A sale of Arko Corp.’s convenience store network is currently not on the table, Chairman, President and CEO Arie Kotler said during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call last week.
Kotler’s comments come nearly six months after Reuters released an anonymously sourced report saying Arko, which at the time operated over 1,500 c-stores under its GPM Investments arm, was planning to divest its retail locations after years of slow sales.
Until last week, Arko had not engaged with the notion that it might be leaving the c-store business. At the time of Reuters’ report, a company spokesperson said in a statement to C-Store Dive that Arko was “not going to comment on rumors.” Arko also declined to comment on the topic to C-Store Dive in mid-February.
But during Arko’s earnings call last week, an analyst from Bank of America asked Kotler if “a larger acquisition or alternatively a sale of a huge majority” of the retailer’s stores would be on the table amid the company’s current transformation plan.
That plan, which Arko launched last summer, includes converting hundreds of its company-operated c-stores to dealer sites. Arko said it “dealerized” over 150 convenience stores in 2024 and expects to convert around 100 more by the end of Q1.
Although Arko is openly lowering its company-operated c-store count with this strategy, Kotler said last week that the company is not planning to sell its stores outright.
“The pieces we have on the table right now [are] dealerization, making sure that we continue our transformation plan,” said Kotler.
Kotler added that Arko is, however, open to making a big acquisition — something the company openly shifted away from last year.
“If there’s a large acquisition [on the table], we will be more than happy to look into it,” Kotler said.
