Casey's General Store

Last night we got the latest set of now, I've been a big, unmitigated fan of Casey's for a couple of years now because they've found there's a reason these guys intentionally target smaller markets where their gas stations and convenience stores with fresh hot food can become a big draw. And that's what's turned Casey's into a spectacular regional to national growth story. It's also, by the way, why the stock always seems to fly under the radar on Wall Street. Most people in the financial industry have never seen a Casey's with its stores mostly in the Midwest and Southeast, and they certainly haven'tried its absolutely fantastic, but breakfast pizza. They basically take this bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich into a pizza and, well, I tried it for the first time over the s It is legitimately great, and I'm from Jersey where I'm a Taylor Ham guy. Now, the stock's now up 94% since I started pus Trouncing the SB500, w However, after the stock soared response to earnings in early June, Casey spent most of the s As we awaited the company's earnings last night, it was off about 10 points from July That's one reason why Casey's initially got very little love after reported last night. The actual quarterly results, they were excellent. Excellent. We're talking a healthy top and bottom line beat with 11. 5% revenue growth as every individual business line came in stronger than expected. Casey's inside same store sales were up 4. 3%. Wall Street was only looking for 3. 6%. With prepared food coming in much better than expected. For the fuel business, same store gallons sold were up, interesting metric, were up 1. 7%. The Anisewater looking for 0. 3% growth will take vol Casey saw some nice margin expansion too, w 02 basis. That's huge. It's nearly 20% earnings growth led by the strength of their inside the store business, meaning the convenience store, not the gas station, meaning those breakfast pizzas. Same store sales and prepared food were up nearly 6%. Wow. I mean, that's incredible, but that isn't just breakfast pizza. They also have sandwiches wraps, wings, salads, fresh cookies. Cookies are very good. But CEO Darren Rebellis also called out, quote, positive traffic growth due to our s On top of that, he said that the company's fuel team, quote, did a tremendous job ac End quote. I know fuel team. Hey, listen, they got the best fuel team. What can I say? And that thanks to the company'steady delivery expansion plans, Casey's also benefiting from operating over 200 more stores than it did a year ago. Put it all together and I think you've got some excellent n Okay. All right. But there was one minor issue with the quarter, w I've said that's often a problem, but let's unpack t For many on Wall Street, it's a de facto guide down because they just reported better than expected quarter and they didn't raise their guidance to just. Specifically, Casey continues to expect inside same store sales to increase 2% to 5% t Same store fuel gallons sold are still expected to be negative 1% to positive 1%. Total operating expenses are still expected to be increased by 8% to 10%. And Casey's plans to open at least 80 stores in fiscal 2026 for a combination of M&And new construction. T It was totally in line with what the analysts were looking for going into the quarter, but given the case, you just put a big top and bottom line beat for the quarter. It was a b And that's why the stock got dinged a little bit at the opening today. Let's go through t I wasn't deterred at all viewing t As I said on Squaggle the Street t Why? First, let's tackle that unchanged guidance issue head on. W For most publicly traded companies, it'standard operating procedure to not raise their four-year forecast after just one quarter unless the n On t Quote, consistent with our past practice, we plan to update annual guidance on our second earnings quarter. A call when we're through the seasonally largest time of the year. End quote. There he just said it, okay? A couple of others tried to specifically suss out whether the lack of guidance increase indicated any extra cost from Casey's management. The answer was basically no, not really. Management simply reiterated that they'll provide an update on their outlook after the second quarter, w Hey, that's fine with me, especially given the company's great tracker. It should be fine with you. It's the chance to buy it without the, what I t Now, there was plenty of other positive commentary too, because be For example, the s And a rebel has mentioned that their data and insights, w And even decisions And I got to tell you is management also said it's taking market share and fuel and it's doing so without sacrificing margins. I told you they had a good fuel team. It's all very impressive. And after t And it seems The final two hours of trading to close the day up almost 20 bucks or nearly 4%. That's why that morning call was so important. Okay. So here's the bottom line. Last night, we got another terrific quarter from Casey's general, one of my absolute favorite under the radar growth stocks. You could buy t I they don't want to get ahead of themselves, but everyt