are some convenience stores that are a part of that, but it's largely, you know, additional partners like in pharma and even small grocery in some cases. You know, we believe that over time, there's room for us to, you know, continue to support that channel and grow it, you know, through Andy and his team. That's helpful. Maybe just my second question. You know, you laid out what the earnings profile looked like last year, what you expect to grow over the next three years. It'd be interesting to know, you know, what that growth rate looked like maybe the last three years. Is this 12% CAGR an acceleration from the historical growth rate? Maybe how M&M performed during the pandemic. Was it, you know, did earnings hold up relatively well, or did you see an elevated amount of volatility, you know, over the past, I guess in 2020? Yeah, great. Again, Ian, if you could answer that one, that'd be great. Thanks. Yeah. I think what I'll do, Bob, is I'll pass it over to Andy. He's got a good view of what the trajectory of the business has been and the impact of the pandemic. Andy, over to you. Sure. Our business was growing quite well prior to the pandemic. When the pandemic hit, our business went through the roof. As a result of people being forced to stay at home and restaurants being closed, they were eating 21 meals a week at home with their kids. The average consumer in Canada has a repertoire of about 8 to 10 meals that they go to. Within about two months, they were literally fatigued and bored with their food. Our food was perfectly positioned for them, value-added meals that offer a very convenient shopping experience, somewhat considered safe. We saw a very strong increase in our sales and a really strong change in our mix, where people were trying a lot of products they hadn't tried in the past. All these products were value-added premium products. Average basket went up, margins went up, and of course, corporate profitability also went up. The way we talk about it here is that when the pandemic happened, because of all the changes we had made, we were ready. That's great. I think, Kevin, just to add, I was just gonna add to that, you know, we see that trajectory continuing beyond it because of, you know, the fact that the customers have tried this product and like it and are cooking more at home. The trend, you know, post when we come out of this thing, is quite favorable in terms of the dynamic shifting and people cooking more at home and taking advantage of products like M&M. That's great. Thank you for taking my questions. Your next question comes from Michael Van Aelst with TD Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah, thank you, and congratulations. Looks like an attractive valuation for a low capital business that's growing. I wanted to ask you though, about the experience within your stores today, because I believe you have M&M in a decent amount of your On the Run stores already. Can you give us- You know, you must have a decent level of comfort in the upside that they offer, given that your experience to date. Can you talk about the sales lift that you've been getting and other benefits you've been getting from adding the M&M, as it is now with the freezers? You know, how much is that part of the growth, and then how much is the fresh from frozen food strategy? Yeah. Thanks, Michael. Thanks for the question. Again, I'll turn that over to Ian, who's been working on the growth scenarios, and in bringing this acquisition in. Great. Thanks, Bob. Michael, thanks for the question. A couple of soundbites for you. One of the things that gave me and gave us confidence immediately, when we installed the M&M business and tested it, was what we saw around average basket and what was in the basket as a result of, you know, selling through an M&M product. Here's a soundbite for you. Roughly, you know, between 70%-80% of M&M Express Mart baskets, so that's M&M products in our stores, in our On the Run stores today, have some other C store item. An average basket is roughly 30% higher than our standard average basket. What we saw were natural, and it's sort of intuitive, but was good to trial the adjacencies around, you know, meal preparation, snacks, beverage, et cetera. We think there's a natural extension into particularly in the Quebec markets or where we're able to sell, you know, alcohol and, you know, wine, et cetera, to have pairings and to have people prepare for whether it's the Super Bowl when you're doing, you know, appetizers or snacks, and you need other, you know, beverage items, et cetera, or a full meal opportunity where you need, you know, snacks afterwards or beverage, et cetera. So we really like that statistic. In terms of growth, I'd say it's about, and maybe get Darren to jump in, but, you know, we see organic growth in terms of new store opportunity. We see same-store growth as well, and we also see growth in this new concept. I call it sort of roughly 50/50 in terms of, you know, new store growth and, you know, in the express concept and standalone and combination. Then the other 50 being, you know, between loyalty and some of the attributes there that we can bring together and our fresh from frozen opportunity to be able to integrate into our existing and new stores. That's- Yeah. It's Darren Smart here. Yeah, we just reiterate what Ian said. About half of the growth that we're projecting comes from growth in standalone stores and same store growth in the network. Then the other half is split between the benefits we see from loyalty and combining the programs. That would be the majority of the other half. Then we round out the growth with growth in the express channel as well. Okay. A good chunk from the loyalty side. You talked about personalized emails. What else do you think you can do? What else can you accomplish from merging the loyalty programs or leveraging the databases? Again, Ian or Darren, do you wanna talk to that, please? I know we've done some work on that. Yeah, no, and I'll let Ian chime in as well. You know, there's certainly opportunity through the AI capability that M&M brings to create more personalized offers. Then there's the cross-promotion opportunity to move M&M customers into Parkland forecourts and back courts. That's a really powerful opportunity in the business. That's how we've thought about the potential opportunity there. Ian, anything you would add? I would reiterate, Michael, the commonality in customer attributes as we look through this opportunity and the ability to make an M&M customer a Parkland customer and vice versa, we think is quite powerful and will drive significant growth. Great. Thank you. Your next question comes from David Newman with Desjardins. Please go ahead. Good evening. Thank you. First question is, beyond the CAD 55 million that you have for the next three years, I think upfront, you sort of alluded that U.S. and international could be incremental. I'm not sure if you added Husky into the potential upside there, and there's 25 countries that M&M is attached to and some are standalone. So what is the opportunity beyond the CAD 55 million? Where could you take it? Yeah, look, and I'll turn it over to the team here, but just some context. I mean, our initial analysis based on M&M's being complementary to our Canadian business. So the CAD 55 million does not represent the opportunity which is there for international expansion, you know, particularly in the U.S. Again, you know, let me turn that over to Darren, and he can add some more color to that. Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think one of the interesting opportunities that the M&M team has surfaced is the opportunity to expand into the U.S., and they've had some initial conversations. Uniquely, we bring a strong U.S. retail network into the mix. There is an opportunity as we get into it to find ways to expand M&M into the U.S. and use our network. We're building on some initial work that Andy and his team have done there and look forward to evaluating that opportunity and fleshing it out in more detail. If you look at the M&Ms, they have a pretty good footprint, and they're all in our local neighborhoods, et cetera. Is there an opportunity here to kind of go the other way and use the M&M footprint to kind of create quasi C-stores in the urban and suburban markets and/or bring over some of the C-store items that you sell today and maybe get even more procurement leverage on the back of that? Yeah. Again, I'll kick it off here and then turn it over to Ian. I mean, one of the things we've talked about is our standalone convenience store format and some of the work that we're doing there, and this is certainly complementary to that. Ian, did you want to comment specifically on the question? Yeah. David, the short answer is yes. What you just described is exactly the way we're thinking about this, and we believe that not just our standalone business, but also our business attached to fuel, you know, can be more food-focused and food-forward. We see M&M playing a key lead role in our ability, you know, to do that. Okay. Last one, just squeeze it in here quickly. Just obviously, owning M&M gives you, as I think you pointed out, a lot more flexibility versus maybe some of your competitors who have partnerships. As I look at it, you know, you're covering a lot of geographies here. Can you fold or bend the menu to the local market? In other words, if you're going in the Caribbean or you're going in the U.S. or you're going down south or whatever, you're gonna have different menu items. Does that- Mm-hmm. Does that allow you the flexibility to address the local markets? Yeah. Good question. Again, you know, work to be done to understand that fully, but I would say one of the things that was very attractive to us about M&Ms is the flexibility of their business and their ability to develop product and ramp up a supply chain very quickly around that. You know, perhaps, Andy, you can provide a bit more color on the capability that you're bringing, you know, and how you do look at different markets because I know that's work that you have done in the past. Absolutely, Bob. I actually believe our whole procurement supply chain is one of our major competitive advantages. I spent 15 years in CPG, and I know what it's like to have major factories where you have to run long lines of the same products. We work with over 85 different vendors from around the world, and we tap into their capabilities. We have restaurant chefs that design products here, then we can source them from anywhere we want in the world. That gives us great flexibility, speed to market, and when we need to pivot, we pivot very quickly. That allows us to tailor the portfolio not only by, you know, geography in terms of Caribbean, we do that also in Canada. We do it right now in Western Canada, eats differently than people do in Quebec. We're definitely able to pivot and to launch products very quickly because of our very extensive vendor base. Excellent. Very helpful. Thanks, gentlemen. Great. Thank you. Your next question comes from Steve Hansen with Raymond James. Please go ahead. Oh, yes. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the time. I'm just curious about how we should think about the margin profile or the variability of the margin profile in the context of these third-party food service providers that you're using. In other words, just trying to understand in an inflationary food and price environment or input environment, how are those types of variables managed in the contract structure with those third parties? Are you adjusting pricing on the fly at the store shelves to reflect those contracts? Right. Just, you know, generally speaking, how should we think about the KPIs around that margin profile and how much it varies over time? Thanks. Yeah. Look, a good question. I will turn that over to Andy to talk about the margin profile of the business. You know, it's certainly something that the team is adept at managing. Yeah. Thanks, Bob. We're definitely in a food inflationary period, for sure. We have contracts with all our vendors which prevent them from taking price increases outside of the dates. We control the pricing that is at the retail level, so therefore we control the margins. The one thing I will say that we've been really focused on over the last seven years is launching value-added differentiated products that can't be price compared with other retailers. If there is a certain product that we have that's priced, we can control the margin and still provide great value to our customers. That's great. That's helpful. Thank you. Just one follow-up, if I may. I think you referred to the U.S. opportunity already, but would you anticipate going into the U.S. with existing third-party providers, or are you already working on developing the supply chain across the border as well as you look to move that way? Again, I think, Andy, you're best positioned to talk to that. Absolutely. Still early days. We're still in evaluation, but I'll say a couple things. One is there is no brand like M&M in the U.S., where we have 450 products across 10 different categories. If you just think about the big CPG brands, they're all in one category. We back in May spent close to $2 billion on researching the market. Not only the size of the market, where it was winning, where it was losing, frozen market that is, but also, you know, comparison of the brands. We did concept testing, which was heavily, you know, favorable. Now we're going through and doing product optimization work. We've done a fair bit. We do think there's a major opportunity for M&M in the U.S. We're still, you know, working through our route to market, and now with being on the Parkland team we'll evolve that even further. I think there's a massive opportunity for this brand to be in the U.S. I lived in the U.S. for 10 years, this brand will do very well there. That's great. Thank you for the time. Appreciate it. Your next question comes from Peter Sklar with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Thank you, operator. I believe you provided this number, but I missed it. How many M&M Express stores are there within Parkland bannered convenience stores currently? Yeah, it's Darren Smart here. It's just over 100. Okay. Can you talk a little bit about like in the pre-COVID period, say, 2019? What was the M&M comping in terms of same-store sales and what was the unit growth like? What was the organic and unit growth profile prior to COVID? Yeah. Good question, Peter. Well, Ian, why don't I turn that over to you and between you and Andy, you can answer that. Yeah. Maybe I'll start, Bob, and pass it to Andy. Peter, what we saw, as we dug into this was a business that was growing year-over-year consistently pre-COVID, both from a top-line and as importantly from a margin perspective. As the mix was starting to change, we liked the profile. I mean, clearly the team did a nice job, you know, through COVID, and we saw a bump. I'll let Andy speak to, you know, the progression that the team has experienced, you know, since going through the transformation and then sort of leading up to the pandemic. Sure Ian. Ian's right. The business performed very well before COVID. We posted positive same-store sales growth and positive margin gains each and every year. A bit of a balance. Our sales per sq ft are generally pretty strong right now. You know, we're pretty small box format, doing pretty strong sales out of the door. Where we want to focus was on the margins to make sure this unit economic model is profitable. We did grow same-store sales every year, but our real focus was on, you know, launching value-added products and higher margins. When you talk about margins, you're not talking about your margins, you're talking about store economics. Absolutely. In a franchise business, it's critical that your franchisees make money. That's how you attract new franchisees. We wanted to make sure that we had one of the best models on the market. Right. Are you prepared to say what the average unit volumes are for the standalone stores? Yeah. I don't have that number, but Ian or Andy, perhaps you do. Oh, I have it. It's 1.25. 1.25? CAD 1.25 million on an average sq ft of 1,400 sq ft. You're looking at, you know, CAD 850-CAD 900 per sq ft, which I believe is pretty strong. Yeah, I agree. Lastly, Bob, can you talk a little bit about the process of how it came about that you bought M&M? Like, is this an ongoing process where you're looking at a variety of brands in addition to M&M and you settled on M&M? Or did M&M come up for sale? I have to admit, I don't know who the owner is. If you could also say who currently owns M&M. Is it private equity or who? Sure. Why don't I talk a bit about the strategic context, and then I can turn it over to Darren, who can talk through the process that we went through. You know, look, as we talked about in our investor day, we are in the food business. We do recognize where we are in the food business, we see the power of that combined with convenience. That really became evident to us with the acquisition of Chevron and the Triple O's, where site productivity is very strong. We've also continually seen strong growth. You know, we recognized consistent with our push to move to convenience destinations, that we needed bigger, better food capability. Certainly this, the M&M and the M&M team, the M&M Food Market brand really helped accelerate that strategy because of the capability that the team's bringing. The team has focused on frozen. We do see a fresh from frozen opportunity, but we also see the team helping us continually to evolve our food capability in the fresh area as well. That's some context around why this fits. In terms of how we engaged with M&M on this transaction, I'll turn that over to Darren who led this process. Yeah, sure. Thanks, Bob. So we've been developing our pipeline of food opportunities really in line with our investor day strategy, where we talked about there being strategic partnerships and acquisitions that we would look to build up our food strategy. As we were building the pipeline and adding opportunities onto our mix You know, the M&M opportunity is one that, you know, we saw as being an exciting fit. We made a call to Andy and found out that M&M was about to start a process and its existing owner, which is a private equity investor called Searchlight, was beginning its sale process. They had owned the business for a long period of time, and it was at the point in their fund where they needed to sell. The timing worked out incredibly well. We were able to get involved in that process as it was getting kicked off. You know, it's not a common thing for us to be involved in processes. We do focus on developing a proprietary M&A strategy and looking at proprietary transactions. Every now and then, an opportunity comes up in an auction where it's a great fit and we're uniquely positioned to buy the business. That was certainly the case with M&M and had a chance to meet the team and understand the fit early on and you really could see the opportunity. We worked pretty closely with Andy and his team to find a transaction that worked. You know, here we are today. A really great story. Okay. You know. Sorry, go ahead, Peter. I didn't mean to interrupt. No, I was just gonna say thank you for your comments. If Bob, you have something to add, go ahead. Yeah, no, just, you know, you asked whether we'd be pursuing further branded product lines. Look, you know, I think this fits very well, again, from a capability and a category perspective. You know, it isn't our strategy to go out and buy all of our product lines that we offer in a convenience store. You know, you will see us continue to make strategic moves is both on the partnership side and the acquisition side when it comes to fresh food. Okay. Thanks, Bob. Great. Thanks, Peter. Your next question comes from Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Hi, this is Carly, on for Neil. Thanks very much for taking the questions. The first one was a bit kind of more strategic. You know, Parkland shares have underperformed the TSX by 35% in the last year and also your retail and refining competitor set. Do you think the market is trying to tell the company to kind of slow down on M&A and focus on deleveraging instead of adding debt to the balance sheet? I guess just kind of how would you respond to this concern that we hear from clients? You know, look, we have done a lot of acquisitions, and we've been able to buy great value and great businesses for Parkland. We've also been able to buy businesses that fit very, that align very close with our strategy. You know, again, our team has demonstrated that we can buy good value, integrate, and get good synergies both from growth and cost. You know, we believe our strategy works and is delivering. Certainly we see the continued power and strength of the broader platform and the scale that we're building to create value in the long term for our shareholders. Understood. Thank you for that color. The follow-up was around kind of the EBITDA power that you've laid out here. You've got the 2021 of CAD 38 million and the third year of CAD 55 million, and recognize you kind of went through the international opportunity set isn't embedded in there. Can you help us just kind of explicitly bridge the gap between those two numbers and any maybe other additional synergy opportunities that are not reflected? Yeah. I'll ask Darren to provide the details on that. Yeah. Great. To bridge to the 55. Why don't I start there? About half of that growth comes from adding new standalone stores. In that three-year period, you know, we think that there's about 30 sites that we would add into the standalone store mix. And then that combined with same-store growth across the standalone channel, that creates about half of the growth to 55. And then the impact of combining the loyalty programs and, you know, here, the way we would think about it is the benefit of active M&M customers coming to Parkland forecourt and back courts more frequently. The impact of that leverage is significant. That's sort of the next largest lever that I would highlight. Then the final component is growth in the express store channel. That would be both within the Parkland network and with other express channel partners. That's how we've thought about getting to 55. Beyond that and what isn't included, as you point out, we don't have expansion into the U.S. included in that number. We don't have any explicit impact of the fresh from frozen benefit that we think is really important to this transaction. We also don't kind of have the loyalty benefits that I described. I think we've been pretty conservative in the loyalty benefits that I described. I think there's further upside there as well. That's helpful. Thank you. If I could just make one follow-up on that. I know you guys had mentioned, in the slides, CAD 1 million of annual maintenance capital. Apologies if you called it out, but have you given any numbers around the capital required to build out those additional standalone stores that are helping to drive you from the 30 to the 55? Yes, Darren, please. Yeah. The capital required to build out the additional stores is part of the arrangement with the franchisees. That's not a capital investment from the corporate entity. Yeah. That's the beauty of the model. It is very capital light and very scalable without having to invest significant growth capital. Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Your next question comes from Matthew Weekes with iA Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I think most of mine have been asked at this point, but I was just wondering, is this going to be a new segment, you know, with potential for it to kind of expand across different geographies, or is it gonna be rolled into the Canada segment? It'll be captured in the geographies where the revenue is achieved. For example, in Canada, the U.S., and international, initially, it'll all be in Canada. Marcel, I don't know if you wanted to- Yeah, no. It will be in the segment. For primary, we will, you know, as we kind of implement our strategy and evolve our reporting, we will provide some additional, you know, insight into the total size of our convenience business, where this will be part of. You will see that coming from quarter one reporting onwards, Matthew. Okay, thanks. Appreciate the answer. I'll turn it back. Thanks. Your next question comes from Ben Isaacson with Scotiabank. Please go ahead. Thank you very much, and congrats. Most of my questions have been answered as well, maybe just two. First one is for Andy. Can you talk about who are your competitors, and how do their margins compare to yours? Yeah, that's a great question for Andy. Yeah, that's a very good question, and one that's not as obvious as people would think. Most people think our direct competitors are gonna be grocery stores, and they are a component of that. I believe our primary competitor is restaurants. Either you decide to have restaurant quality at a restaurant, or you can have it at home with M&M. That's really what we target. You know, Ian mentioned this before, that we are a food company, not a frozen company. We have a team here that has experience in food service, restaurants, CPG, retail, all with food backgrounds. I would say our primary competitor is restaurants or the home cook person. Like a McGregor's, those are, that's not your competitor? The McGregor's is one of our suppliers, and they've been one of our suppliers since 1981. McGregor's also supplies recipe at all the major restaurant chains. We tap into the same vendor base that the restaurants do, and they're a great supplier, by the way. Got it. Just my final question, I may have missed this. Can you just talk about what your, however you wanna define it, gross profit or EBIT or EBITDA margins, were pre-pandemic, you know, let's say 2019, and what are they now running at? It's Bob Espey. You know, I'm not sure we're in a position to disclose that. Looking at Darren here. Yeah. Yeah, you know, we'll That's okay. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you do have any questions, please press star one. Your next question comes from Steve Hansen with Raymond James. Please go ahead. Oh, yeah, thank you. Just a quick follow-up, if I may. Just on, I think you clarified that 100 existing locations had the format already included. Did you give us a sense for how many SKUs are actually running through the Parkland channel at this point relative to the 400 that I think was referenced by Andy? Yeah, Ian, if you could comment on that. There's certainly a large opportunity within the 100 sites that we already have, but then certainly more to come throughout the network. Over to you, Ian. Yeah, about 25-50 SKUs is the general range, and it would, you know, it would be everything from. It really is catered, Steve, subject to the local market in that store. In areas where there is, you know, a high sort of lunchtime or office crowd, it would be more single-serve items. In more suburban areas where people are driving, you know, past our site on the way home, it would be more, you know, meal kits or meal options. Great. Very helpful. Thank you. That was it. Great. Well, really appreciate everybody listening in today. Thanks so much for your questions. Oh, we got one more. Neil Mehta's back. Okay. Well Yes. You do have a follow-up from Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead, Neil. Hi. Great. Thanks. I just want one other follow-up. It was just around the funding side. Can you talk a bit more about how you're financing this again and kind of what your comfort level is with the increasing leverage profile in the business? Yeah. Marcel. We'll fund this transaction once it completes. You know, we'll fund this out of our existing facilities which we have. You know, that fits well within kind of the leverage guidance and boundaries that we have set within that. That's the funding mechanism, and we'll continue to be comfortable with our overall leverage. Understood. Thank you. Great. Thank you. If there are no other questions, I appreciate everybody listening in and look forward to giving you updates on M&M and the growth that we're going to achieve. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a great day.