Greetings, and welcome to the ARKO Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star 0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Chris Mandeville, Managing Director of Investor Relations at ICR. Thank you. You may begin. Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to ARKO's second quarter fiscal year 2021 earnings conference call and webcast. On today's call are Arie Kotler, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Don Bassell, Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the company's earnings press release that was filed with the SEC this morning and is also available on the investor relations section of ARKO's website at www.arkocorp.com. Before we begin, please note that all second quarter 2021 financial information is unaudited, and during the course of this call, management may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements may be identified by the use of words such as will, may, expect, plan, intend, could, estimate, and similar references to future periods. These statements speak only as of today, are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements. Please refer to today's press release, the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31st, 2020, and other filings with the SEC for a detailed discussion of the risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made today. Except as required by federal securities laws, ARKO does not undertake to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements subsequent to the date made as a result of new information, future events, changing circumstances, or for any other reason. Please note on today's call, management will refer to non-GAAP financial measures, including same-store measures, EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA. While the company believes these non-GAAP financial measures provide useful information for investors, the presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Please refer to today's press release for reconciliations of our non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. I would also like to note that we are conducting our call today from our respective remote locations. As such, there may be brief delays, crosstalk, or other minor technical issues during this call. We thank you in advance for your patience and understanding. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Arie. Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. On today's call, I will briefly review our financial highlights for the quarter ended June 30, 2021, and provide an update on our business. Don will then review our financial results in more detail before we take your questions. I would like to start by thanking our over 10,000 associates company-wide for rising to occasion and once again continuing to execute in a challenging environment brought on by COVID-19 and several other dynamics. Let's review a few of these challenges and how we successfully navigate them. To start, much like the rest of the economy, we are experiencing a very tight labor market. To address this, we have implemented several hiring initiatives, including $500 sign-on bonuses, fas REWARDS points to existing associates, overtime hours, and job fairs, along with hiring an additional team of 10 full-time recruiters. Next was the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack, which disrupted fuel supply in the Southeast for several days and continued shortage of transportation drivers. Our fuel logistics team leveraged our strong fuel supplier and transportation partnerships to minimize disruption, successfully secure supply, and continue to manage supply efficiently on an ongoing basis. Supply chain disruption in store merchandise was also persistent related to continued driver and labor shortages, as well as lack of availability in certain raw materials. The marketing department also leveraged our strong supplier partnership and conducted regular supply chain calls with our top suppliers. Solutions included extended delivery times, product substitutions, and inventory buildup to ensure we met our customers' needs. Lastly, there is COVID-19. When it comes to the pandemic, the top priority is the safety of our associates and customers. To that end, we continue to encourage and educate our associates on the importance of getting vaccinated. As a new variant of the virus continue to spread, we are ready and prepared with PPE supplies such as masks, sanitizers, and wipes to meet the needs of customers and our employees. In spite of these challenges, once again, our business model proved resilient, and we are very pleased to report strong results for the second quarter of 2021. Our adjusted EBITDA was $75.7 million for the quarter versus $68.5 million, up over 10% versus the prior year period, supported by strong results in overall profitability of our Empire acquisition, which is currently exceeding our expectation along with continued in-store sales and margin growth. We experienced another quarter of merchandise margin expansion of 140 basis points and a solid 2.4% increase in same-store merchandise sales. Importantly, we realized further sequential acceleration in our two-year stack to 7.4% from 6.2% for same-store merchandise sales. Excluding cigarettes, our results are even more impressive, with same-store sales of 4.3% and 10.2%. On a one and two-year basis. Additionally, we have an increase in same-store sales of higher margin other tobacco products of 6.3% from the prior year, with a category margin increase of 170 basis points, which is in line with market trend of cigarette consumer converting to other tobacco products. Let me now add some color to the three key drivers of our inside sales and margin. The first one is process improvement. We have implemented new processes to include annual category reviews, annual top-to-top suppliers meetings, annual planogram resets to ensure new items execution, and additional marketing resources to ensure all categories are receiving the appropriate amount of attention. The second one was consumer-facing initiatives. Having grown through acquisition, each brand has select opportunities for growth, and we are in the process of executing them. They include adding approximately 525 grab-and-go coolers and 650 freezers for frozen foods, revised fountain assortment in over 250 stores, expanding our partnership with DoorDash, which is now available at 684 sites, including 84 sites in Virginia that now deliver beer, an expanded OTP offering, an enhanced value food offering, and enhanced assortment driven by process improvements. The third one, of course, is supplier partnership. In May, we extended and restructured our Core-Mark wholesale supply agreement. This is particularly impactful as the agreement aligns our sales growth and profitability incentives. In addition, we awarded Core-Mark 190 additional stores, allowing us to consolidate down to two wholesalers. Retail gallons sold were up 27% compared to a year ago, reflecting continued increase in consumer mobility, as we are now in the summer driving season and the economy as a whole has received an increase in vaccinations. On a same-store basis, gallons were up 11.9%, and despite a fairly considerable run-up in fuel prices throughout the quarter, our fuel margin was quite resilient, having come in at $0.343 per gallon for retail. Switching gears to our longer-term strategic growth initiative. Beginning with M&A. We have an aggressive, yet disciplined M&A strategy as our priority is deploying capital at a very attractive return. We have many M&A opportunities in the pipeline that we are actively exploring, and I look forward to talking about this in the future. The Empire acquisition we closed in October 2020 is outperforming our expectations. We have been very pleased with the acquisition from both synergies and growth perspective, as we've managed to renegotiate 3 major fuel contracts and add 52 net new dealers since we closed, with 19 of those coming just in the second quarter alone. Our recent acquisition of 60 convenience stores under the highly regarded brand ExpressStop in Michigan and Ohio closed during the quarter and added over $26 million in revenues and $800,000 in net income for the quarter. This is a high-quality operation and a brand well regarded within the communities to which it services. On our remodel and new store prototype initiative, as stated previously, we believe that we have significant embedded opportunity to optimize our store base and invest capital prudently through remodeling stores. We opened our second remodel site at the end of the second quarter, and while very early, we are pleased with the preliminary results. Among other upgrades, the new sites include the following features: New interior and exterior design, newly incorporated store deli featuring fried chicken, pizza, and hot grab and go inclusive of breakfast and snacking items, bean-to-cup coffee machine with a selection of always fresh coffee, a walk-in beer cave featuring easy access to a large variety of cold beer, craft beer and seltzer offerings. Of course, we expanded the fountain assortment featuring 16 flavor and chewy ice. Our third site, which is a raze and rebuild, is expected to open within the next two months. This site will be a 5,600 sq ft travel center, nearly two times larger than our average store, with 26 fueling positions located on 6 acres of land in Rock Hill, South Carolina, just off Interstate I-77. Two additional sites are completing the design phase and are in the permitting process. Construction on those sites is planned to begin by the end of the third quarter. Three additional sites are in the design phase and will be moving to permitting shortly. Planning for 2022 has already begun, including the addition of resources to increase the scale and pace of remodels. Lastly, we have our fas REWARDS loyalty program. As a reminder, we relaunched our loyalty program last November with the focus being develop lasting customer relationships and positively influence consumer behavior by driving incremental trips and increase in basket size. We are currently enrolling approximately 5,000 new fas REWARDS members each week and now have in excess of 480,000 enrolled members with whom we communicate on a regular basis, and I'm excited to share with you some of our early results. Since relaunch, our enrolled customers are visiting our stores over four times more often than non-loyal customers, and their average spend per trip is two times larger. In conclusion, I'm very pleased that we are continuing to demonstrate our strength and capabilities as we navigate through a constantly changing consumer environment. I hope you are as excited as I am about our multiple growth opportunities, which we believe position us well for the future. I would like now to turn the call over to Don, who will walk you through our financial results. Thanks, Arie. It's great to be speaking with you all today about our strong second quarter results. Total revenue, excluding fuel, was $449 million, a 10.4% increase from the prior year period. This was a result of strong same-store merchandise sales growth of 2.4% on top of 5% growth in the prior year period, and the ExpressStop and Empire acquisitions, which contributed 9.6% of the overall 10.4% increase. This was partially offset by a decrease from underperforming sites that were either closed or converted to dealer-operated sites. Merchandise margin dollars increased by $15.3 million versus the prior year, while margin expanded approximately 140 basis points to 28.7%, largely due to a lower reliance on cigarettes and higher contribution from packaged beverage, other tobacco products, and other center store items. The Express Stop and Empire acquisitions contributed $10.1 million, while same stores increased by $6.9 million, which was offset by sites that were either closed or converted to dealer-operated sites. Retail fuel profitability, excluding intercompany charges for the quarter, increased to $2.2 million, or 2.5% on increased volume, a function of our 11.9% increase in same-store fuel volumes, as well as Express Stop and Empire's contribution, offset by a reduction in fuel margin, $34.3 per gallon versus a record-setting $42.5 per gallon from the prior year. For the second quarter of 2021, wholesale fuel profitability, excluding intercompany charges, increased approximately $20.9 million compared to the prior year period, with the majority coming from the Empire acquisition, which contributed approximately $20.6 million of the growth. Fuel contribution from non-consignment agent locations grew by $11.7 million compared to the prior year due to a 207-million-gallon increase in fuel volume. Fuel margin cents per gallon for these locations increased $0.2 versus the second quarter of 2020 due to the increase in the prompt pay discount on fuel invoices related to the increased cost of fuel. Fuel contribution from consignment agent locations grew $9.2 million compared to the prior year due to an increase in volume of 37 million gallons. Although fuel margin cents per gallon declined $4.7 versus a record-setting $30.1 per gallon from the prior year. Second quarter store operating expenses increased $28.6 million or 22.7% versus prior year, primarily due to approximately $20 million of incremental expenses related to the ExpressStop and Empire acquisitions. General and administrative expenses increased $11.3 million or 55.2% for the quarter as compared to the prior year, primarily due to expenses associated with the ExpressStop and Empire acquisitions, annual wage increases, incentive accruals, and stock compensation expenses. Net interest and other financial expenses decreased by $500,000 to $12 million in the quarter, primarily due to favorable fair value adjustments of $2.3 million and lower foreign currency losses, which were partially offset by higher interest expense from incremental debt in 2021. Second quarter net income was $25.5 million, compared to $21.9 million for the prior year. Incremental earnings in the second quarter were related to strong results from the Empire acquisition, coupled with strong same-store merchandise margin, with partial offsets coming from higher expenses, including depreciation related to acquisitions. Minority interest was almost eliminated versus the prior year, primarily as a result of the merger in late December 2020. Adjusted EBITDA was $75.7 million, an increase of $7.2 million or 10.5% compared to the second quarter of 2020. Higher same-store merchandise margin contribution and $22 million from the Empire acquisition were partially offset by the previously mentioned reduced fuel margin, as well as higher credit card fees. Our balance sheet remains strong. On June 30th, the company's total liquidity was approximately $509 million, consisting of cash and cash equivalents of $229.4 million, + $31.8 million of restricted investments and approximately $248 million of unused availability under our lines of credit. Outstanding debt was $685.7 million, resulting in net debt of $424.5 million. For the first six months of 2021, net cash provided by operating activities was $59 million, versus $101.9 million for the first six months of 2020. The decrease was primarily due to working capital changes related to higher fuel costs and increased volumes. In addition, there were approximately $7.9 million of higher tax payments, $11.9 million of higher net interest payments, including $5.2 million related to the early redemption of the Israeli Bonds. Operating cash flow was also impacted by approximately $13.6 million of incentive payments. 2020 included favorable working capital adjustment of approximately $16 million, which went away in Q3 2020. Capital expenditures were $32.6 million for the six months ended June 30, 2021, compared to $20.5 million for the prior year period. We ended the quarter with 1,381 retail sites and 1,647 wholesale sites. I am very proud of the dedication of our team and the profitable growth momentum of the business demonstrated by our strong financial results as we continue our journey as one of the largest and most successful convenience store operators in the country. With that, I'll turn it back over to Arie. Thanks, Don. We are excited to continue the strong execution against our priority as we drive growth and increase shareholder value. Thanks for joining the call today and your interest in ARKO. I will now turn it over to the operator for questions. Operator? Thank you. Our first question comes from Bobby Griffin with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions and congrats on a strong quarter. All right. I guess first I want to unpack the merchandise margin performance a little bit more. Pretty impressive growth year-over-year. Can you maybe dive into a little bit more details of what's driving the expansion in merchandise margin? More importantly, what opportunities do you see going forward over kind of the next one or two years for where merchandise margin could go? Is it possible that works its way into the low 30s like some of your peers? Sure. I will answer that. As I mentioned on the call, the ex-cigarette numbers came very, very strong. We are at 4.3% same-store sales ex-cigarettes. As you can see, the high margin comes from packaged beverage, comes from grab and go. For example, our grab and go same-store sales are up 51.3% compared to last year. The margin increased from 31.4% to 37.8%. That's just one example. The other example is same-store sales on frozen food that I mentioned. I've been talking about adding freezers all along. Again, we are up 43.7% with a margin increase from 30.9% to 35.4%. As we continue to move from cigarettes, our percentage of cigarette sales continue to come down and we see an increase on merchandise sales. That's going to continue to drive the margin up substantially. The same thing, by the way, goes to nicotine. We keep talking about OTP. As you can imagine, as consumers stop buying cigarettes, they are moving to other types of nicotine. I mentioned that. We saw an increase of over 6.3% of other tobacco products with a margin increase of even better, 170 basis points. Yes, I think we are going to continue to see that as we move along, because remember, last year, a lot of people were pantry loaded cigarettes and beer during this time period. The more people are out, the more people are going to continue to basically purchase merchandise inside the store, at the center of the store with a much higher margin. I understand they are still a very tiny base, only a few of them done. What about on the remodel stores? What are the merchandise margins look like there versus the core average, the company average? Is it significantly higher? Is there any color to help us understand as those become a bigger and bigger part of the mix of your stores, what the potential margin upside could be inside those stores? As you know, it's really too early. Our second store just opened six weeks ago. It's a little bit too early, but I think the mix within the store, as I mentioned, we added all of the items that I mentioned earlier are basically high margin items. We talked about the food, for example, the food service. We added grab and go. We added pizza. We added fried chicken. Those are really high margin items that we added to the stores. We added more assortment of fountain drinks. We extended, of course, the beer cave. All of those things that I mentioned are much higher margin than basically what we see from the rest of the store. There is no question that the more store we're going to continue to remodel, the more features like this we're going to continue to add to the stores. There is no question that we expect the margin to expand because of that. Okay. You mentioned the plans look good for 2022, but do you have a number you can share on how many remodels you might be able to get done in 2022 or you're targeting? We don't have the final number at the moment. This is something that we are working on right now. Okay. I guess lastly from me, you called out labor in the prepared remarks and understanding of it's a tight labor environment for everybody right now. Has it hindered results at all? Is it more just a challenge that you're working through? Have you had to cut store hours or anything like that for us to keep in mind? Sure. We are no different than any other retailer, as you can imagine. As you guys remember, I've been mentioning it from the beginning of our calls. The one thing that we are different probably from the rest is that we were not fully involved in food service. We decided to shift gears towards grab and go and frozen food when less labor intensity is required on this one. This is our business. We have the challenges like everybody else, and we continue to work through those challenges. We did reduce hours in around 75 stores. Again, the hours were reduced just because we felt that in those particular stores, the third shift, I'm talking about after 11:00 at night, we just felt that there is really no reason to keep those stores open from a profitability standpoint. We always open profitability. This is really what we did over here. Other than that, we continue to work through all of those issues, and we know how to manage our business. This is what we're doing. Let me just add on to Arie's point about the reduced hours. They're not significant. We're trying to shave them like in the morning and the evening, and we're even in the process of starting to restore those hours now. I think, they're being done strategically where it makes sense, where we're having problems, but it wasn't like cutting out massive hours. It was just being done where we had particular issues, and we're already in the process of restoring some of those stores that we cut the hours on. Understand. I appreciate the details. Best of luck to you in the second half. Thank you, Bobby. Thank you. Our next question comes from Kelly Bania with BMO Capital. Please proceed with your question. Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking our questions. Just had two here. Just the comment about the integration of wholesale, I think running ahead of expectations. Just wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more on what you're seeing there and just your expectations now for wholesale and Empire now that you've had a little more time under the belt. Sure. Don, would you like to take this? Sure, I'd be happy to. Kelly, I think the biggest thing that we found is, number one, obviously, when we look at total gallons, we're signing up a lot more accounts. You heard Arie Kotler talk about 52 new accounts since inception. We've got a very aggressive team on the ground signing them up. That's really been helping us is the additional fuel volume. Obviously, we benefited from the higher margin levels than we anticipated. I think the biggest boost that we found out of all this is just what we thought would be true is proving to be true plus more, is that we got a very aggressive team on the ground that's bringing on a lot of new business. Perfect. And- sorry, go ahead. Just to add, Kelly, just to add. I mentioned the three supply contracts that we were able to negotiate. Remember, those things are going across. They're not going only on the wholesale business. They're actually going to impact also the retail business. As you can see, we came with a very high CPG margin for the quarter. Just to note that as well. Good point, Arie, and sorry I left that out. I want to point one thing out. That is ongoing, too. It's not just we've gotten done what we think we expected to get done, but, as we know, agreements expire, and this will be ongoing. I think between the combination of the gallons, and again, as Arie mentioned, which is very important, that was our plan, to go out and aggressively negotiate, and we got the target of what we thought we would get done. This is a thing that will keep on giving us benefits going forward as we go through agreements that come up for closer expiration. Okay. That's very helpful. I guess maybe just to follow up on the retail business. I guess, one, would you attribute that sequential acceleration in fuel margins to the supply contracts or anything else? I know it's always hard to know, but I guess what would you attribute that sequential acceleration in? Then can you also just talk about gallons on the retail side and how those are coming in line with your expectation and maybe where we are on a gallon standpoint versus 2019, kind of on a pro forma basis with everything? Sure. Let me start. I'll let Don answer the second piece of the question, but let me start basically with the gallons. We want to make sure that while we focus on profitability, we're not losing gallons because of that. We are managing the gallons market by market, region by region. As we look at demand over there are some pockets that we see opportunities. As we see opportunities to keep margin at over $0.30 basically range, this is something that we continue to do on a daily basis. As I said, at the end of the day, there is no question that people are driving less, people are working from home more, and we don't have the same mobility that we saw probably in 2019. Because of that, we are trying to go at least up to the margin in areas that we think we can. I will let maybe Don answer the second piece of the question. Sure. Kelly, on a gallon basis, we're not back to 2019 levels. Obviously, we saw a nice increase. I think, again, it's a different story by area. I don't know that we'll, in the short term, get back to the 2019 levels. I think we're experiencing a new reality, especially with the new variant out there. I think companies have now put off going back to work plans. People are changing habits. I think what we're doing, as Arie talked about, is for us, it's maintaining the volumes that they're steadily growing and have been pretty stable, but we're also trying to maximize the gross profit into that. We're very competitive out there. We're not outside of the bounds of the market. Who knows if we'll get back to 2019 levels? We're not there yet, but we are growing. I just want to add one more thing just to finish the sentence on this one. I think I mentioned it probably at the beginning of 2021. I mentioned that right now we see a tight labor environment. When you have tight labor environment, there is no question that a lot of the comps that actually are more involved with food service. Given that you have that shrinking labor, which means that a lot of people are not able to continue to get the same results that they get within the stores, the area that we're going to see probably an expansion will probably be outside the store, which is the fuel margin. This is something that we've been seeing for the past 15 months, as you know. Great. That's very helpful. Just also wanted to ask on the labor, just obviously a big topic. Maybe could you just help us understand where turnover is and can you quantify the impact of maybe the sign-on bonuses and costs that you're kind of maybe hopefully dealing with on a transitory basis? Sure. At the moment, we are not commenting on turnover numbers at the moment, but one thing I can tell you is that we actually see an increase in basically, we hire more people than we turn. We have more people that are being hired than the numbers of the people that actually turn over here. The $500 bonus, of course, this is something that we measure for the past few weeks, and it's been working. When I say it's been working, it's basically when you hire those people, in order for them to get the $500, they need to stay a period of time, basically within our stores. We see that a lot of those people are actually staying and keeping their jobs. In addition to that, the other thing is really making sure that you have enough recruiters to hire people. The applications are coming in, especially now we see that in the last couple of weeks, and I think we're going to see more. There is almost 7.5 million people that, at least for the time being, their unemployment benefits are going to expire by the end of August, beginning of September. We believe we're going to see a very high, basically an application volume coming in. This is the reason that we hire all of those recruiters. We want to make sure that the store people are working at the store and they're not focusing on hiring. Because of that, we beef our HR department and added those recruiters to make sure that they're actually dealing with the day-to-day hiring. Versus in the past, the store manager was just dealing with that. We want to make sure that we take it away from the store manager and he can focus on the store and on his customers. Yeah. Kelly, one of the things that we've been able to do that's been very successful is make that hiring decision and offer on the spot. Because the market's so fluid and people are getting so many offers, so we're able to interview, make that hiring decision, give that offer right then. Because one of the things we found is if you're taking more than a day or so to get back to the employee, they've already gotten another job. I think that's been very critical. As was talked about, since that $500 bonus has come into effect, we're really tracking net hires because that's really important to us. Are we increasing the labor force? I think we have. It was an uphill battle, and I think we're now on the still while it's an issue, we're on the downside of that hill. Great. That's very helpful. Then just last one for me. In terms of the remodels, it's really expected to kind of ramp more aggressively next year. Just any update on the costs that you're seeing for materials or just the overall outlook for remodels and pace there that you've provided in the past. Just any change in the expectations there? There are no changes in expectation. I just want to remind everyone over here is that we decided to do 10 stores this year, not because of a lack of basically pace or lack of basically availability. We decided to do that because we want to make sure that we measure the right concept. What we're doing over the past few months is really with making sure we have the right concept in place, and then we basically gonna increase the pace over here. This is what we're doing. We threw, just for your benefit, in the last couple of stores, we really put everything that you can imagine within the store, and we try to test all kind of concept to make sure that this is the right concept. I think we're getting very close to make some decisions about that, about what's like the final concept on that. The minute we have the final concept, I think we're going to be able to start to increase basically the pace over here. Thank you. As a reminder, it is star one to ask a question at this time. Our next question comes from the line of Luke Lemoine with Capital One Securities. Please proceed with your question. Hey, good morning, Arie, Don. Really good quarter. Just curious, was the Colonial Pipeline impact noticeable in your results? Is there any way you could maybe quantify the impact? I don't think the Colonial Pipeline actually impact the results. If you remember, it was a week of some issues in the Southeast. Remember, we are very well diversified. I know it was all over the news and people were running even in Florida, which is not impacted by the Colonial Pipeline. People were just running all over the place just to gas station to fill gas. I think it was more panic buying more than anything else. Again, given our size and given that we are diversified, we were able to use our connection and our contacts within our logistics department. We were able to bring products from some other states that we do business just next to the Southeast. I don't think there is any major impact that happened during this quarter. It was just a challenge that we had to deal with probably for two weeks, during the first few days of the cyberattack and then following that, again, the problem of getting product and making more product available to our stores. I don't think that was something so impactful. Yeah. To follow up, Luke, essentially what happened, if it wasn't in the news, I don't think there would've been as big of a problem. Essentially, all the inventory transferred out of tanks into people's cars. There were huge spikes in sales when those announcements came out, then, once everything calmed down, I think net-net, it really didn't have an impact, really, if you think about it was just a shift of fuel, which actually helped us because when you convert over to summer fuels, you have to turn your tanks. In a lot of ways, it helped us turn our tanks over. I think the news panic caused more issues than anything else, people were just topping off tanks and panic buying. Again, it was an incident that concerned us, but I don't think it had major results. Well, the shortage came because all of a sudden, if you're selling X amount of gallons on a daily basis, all of a sudden you got 300% increase in sales during this time. It doesn't matter. You cannot fill the tank and expect 300% increase in a very short order. That's usually what happen. This is similar to what we see during hurricane season when a hurricane actually hits. That's usually what we see over there. Got it. Thanks a bunch. Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Mark Astrachan with Stifel. Please proceed with your question. Thanks, good morning, everyone. I wanted to ask firstly about just the retail fuel margin and just how to broadly think about that. The numbers obviously bounced around a bit, remains pretty good across the industry. Anything that we should be thinking about, or keeping in mind as it relates to your business, specifically relative to kind of what we're seeing more broadly? No, as I said earlier, I think that at the end of the day, we are competing with the rest of the market. We are in line with the rest of the market, and as I said, I think that the more people that rely on basically inside sales, inside the high margin items like food service, the more people rely on that, and they can't get those results back to the 2019 numbers. I think that margin is going to continue to expand outside. Again, I don't have a crystal ball, of course. I don't know what's going to happen next month, but the only thing I say is that this is something that's been going on for the past 15 months, and again, we don't expect that to stop anytime soon. Okay. Switching over to store acquisitions, I appreciate the earlier commentary on the opportunities out there. Any sense of pace of acquisitions going forward? To the extent that you can talk about it, I feel like it's been maybe a little bit slower out of the gate than history. If there's a lot of opportunities out there, should we be expecting that to accelerate from where we are? Just to answer your comment, I don't think it's slower. I think that it's consistent. We do two to three acquisition a year. This is something that we've been mentioning all along. We already finished the first one. We finished the first one already in May. We continue to basically grow through acquisition. Remember, we mentioned adding just 19 contracts, wholesale contracts, during this quarter. I think the other thing that you need to take into account over here is basically that now, when we have the wholesale business as well, we have a 20% target return, and if the target comes from increasing wholesale accounts versus just retail accounts, we of course, are going after that. We are trying to be very, very careful. It's not just doing acquisition, it's doing the acquisition and actually continue to deploy our capital and receive the return that we saw in the past. I don't think we're going to have any slowdown. I don't expect any slowdown, at least, from what you actually guys saw in the past. Right. Mark, also to add on, I think Arie said this in the past. The pipeline's been very robust. Obviously there's deals where we're looking at all the time. There's no shortage of deals that we're working on. Like I said, there's more to come down the road as we finish them and get through and see if we're the successful bidder and finish all the due diligence. There's no shortage of deals out there. I think the environment, given a lot of things, has not slowed that down at all. Yeah, I just want to mention, given that we have a lot of liquidity over here and given that we are very liquid, doesn't mean that we need to do deals that do not make sense. We are not going to change our strategy. We have a high, basically, ROI threshold, we're going to continue to basically use this threshold to benefit us. This is something to take into account. We will not do crazy deals just to make deals. We will do the right deals continue to basically, to provide the return that we actually show all along. Got it. Okay. I guess just lastly, and then a follow-up to that other question. On the remodels, I think some competitors have commented on just supply chain challenges, labor shortages. Any thoughts there, especially as you think about ramping the remodel pace into 2022? Anything that would prevent that from happening near term? Then back on the deals, just some follow up there. What is it about some of the deals that you're looking at, that you're passing on? Are there any sort of big picture things that maybe aren't working out, return profiles, et cetera? Yeah. Let me basically start with the remodel. I don't think with the remodel nothing is going to slow us down. We have the same challenges like everybody else. Again, I don't see any reason to believe that things will slow down. Again, we're no different than the others. However, as I mentioned, we need to make sure that we have the right concept. All along from the get-go, I said, we're going to do first 10 stores, not because of challenges or because of pace or because of we don't have the capability of doing that. As I said, we want to make sure that we see at least 20% return on investment on the concept. Those things take some time. As you can see, we did two stores so far. The second one was just opened with a broad concept, just opened six weeks ago. We're getting ready to test another concept. This is a 5,600 sq ft store. It's like a travel center, small travel center. Again, it's a big store. It's a different concept. The minute we actually refine all of those concepts and all sign off and make sure that this concept is the concept that we feel comfortable that's going to drive us to the future, we're going to actually start to pace them. I don't think we're going to have any slowdown other than making sure we have the right concept. That's regarding to this. Regarding to acquisition, without basically mentioning names or anything like that, I can tell you that every deal in the market we are participating, or I believe at least every deal in the market we are participating. We are being invited to almost everything that we see over here. One of the problems we saw at the beginning of the year is that a lot of people believe that the Speedway 7-Eleven deal that was done for almost 14x multiple, people believe that they're going to get those numbers. Again, this is not something that we are willing to pay. This is not the return on investment that we are willing to basically to go after. I don't think that we're not passing on anything other than we are submitting our bids. Given that the environment, interest rate is very, very low right now, fuel margin are very high compared to the past, and I think people are not taking this into account. I can tell you, Mark, that we saw that in the past. You have one year that people just didn't take this into account, and when the word settled, all of the sudden, again, without mentioning names, it was acquisition that closed for a very high double-digit multiple, and few years later, those guys end up selling the stores for a much lower multiple because they couldn't basically carry the expense, couldn't carry the debt. I think this is something that we're going to see over here moving forward. Because of that, we want to make sure that we are liquid and we are ready to execute on every opportunity that actually meet our threshold. Mark, I want to add one thing on to the first question you had. There are components of remodels which will go in many of our stores that we're taking advantage of when we see opportunities to buy supplies of them, that we're going after and buying them. We are taking advantage of that, not sitting back and saying, "Whatever." We have had several cases where we've gone out and bought certain equipment that we know we're going to need, whether we remodel or whether we're just going to put in our existing stores as part of the marketing program. We are doing that proactively. Yes. This is, by the way, this is being said also for acquisition, Mark, just for your benefit. Everybody know that there is some shortage in computers, EMV assets, and things like that. Like Don mentioned, we're doing the same thing over here. We know that this is basically our DNA. Acquisition is part of our DNA, and we make sure that we keep enough supply in place to make sure that when the opportunity basically happens, we are not able to close because of short of supply. We are actually keeping more inventory basically at the moment. Okay, great. Thanks, all. Sure. Thank you. We have reached the end of our question and answer session, so I'd like to pass the floor back over to Arie for additional closing comments. Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody, for participating. Before we end over here, I'd like to say that our thoughts are really with those affected by the virus in the U.S., around the globe. I want to make sure everybody try to keep safe. This variant, it's really contagious, and we need to make sure that everybody just keeping safe over here. Thank you for participating, and goodbye. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. Once again, we thank you for your participation, and you may disconnect your lines at this time.