Murphy USA Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Murphy USA (NYSE:MUSA) reported third-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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Summary

Murphy USA maintained its guidance for opening 45 to 50 new stores in 2026, with a strong pipeline of 55 stores under construction.

The company is testing the White Castle partnership, referred to internally as Murphy Automated Restaurant Solutions (MARS), with encouraging initial results but no scalable performance data yet.

Fuel volumes are flat year-to-date, with a guidance of minus 1% to minus 3% for the full year; however, the company is optimistic about volume growth due to heightened price sensitivity among consumers.

Retail fuel margins remained close to last year’s levels despite a challenging rising price environment, indicating structural margin strength.

Murphy USA’s strategy includes expanding in desirable markets, focusing on controlling operating expenses, and leveraging its supply chain advantages amid tight supply conditions.

Inside store sales, particularly nicotine products, remain strong, with continued promotional activity expected to boost sales.

The QuickChek segment continues to face pressure due to its food-forward model and geographic concentration, but efforts are underway to improve performance.

The company is optimistic about its future performance, expecting continued benefits from current market volatility and supply chain capabilities.

Full Transcript

Freda (Operator)

Thank you for standing by. My name is Freda and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to Murphy USA’s third quarter 2026 earnings Q&A call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you.

I would now like to turn the call over to Kristian Paykel. Please go ahead.

Kristian Paykel (Investor Relations)

Hey, thanks, Freda. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. With me are Mindy West, Chief Executive Officer, and Donnie Smith, Chief Financial Officer. I know you’ve all probably accessed our earnings release and management commentary from the website last night, so we’ll go ahead and kick off the Q&A session. Please limit yourself to one question and a follow-up and then get back in the queue to make sure we get to everybody. Please also keep in mind that some of the comments made during this call, including the Q&A portion, will be considered forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. As such, no assurances can be given that these events will occur or that the projections will be attained. A variety of factors exist that may cause actual results to differ. For further discussion of risk factors, please see the latest Murphy USA Forms 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, and other recent SEC filings.

Murphy USA takes no duty to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements during today’s call. We may also provide certain performance measures that do not conform to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP. We have provided schedules to reconcile those non-GAAP measures with the reported results on a GAAP basis as part of our earnings press release, which can be found on the Investor section of our website. With that, let’s go ahead and open up the call. I’ll turn it back over to Freda.

Freda (Operator)

Your first question from the line of Jacob Aiken Phillips with Melius Research. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Jacob Aiken Phillips (Analyst at Melius Research)

Hey, good morning everyone. So just on the unit pipeline, you have 18 stores through today and 55 under construction. Does the 45 openings this year still hold and how many construction sites that open this year versus the first and second quarters of 2027 and then also will 2027 be back half weighted?

Mindy West (Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks for your question, Jacob. Yes, we’re really pleased to have built the pipeline where we have 18 stores open year to date, 55 as you mentioned under construction, and also a firm plan to start 15 to 20 between now and the end of January. So our guidance still holds. You know, we’ll be around that 45 to 50, probably obviously a little bit better than 45, we hope, as we end the year. Very difficult to predict what stores are going to open December 31, for example, versus January 2, because we have so many in flight right now.

But that’s why we wanted to give you comfort in the stores under construction because obviously, you know, whatever doesn’t open in December is going to open very soon within the new year, starting our 2027 pipeline off in a good direction. So we are still firm that we have built our pipeline sufficient now to be able to carry out 50 stores a year, not just for this year, but also next year and maybe even do better than that by the time we get to 2028. I would also estimate that by 2028 our hope is to get our pipeline more ratable. So instead of opening everything kind of at the end of the year, first of the year, we’re more ratable throughout the year. So too soon to tell how lumpy the pipeline is going to be in 2027.

Obviously we’re going to have a slug of stores that are going to open early, but then we would also expect to have a nice complement of stores going behind that in the second, third and fourth quarters as well.

Jacob Aiken Phillips (Analyst at Melius Research)

Super helpful. And then just on the White Castle partnership, any early reads or customer behavior that you’re willing to discuss?

Mindy West (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, that’s a great question too, Jacob, and one actually we anticipated getting. And just to clarify for everyone, we actually refer to that program internally as MARS — Murphy Automated Restaurant Solutions. We view this as a test-to-scale program. So currently we have more than 100 units in the market today and are deliberately scaling the program across new markets and formats. Our goal though really is threefold. It’s to build evidence around customer demand, fit to our operating model, and also the store-level economics as we deploy this out.

So at this point it’s simply too early to comment on any scalable performance potential, although we will say the initial results that we’ve seen so far are encouraging. But that’s really all that we really want to say at this time. So hopefully in future calls we will have line of sight to some more detail to be able to provide you.

Freda (Operator)

Your next question from the line of Bonnie Herzog with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Bonnie Herzog (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)

All right, thank you and good morning. I just had a quick question on fuel volumes. You know, you mentioned that you are confident in your SS fuel volume guidance of minus 1 to minus 3. But then looking at, you know, year to date, your volumes are essentially flat. And I know you have a tougher comp in Q4, but it does sort of maybe be at the, I guess high end of that range. So hoping, you know, Mindy, you could talk about, you know, how we should think about that, maybe what you’re seeing from a fuel volume dynamic and, you know, any consumer behavior at the pump.

Thank you.

Mindy West (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, I would say that our business is advantaged as we enter this more elevated price environment for longer because that is going to make customers more price sensitive. For the third quarter, I believe we have prices above $4.10 out of our 27 states. But I think the longer that that continues, the more price fatigue there’s going to be on our customer, the more budget fatigue there’s going to be. So we would expect gallon growth from that. And also we’re continuing to take share.

What our third quarter results tell us is that we took share on both a total gallon basis but also a same-store basis, as we were plus six versus OPIS. So we were slightly positive when OPIS would tell us that we were going to be flat. So we know that higher absolute prices absolutely increase price sensitivity. But also we still need that right environment, price-wise, to be able to create that separation to drive incremental value. We saw that a little bit for a third of this quarter, being in a high-priced environment combined with a favorable fall-off, and we saw the behavior that we would expect.

So for the fourth quarter, too soon to know what that’s going to look like. But I would say that we are encouraged by volumes, you know, so far in the month of October being at 100% of the prior year because that’s despite some hurricane activity which really took a large percentage of our stores down for several days. So we’re, you know, optimistic about what we see and we’re also optimistic as we go into 2027 because we think this heightened volatility and these higher prices are going to continue as we enter into next year.

Bonnie Herzog (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)

Yeah, that kind of does make sense. And if I could ask, maybe just a follow-up on sticking with fuel because on that point, looking at your fuel margins in the quarter, could you maybe just touch on a little bit more on the composition of total fuel contribution? What I mean by that is I was looking at the retail fuel margins seem to be a little bit more under pressure. So maybe talk about that. Then I know a lot of the fuel supply and RIN strength was due to uncontrollable factors.

But how should we think about modeling the fuel supply segment, I guess in Q4 and maybe next year? Mindy, based on what you just said. Thank you.

Mindy West (Chief Executive Officer)

Bonnie, I’m actually glad I’m not an analyst and don’t actually have to model it because I appreciate there’s a lot of moving parts, there’s a lot of nuances that happen out there and every one of those absolutely can make a difference in our results. But I’ll try to help you out as much as I can. So as I unpack the third quarter, the retail margin, it may have looked soft to you, but actually what we saw in July was a run-up in price and so that’s not going to be an environment favorable to margin.

So actually prices crept up for almost all of the quarter, which is not a great backdrop to earning margin. So the fact that we were within a penny of the prior year, which had a falling price environment, is telling us that that structural component that we talk about, that are causing pressure on those marginal retailers. It really wasn’t until the last half of September where we had the elevated prices combined with a fall-off that we were able to create that separation and drive both margin and volume.

And then when I look at the fuel supply results, again, it was an upward-sloping environment. So we had an impact on the uncontrollables, as we call them, especially during the month of July. And then from a controllable standpoint, product supply was still very tight. Not as tight as it was in the shock, maybe the first shock that we saw in the second quarter. So the controllables were lower in the third quarter versus the second quarter because the second quarter was dealing with that initial shock.

But we still see a tight supply condition going into the fourth quarter. We don’t expect that to alleviate. Don’t know what’s going to happen with the pricing environment, but want to remind people if we do see a fall-off, yes, that will cause an effect in what we determine are uncontrollables. But that should also have a very positive effect on the retail side of the margin with expanded margin and then hopefully also a chance to create separation and drive volume, so that total fuel contribution would be very healthy in that type of environment.

But appreciate, Bonnie, that there’s lots of moving parts. I don’t know how to tell you to model it, but look forward to unpacking the results for the fourth quarter when we are talking in January. Hopefully that helps a little bit at least.

Freda (Operator)

Your next question from the line of Tom Palmer with JP Morgan. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Tom Palmer (Analyst at JP Morgan)

Good morning. Thanks for the question. Maybe I could just follow up on Bonnie’s question on fuel supply and kind of clarify on the controllable side, how do, because they were bucketed in controllable RIN prices, how do they impact your fuel profit? Should we think about elevated RIN prices as being a more enduring tailwind versus like say the 3 cents or so outlook you’ve talked about in the past? Or is it more about the volatility of RINs? Just any help there?

Mindy West (Chief Executive Officer)

The volatility of RINs can have an impact that is temporary. But largely prices are a pass-through because the price of the RIN that we’re getting was embedded in the cost that we incurred to get that supply in the first place. So yes, if RIN prices rise really rapidly or fall really rapidly, that may not have an impact immediately within the cost of our supply. But over the course of a few days that’s going to normalize out. And so we really concern ourselves with what the price of the RIN is because it is strictly a pass-through.

And that 2 to 3 cents that we talk about, that is what we would expect to earn during a normalized environment where that uncontrollable piece is more or less flat. That is the 2 to 3 cents that we believe that we can earn from the controllable side of the business. But I will say in a tight supply environment like we are in now, that is where our fuel advantages are to the most effect because we have all this optionality around how we acquire supply, so we can acquire it cheaper than we could if we just bought it at the rack. So we would expect our product supply and wholesale business to earn over the 2 and 3 cents in a tight supply environment. And then obviously this uncontrollable piece will have an impact pertaining to the direction of the prices.

Well, we’re always going to have a focus on controlling our cost. So the elevated—we were actually down this quarter. We’re expecting a little bit of a catch-up in next quarter. But also we’re overlapping some initiatives that we deliberately put in place last year with regard to maintenance. So as we overlap those cost savings that we already got in the fourth quarter of last year, that’s part of what is driving the modest income. But again, for guidance purposes, we still expect to end the year even below our very low guidance that we already put out there.

And then as we enter next year, our intent is going to be to sustain the advantages that we already have and create some new ones as well. But too early to guide specifically as to what that’s going to look like.

Freda (Operator)

Your next question from the line of Edward Kelly with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Edward Kelly (Analyst at Wells Fargo)

Hi, good morning. I wanted to follow up on fuel margins and, you know, you mentioned retail margins better than you would have thought in a rising price environment. Could you maybe provide a little bit of context around that, you know, competitively and what’s allowing that to happen? And then as part of that, you know, as you think about, you know, maybe eventually—right—the situation in Iran stabilizing, curious as to what your thoughts are on where margins could settle out versus the 28 cents you earned in ’24 and ’25 on the retail side and maybe how independent breakevens are informing that.

Mindy West (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, when we talk about a rising price environment not being conducive to margin, it is because you’re constantly having to catch up for the price increases that you’re incurring. So the market continues to have to restore. And in a choppy market, especially one that we saw during this quarter, it was very difficult to get ahead of it. And so we were always trying to restore the market versus the prior period where you had lower absolute prices, but a fall-off in prices that sustained for a longer period of time.

What we are also seeing is that, for instance, when we take share of market, which OPIS would indicate that we are, that is just putting more pressure on those marginal retailers, who their only way to make up for that lost volume is to make up for it in margin. So that is continuing to support that structural margin element that we talked about that maybe will be half a penny a year. Don’t know. But that certainly is seeming to hold up, as our results this quarter would verify, based on our retail margin being very close to what we reported last year in a completely different environment.

As we look forward, we actually expect this heightened tight supply, elevated volatility to carry on into next year. Don’t know when the war is going to end, but even after it does, the normalization effect is going to be really complicated because we’re going to have infrastructure impacts, refinery maintenance that’s been postponed, supply chain recovery, strategic reserves have to be replenished. And as long as supplies remain tight, we are going to expect continued volatility, which actually is an opportunity for the Murphy USA business because we are built for this environment and our capabilities allow us to capitalize on that continued volatility. So we will be able to capitalize on it on the product supply side. But that pressure that we’re also putting on that marginal retailer is going to allow margins to elevate for all in the business.

So we’ll be able to capture benefits on both sides of the fuel business. And with all these stores that we have in the pipeline that are going to open next year, they’re going to open into a favorable environment also, which will increase our earnings power for 2027 and beyond.

Edward Kelly (Analyst at Wells Fargo)

Maybe just as a follow-up, from a competition standpoint, can you just talk about some of the differences that you’re seeing in some of the markets that have been a little bit more difficult from a volume perspective, whether you’re seeing any easing there, or are there any other changes that we should note in this regard?

Mindy West (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, no real changes. There continue to be areas of pressure, but pressure is just going to naturally shift across the chain over time as markets are simply all at different stages of maturity and competitive intensity. I know that Colorado and Florida have been two states that we’ve mentioned with material competitive pressure. But just like we discussed in this year’s investor deck, Colorado is a great example of what happens when a market is starting to normalize.

Volumes are still under pressure, and I can tell you that they still are. But CPG is more than offsetting that gallon decline, which is driving total contribution up for the market and for players like us. So look, we’re still investing in desirable markets where people want to grow. That’s fine because we know over time that competition is going to put additional pressure again on that marginal retailer, supporting the structural margin. So yes, we had volume pressure in certain states—Colorado and Florida were two of those. But seven out of our top 10 actually showed same-store growth, which is the benefit of us having a broader footprint. So competitive intensity continues.

I wouldn’t say it’s any more or any less. I would just say the pockets of intensity tend to move over time and evolve, but in a very predictable way.

Freda (Operator)

Your next question from the line of Bobby Griffin with Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Bobby Griffin (Analyst at Raymond James)

Come on, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess, Mindy, first I want to switch back to the stores. I think you guys have opened up a little over 40 over the trailing 12 months. Can you maybe talk a little bit how those have opened or performed in the first year? And I think you guys were debating maybe a little bit different store prototypes or having a second prototype or something like that. So just any update there on kind of that aspect of the store group pipeline over the next couple years?

Mindy West (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question, Bobby. Yeah, I would say the latest class, the build class, is ramping up good. Maybe a little bit slower on the fuel side because you remember we opened a lot at the end of the year, so they ramped first into all the winter storms impacting our network. Then they ramped into all this price increase. So that wasn’t a great environment to create separation in volume. But they’re ramping despite the environment that they face.

When we look at the build class from the year before, what we talked about in 2025 was we were seeing those build classes return 15% fully ramped up after tax. That was in the trough environment. So we would expect that to be even better when we look at them this year. But, you know, we’re building really strong assets to last for 30 years. And as you know, our issue really hasn’t been performance and still isn’t. Our issue has been pace of store openings. Because the math would tell you, had we opened 50 stores per year from 2021 to 2024, our EBITDA last year actually would have exceeded 1.1 billion. But obviously we didn’t do that. We opened 18 stores, 35, 22, and 29 stores. And that really created a tax on our business, not allowing us to show incremental EBITDA improvement in what was the worst possible fuel macro environment last year.

So that’s why we’re excited now to have our pipeline built up, because we can sustain that pace that we have talked about for the last several years. And we know that that’s going to be able to drive rateable EBITDA improvement for us regardless of the macro. So last year’s stores are ramping in a challenged environment, but they’re coming along fine. This year’s build class is going to do just fine as well. We are continuing to build great sites and great locations. But also, as the second part to your question, we are definitely looking at new formats, not completely abandoning the model. You know, the 2,800 is still going to have its place in our portfolio, but we’re also looking at are there things that we can do that are maybe slightly smaller, slightly larger, or just new and different from what we have done.

We’ve also reimagined our raze-and-rebuild programs too, where it may not be a raze-and-rebuild that we do. We may do a heavy refresh, heavy remodel, do things like that. So just having a little more optionality in our model than what we have had before, but too soon to really talk about specifics as to what those will be.

Bobby Griffin (Analyst at Raymond James)

Okay, that’s helpful. Makes sense. And then maybe switching gears just over to the inside store business. In particular on nicotine, obviously lapping the ZYN promo from last year. But just curious, what are you hearing from that category about the promo environment going into ’27? And I believe with some of the FDA changes, vapes might have been hitting the floors late in 3Q or maybe early 4Q. So just anything there on some of the changes that were taking place?

Mindy West (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, sure. And look, it still continues to be very promotional. The whole category, as consumers are still really in a test-and-try environment, they’re not necessarily really loyal to any one thing. And we’re seeing a lot of customer sets from the oral nicotine in particular, where we’ve seen people switching from their traditional method. We’ve seen people trying it in conjunction with their traditional. We’re also seeing new nicotine customers that are new to us buying from us instead of someone else.

So vendors are still going to be very promotional around this category and make investments with us because we offer a high ROI on that investment. Then you also mentioned the vape and other things that may be entering legal. Vape is an incremental opportunity. We do have one brand in our stores today. We have additional products expected in 2027. So it’s still limited right now, but it will become more meaningful as more products are allowed to be available. And it’s been an important category historically. So we know there is opportunity as volume moves back into the legal channel. So we definitely expect that to happen and we will leverage our supply chain, our capabilities, the investments that we’ve made, to be among the first to be able to offer that to our customers.

Freda (Operator)

Your next question from the line of Purun Sharma with Stephens. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Purun Sharma (Analyst at Stephens)

Good morning. Thanks for the question. Maybe wanted to just start out with the broader consumer and wanted to kind of get your view on maybe the different cohorts. I know you mainly index to lower-income consumers. But in this higher gasoline-priced environment, are you seeing consumers trading down from premium and mid-grade to regular? And more broadly, are you seeing consumers trading down from higher-priced competitors to Murphy USA in general?

Mindy West (Chief Executive Officer)

Are you meaning strictly on the fuel side or also inside the store?

Purun Sharma (Analyst at Stephens)

Kind of on both, really.

Mindy West (Chief Executive Officer)

Okay, perfect. Let’s do both. So your specific question as to RUL, yes, RUL actually for the quarter was up almost 2.5%, was actually up double that in the month of September. As you’re right, we are seeing customers, both our customers trading down from premium and mid-grade, but also customers trading in from other competitors because of our low price. Inside the store, we would also characterize our customers as resilient despite the ongoing pressure. We’re calling them selective but resilient. As we know, our customers have both discretionary and non-discretionary spend. We’ve seen them continue to spend on those non-discretionary purchases despite the rising fuel cost. But their purchases are remaining disciplined. They’re not deteriorating. And to give you a proof point, we have a static panel of over 2 million of our Murphy Drive Rewards customers.

Their total spend is up $50 year over year with us, and that’s driven by the higher fuel spend. Right. But the merch spend is also remaining static, actually up slightly. So our customers are making the trade-offs, but they’re doing it in other areas of their household budgets to absorb that higher fuel spend. And we continue to resonate because of our value proposition, our everyday low price position. We stand for value, so we are helping to support them even as their household budgets are remaining constrained.

So maybe a little bit of pressure on the non-discretionary purchases, but for those discretionary purchases in our store, even inside the store, those are very much tied to routine everyday things and customers are still finding room in their wallets to be able to come in our stores and purchase those.

Purun Sharma (Analyst at Stephens)

Appreciate that color. And just for my follow-up, wanted to ask about volumes. I know a few folks have asked about it already, but just, you know, October volumes last year were about 2% lower, so I think it was a little bit easier comp. You finished 4Q last year around flattish volumes, which implies harder comps in November and December, as Bonnie had pointed out. But as you mentioned, historically a sustained decline in pricing is that type of environment where you can kind of create some separation.

And so as I’m looking to 4Q, even though you have harder comps in November and December, if RBOB holds here or kind of drops further, do you think it would be justified to think that you could see positive same-store gallon growth in November and December this year?

Mindy West (Chief Executive Officer)

We could. Um, you know, I think October, the fact that we’re flat despite the hurricane impacting our stores is significant because last year, while it was an easy, we didn’t have any hurricane activity at all. But from a pricing standpoint, yes, last year was an absolutely low price. But we did have a down in October. We had another down in the month of November. So when we look at this October, we had an up and then a down. And it remains to be seen what we’re going to have for the rest of the year.

But if we continue to get sustained prices above $4 and if we can even rise a little bit from there so we can get more of our network above the $4 mark and, importantly, our competitors way above that $4 mark, I think that that is going to make customers more price sensitive. And then obviously if we could have a glide down, you know, in the second half of November that was on a sustained basis, not a choppy basis, that would certainly be an environment where even despite the difficult comp we might could improve.

But really too soon, in the crystal ball, to be able to tell what’s going to happen for the rest of the year. Is it doable? Yes. But it would take the right set of conditions to make that happen.

Freda (Operator)

The queue is now open for follow-ups and additional questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star one on your keypad to ask a question. To withdraw your question, press Star one again. Your next question comes from Dan Guglielmo with Capital One Securities. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Dan Guglielmo (Analyst at Capital One Securities)

Hi everyone. Thank you for taking my question. Just one for me. You mentioned in an earlier answer that you expect the normalization effect to be complicated and the team has so much experience in the industry. So I’m just curious, what do you look for when judging if we have reentered a normalized period?

Mindy West (Chief Executive Officer)

Well, the spot-to-rack differential is going to tell you one, but the leading indicators will be, one, does the war actually end and does it actually end or is it just talk that it will end? Finding out what’s happening with the infrastructure overseas will be important. Refineries that have been running in North America full out for almost two years, refineries are not designed to do that. They’re going to have to come down for maintenance. Do they have problems on the way up or not?

How soon does the supply chain work its way out and what really is the decrement to this overall supply chain that has to be filled? There will be some leading indicators for that, but those aren’t things that are going to normalize within a week or two. Those are things that are going to take months. And that’s why we feel confident, at least at this point, that even if the war actually ended today, we would still have lingering impacts well into 2027, which works to our advantage. Because of the optionality we have around the fuel chain, we aren’t dependent on one source of supply.

We can get supply from a lot of places. So if supply happens to be tight in one area, we’re not dependent on any one area. That is why we are built for this environment and our capabilities are actually worth a whole lot and our advantage is worth a whole lot. But those are the type of leading indicators that we would point to. But regardless of anything, you know, these things are going to take months and months to work out.

Dan Guglielmo (Analyst at Capital One Securities)

Great. Thank you.

Freda (Operator)

Your next question from the line of Brad Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Brad Thomas (Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets)

Hi. Thanks so much. Mindy, a first one on QuickChek. Can you talk about its performance in the quarter and how you’re thinking about its EBITDA going forward?

Mindy West (Chief Executive Officer)

You know, we don’t break out the QuickChek EBITDA, but happy to talk about it. That business does continue to face pressure. It is a different business. Look, it is food-forward, not fuel-forward. It is a higher-cost model to run because of that. It also has a very concentrated geographic footprint. So it doesn’t have the benefit of stores everywhere where, if you’re experiencing competitive intensity in Colorado, we have all these other stores everywhere else that are doing just great.

It is very concentrated geographically. So we’re remaining focused on improving our merchandise performance through things like sharper pricing, right assortment, executing well on our food and beverage capability. We’re also working on the cost side of our business, tightly aligning the labor and our operating costs to the actual customer demand that we’re seeing. We’re also implementing that sales-first model that we have on the Murphy USA side into the QuickChek side with the ability to upsell and better execute on promotions.

But to be quite candid, we expect all the pressures that we have been seeing and are seeing to continue to persist in the near term. And that expectation, though, is reflected in the guidance that you’ve already seen for the full year, so no additional increment. But that business does continue to face pressure.

Brad Thomas (Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets)

I appreciate it. And then obviously the overall business on track for a great year here. So I hate to nitpick on the, you know, non-nicotine same-store sales, but as you look at that area, clearly some challenges for the consumer. Maybe can you speak to are you still seeing headwinds from SNAP and how big are those? And then anything interesting that you’re seeing in the pipeline or that you’re testing in stores that might be helpful to drive some more excitement in that area?

Mindy West (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, that’s a great question. And look, our non-nicotine performance is primarily due to two specific categories which we’ve talked about before. It’s beer and it’s lottery. Those are discretionary categories. Obviously higher gas prices are not helping those at all. Lottery was the largest driver of our same-store decline, but it’s also comping prior year where we had a $1.8 billion Powerball. Beer similarly is also a headwind. We did see some moderation this quarter.

It doesn’t mean it’s positive, it just means it’s not as bad as it was. But if you exclude lottery and beer, our non-nicotine same-store margin was actually up a percent year over year. So that’s showing you that customers are still engaging in the key categories. Pack Bev did really well. Snacks did really well. We are gaining share across our center-of-store categories versus Nielsen. So that speaks to the strength of our value proposition. And also don’t forget nicotine. We’re continuing to drive results there and take share across that broad portfolio.

SNAP, we’re really not seeing a material impact yet. But as a reminder, our exposure there is limited to less than 2% of sales. And SNAP is a currency, not a customer. So yet to be seen whether those customers just come to our stores and buy those products, like a Red Bull energy drink, for example, but pay with a different method. And then with regards to initiatives, we’re continuing just to focus on the basics: our offer being in stock, priced right, promoted effectively, and leveraging our continually sophisticated MDR capabilities.

So those are the things that we’re doing to address. But the primary culprits are lottery and beer. And that’s not just a Murphy USA-specific headwind. That’s an industry headwind, as you guys know.

Freda (Operator)

We have reached the end of the Q and A session. I will now turn the call back to Mindy West for closing remarks.

Mindy West (Chief Executive Officer)

All right, thanks everyone. We’re pleased with the results we have delivered so far this year. We’re also even more confident in the underlying strength of our business. But we appreciate your continued interest in Murphy USA and look forward to updating you again next quarter.

Freda (Operator)

This concludes today’s call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

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