Travel Centers of America LLC today announced that it has agreed to acquire 31 convenience stores with retail gasoline for $67 million, before closing costs and customary working capital adjustments. The seller is a private company which operates these C-stores under its proprietary brand name “Minit Mart”.
Twenty-eight of the C-stores are located in Kentucky and three are in Tennessee. Twenty-sevenof the locations include the ownership of land and buildings, while four are leaseholds. The typical location includes 10 fueling positions and approximately 5,000 sq. ft. of interior space offering C-store merchandise as well as some prepared food services. During 2012, these stores dispensed an aggregate of 38 million gallons of fuel.
Thomas M. O’Brien, TA’s President and CEO, made the following statement at the time of this announcement: “The 31 C-stores TA has agreed to acquire are high volume fuel locations with larger interior space for merchandise and food offerings than typical C-stores and appear to have limited need for near term capital investment. In addition, we do not expect these C-stores to require a lengthy period to achieve stabilized financial results. We also expect TA may be able to realize synergies in purchasing and merchandising customer offerings at these C-stores which may make the financial results, relative to the acquisition cost, similar to that expected for travel center acquisitions. Nearly all of TA’s existing travel centers currently offer gasoline for motorists and most of these C-stores’ customer offerings are similar to the products and food services available at our highway travel centers.
“TA’s principal business focus is and remains operating and expanding its nationwide network of large, full service travel centers along the U.S. Interstate Highway System that serve the U.S. trucking industry.”
The transaction announced today is subject to customary closing conditions, but TA currently expects it will close before year end 2013. O’Brien’s comments are based on information provided by the seller to TA prior to the date of this release and may be subject to change.
TA primarily operates and franchises travel centers under the “Travel Centers of America”, “TA”, “Petro Stopping Centers” and “Petro” brand names and offers diesel and gasoline fueling, restaurants, truck repair facilities, stores and other services. TA’s nationwide business includes locations in 42 U.S. states and in Canada.
