Austin B. Harkness
Spiro, this is Austin. Happy to share some commentary on both our reported numbers and kind of the overall broader margin environment as we see it. I'll start by just reminding folks, we manage for fuel profit and EBITDA when we manage the business versus solving for a particular number with volume or CPG independently. . That said, as it relates to our reported numbers, I would just go back to some of Karl's prepared remarks and some of the commentary that we've shared in the past. There's 2 higher-margin businesses that I think it's important to remember, are no longer included in our segments reported numbers. The first, obviously, following the NuStar transaction, we moved the transmix business into the Terminal segment. And then the second was the sale of our West Texas retail business in the second quarter of last year. And so that said, while our reported CPG number has been reduced, the fundamentals in the macro environment remain bullish for margins overall, and that's really due to elevated breakevens remaining in place. And Spiro, I know you're familiar with this and know this, but I think for folks who might be newer to the story, it may be worth providing a little bit of context on what we're talking about when we mentioned elevated breakevens. Just quickly, the first thing to know is our industry is hyper-fragmented. The majority of sites are managed by single-unit owner operators in our space. And so when you couple that with any exogenous shocks to the business, whether it's demand destruction like we saw in COVID, inflation or flat price volatility, that has the impact of raising fuel margin breakeven levels for all operators in the space. Now that said, for those operators that have significant scale or fundamental cost of goods sold advantage like Sunoco, would actually create a bullish margin environment. And so as we think about the margin environment that we're in today and what we see going forward, 2 of those 3 elements remain in place from our view. So flat price volatility, just starting there. If you look longitudinally at daily RBOB or ULSD movements, volatility has only increased post-COVID. And so we think that, that's going to be a feature that remains in place for the foreseeable future. And then separately with inflation, it's important to remember that when inflation is in place, it has the impact of increasing key line items in all operators' P&Ls and even when it abates, the effects can be long lasting and prices and costs tend to be sticky downward, particularly if you think about things like labor. So with all that said, we're -- regardless of how our portfolio evolves, we're going to continue to take advantage of and leverage our significant scale, our supply chain optionality, our cost of goods sold advantage to create asymmetrical upside in flat price volatility environments and minimize the downside risk and exposure that we have. And so with all that said, I think the -- so what that I'll end with is the fundamentals for the fuel distribution business remain very healthy. And we're on track for a very strong second half of the year on the heels of some organic and roll-up M&A investments that we made in the first half of this year that I think you're going to see are going to drive noticeable volume growth at healthy margins and ultimately results in year-over-year EBITDA growth for the segment despite the fact that we don't benefit from the aforementioned businesses no longer being in our reported numbers in '25.