Circle K will run its largest U.S. business unit, the Texas Business Unit (BU), from San Antonio. The Texas BU will manage close to 700 stores in Texas.
By David Bennett, Senior Editor
Quebec-based Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., on June 28, announced that it has successfully closed on its deal for CST Brands Inc., following approval from the Federal Trade Commission this week.
On Monday, Couche-Tard announced it obtained clearance from the FTC for the $4.4 billion acquisition of San Antonio-based CST Brands.
The merger clears the way for a bulk of former CST holdings in Texas to become part of Circle K Stores Inc., a subsidiary of Couche-Tard, said Marie-Noëlle Cano, senior director of global communications at Couche-Tard.
TEXAS PRIDE
“Circle K will run its largest U.S. business unit, the Texas Business Unit (BU), from San Antonio. The Texas BU will manage close to 700 stores in the state of Texas, with more than 170 of them located in San Antonio,” said Cano. “Circle K looks forward to continuing to invest and grow in Texas from this base in San Antonio. Circle K’s Texas Business Unit will be located in the present CST Service Center on Bulverde Road in San Antonio.”
As part of winning antitrust approval, Couche-Tard agreed to sell 70 of CST’s Corner Store locations this week.
As Convenience Store Decisions reported yesterday, those locations are being purchased by Dallas-based fuel distributor Empire Petroleum Partners LLC, and Getty Realty Corp. is providing acquisition lease-back funding to Empire to facilitate its acquisition of properties from Circle K.
Getty Realty Corp. entered into a definitive agreement providing for acquisition lease-back funding to Empire. The company, through a subsidiary, will acquire fee simple interests in 49 convenience store and gasoline station properties for $123 million under a unitary lease. The transaction is expected to close before the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2017.
The 70 CST convenience stores with fuel stations are spread over Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico and Ohio and Texas. The divested locations represent about 6% of the 1,178 stores, which fell under CST Brands in the U.S. Couche-Tard also operates almost 4,700 convenience stores in the U.S., primarily under the names Circle K and Kangaroo Express.
Additionally, Couche-Tard is now selling some CST Brands’ Canada retail assets to Parkland Fuel Corp.