Murphy USA Q2 2026 Earnings Report

Murphy USA EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $11.27
• Consensus EPS: $9.95
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$1.32
• One Year Ago EPS: $7.36

Murphy USA Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $6.81 billion
• Expected Revenue: $6.03 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$774.58 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +36.00%

Murphy USA Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q2 2026
• Date: 8/5/2026
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, August 6, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 11:00AM ET

Murphy USA (NYSE:MUSA) (NYSE:MUSA) operates a network of retail fuel stations and convenience stores in the United States. Its locations primarily serve motorists and local communities, offering gasoline and diesel fuel along with convenience merchandise.

The company’s stores sell products such as tobacco, nicotine products, beverages, snacks, packaged food, and other general merchandise. Many locations also provide prepared food and other convenience services, with product offerings designed to complement the company’s fuel business.

Murphy USA was established as an independent publicly traded company in 2013 following its separation from Murphy Oil Corporation. The company’s stores are concentrated across numerous states, particularly in the southern, southwestern, and midwestern United States. Andrew Clyde serves as president and chief executive officer.

Murphy USA Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Fuel margins are stabilizing at a higher floor, with management viewing the $0.35-per-gallon back-half guidance as achievable and intentionally conservative. Supply-chain disruptions and rational competitor pricing could support margins into next year, with further upside if wholesale prices fall materially.
• Negative Sentiment: Merchandise guidance was moved toward the low end of the range as weather disruptions and pressure on consumers’ budgets weigh on discretionary and non-discretionary categories. Lottery and beer remain particularly challenged, although Murphy USA said it is holding or gaining share in major categories.
• Positive Sentiment: Same-store fuel volume rose 0.5% in the quarter and was up 1.5% in early August as falling prices enabled Murphy USA to create greater price separation. Management cited improving trends in markets such as Texas and potential stabilization in Colorado and Florida, while cautioning that competition remains elevated.
• Positive Sentiment: The Murphy Drive Rewards program continues to expand, with sign-ups exceeding 600,000 per month and new or lapsed customers approaching 46% of additions. Targeted onboarding offers are improving engagement and pump-to-store conversion, which management believes can make new customers more loyal.
• Neutral Sentiment: Organic new-store openings are expected near the low end at roughly 45, excluding potential tuck-in acquisitions, while capital spending is tracking near the high end because of store pull-forwards, maintenance investments, and land-bank expansion. Management plans to continue balancing growth investment with share repurchases; QuickChek is stabilizing but remains below its desired performance level.

Presentation

[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 the Murphy USA first 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 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 Christian Pikul. Please go ahead.

[Christian Pikul, VP of Investor Relations and FP&A at Murphy USA]

Hey, thank you, Freda. Welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining us this morning for this Q&A session. With me are Mindy West, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Donald Smith, Chief Financial Officer. As Freda said, we're happy to welcome more analysts to the research community covering Murphy USA. We're going to ask that you limit your initial questions to one and then get back in the queue afterwards. Please keep in mind that some of the comments discussed in today's Q&A session may be considered forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Please refer to the forward-looking statements section of either the earnings release or the management commentary document for further details. With that, I'm happy to open up the call.

[Operator]

Thank you. Please limit yourself to one question. You may re-enter the queue for any follow-ups. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your keypad. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question from Irene Nattel, RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

[Irene Nattel, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Thanks, good morning, everyone. I was just wanting some more color on the updated 2026 outlook, notably around two elements. The first being the fuel margin guidance, and the second being the, relatively speaking, the slightly low-end guidance on merch. So I was looking for more color on confidence and drivers of both of those, please.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Good morning, Irene. Welcome to the call. Thank you for your question. When thinking about retail margins for the rest of the year, it's very difficult to predict where we're going to land because we're in the middle of a lot of heightened volatility with a crisis that continues to ebb and flow and don't know where that will end. While we can't predict the macro environment, we are seeing a higher floor for retail margins. Competitors are remaining rational. Pricing is reflective of those needs of the marginal retailer to maintain their required returns. That's still reflecting that virtuous cycle that we've seen. What we haven't seen so far is a pronounced decline in price, which would gather incremental volumes for us, as well as expand the retail margin. At this point, we are not baking that into the forecast at all.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

You could call our margin forecast somewhat conservative. I would agree with that, but I would also say that that's intentional on our part because we don't know what it's going to be, and we manage our business to try to outperform our commitments. What we are saying is reflective of what we have high confidence that we can deliver at this point. With regard to the merch, obviously our consumer is experiencing some budget pressures, which are putting some pressures on the non-discretionary pieces of our merch business. Although, we have been very pleased with how resilient the customer has been year to date. I will tell you that target, when we originally set it at the beginning of the year, was a bit of a stretch target anyway. It was going to be very hard to get to the high-end range of that target.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

In the face of all the weather impact that we had in the first quarter, excuse me, while we had the winter storms and at one point had half our network closed. That results in just a loss of demand there for those time periods, along with what we think are still going to be some pressures on our customers' wallets as we go through the rest of the year. That gives us confidence that, yes, we will be in the range, but towards the low end of the range.

[Irene Nattel, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Thank you. That's really helpful. Can I ask a follow-up question?

[Christian Pikul, VP of Investor Relations and FP&A at Murphy USA]

We're just going to move on, Irene. Please get back in the queue.

[Irene Nattel, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Okay. Will do. Thank you.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Thank you, Irene.

[Operator]

Your next question from the line of Pooran Sharma with Stephens Inc. Your line is now open.

[Pooran Sharma, Analyst at Stephens Inc]

Good morning. Thanks for the question and congrats on posting the strong results. I wanted to get your sense on supply normalization. If current peace talks ultimately result in a durable resolution, how quickly do you think physical supplies could take to normalize given depleted inventories, the need to rebuild strategic reserves, disrupted shipping flows, potentially shuttered upstream and downstream assets? How long should investors expect supply tightness and volatility to persist even after the geopolitical situation improves?

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

A very good question, Pooran. Wish that I had the answer to that because all the things that you mentioned are great uncertainties in the market. Very unlike what we saw in 2022, where COVID did produce a demand shock, the Russia/Ukraine created a lot of volatility, but really had no impact on domestic supply at all. When you look at the current conflict, it obviously is a supply shock, is having a material impact on domestic inventories and flows, essentially globally. Our belief is a return to normal is not likely at all in the near term, yet to be seen is how much damage to infrastructure is there overseas, how long does that take to recover. You mentioned if this conflict resolves, I don't know that we have any line of sight to think that it's going to resolve quickly.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

That in and of itself may take a prolonged period. I think we're looking at well into next year before this thing even begins to unwind.

[Pooran Sharma, Analyst at Stephens Inc]

Great. Thank you for the color.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Thanks.

[Operator]

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

[Bonnie Herzog, Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Okay, thank you.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Good morning.

[Bonnie Herzog, Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Hi, good morning. I had a question on NTIs. You mentioned in the press release that you expect your NTI delivery to come in closer to the 45 new stores as opposed to, I guess, the upper end of guidance. I was hoping to hear what changed. Is construction taking longer this year, and/or did your original guidance maybe imply some M&A that now isn't happening? You also mentioned that you're pulling forward construction of new stores scheduled to open in 2027. Should we assume a faster ramp of NTIs next year? Ultimately, I guess, Mindy, how does this change the pace of growth and profitability, since I think you said in the past it takes a few years to reach run rate profitability on new stores. Thank you.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Thanks, Bonnie. Yes, this year we are going to be at the lower end of our stated range, but that is without the tuck-in acquisitions that we said would take us to the high end of the range. Those may come up, we don't know. We are only commenting now as to what we have in the pipeline, in the organic pipeline currently, as we continue to invest heavily in our team and in our new store pipeline. We think we are well-positioned to grow at this rate and above per year going forward. Pulling some stores forward earlier in the year, that will certainly be helpful to get them to ramp starting sooner. It does take, as a reminder, about three years for a store to get to full ramp. It's not an indication that our activity is taking longer or we're doing less.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

It's just indicative of what we felt we could deliver from an organic standpoint and absent any tuck-in acquisitions. The ramp, we think, is going to go as expected. As for M&A, large scale M&A, that's certainly not something that's on the radar for us and does not need to be, given the health of our organic pipeline.

[Bonnie Herzog, Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

All right. Thank you. I'll pass it on.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Thanks, Bonnie.

[Operator]

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

[John Park, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Hey, good morning. This is John Park on for Ed. Thanks for taking my question. Just the outlook for Q3 just given the ZYN lap year?

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Yeah, the ZYN lap is going to be a big one. We do believe that nicotine is going to continue to be a tailwind for us in the second half. Excitingly, we're actually seeing strength in combustibles, especially with the new value price Cowboy Cut cigarette that did really well. It was well-received by our customers. We actually had a hard time keeping that product on the shelf. As we look forward, we think that that's going to continue to be a source of strength. We also see some emerging other tobacco product opportunities in the second half. Some new gen pouches are going to come online. We expect some flavored vape products back in the market. Again, as you reminded us, we do have a tough third quarter comp as we lap that ZYN promotion.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Our margins this quarter were reflective of growth in the pouch category of other tobacco products, but continued resurgence in that cigarette category, which again, as a reminder, carries a lower margin than those other tobacco products. Q3 is going to be a tough comp, but we think overall the category is going to continue to be promotion heavy and we'll be a major participant in that.

[John Park, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Great. Thank you.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question, Omer with JPMorgan. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

[Analyst at JPMorgan]

Good morning. Thanks for the question. I wanted to ask on what you're seeing with rewards. Last quarter, you discussed elevated sign-ups in the program when fuel prices moved higher. How has the conversion of those sign-ups been in terms of driving more consistent customer visits by those new members, and then also converting those customers from the pump into the inside of the store? Thanks.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Yeah, that is a great question. As we said last quarter, our sign-ups had elevated to 600,000 a month up from around 400,000 a month. Happy to report that during the second quarter, sign-ups were even over that 600,000 mark every month during the quarter. Also, what we said was in the first quarter, what we were seeing was 40% of those new signees were either new or lapsed customers. That number has also ticked up in the second quarter to approaching 46% is new or lapsed customers. We love the MDR platform. It is making it easier for us to communicate with our customers, to encourage full membership, which we know translates into durable and loyal behavior.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

We are taking those new members on an automated journey with a series of offers to increase their engagement, building mechanisms that are very personal to the customers as they onboard, engage, and we retain them. You mentioned driving business inside the store. Just to give you a specific example, one of the ways that we are encouraging pump-to-store conversion is we were offering spend $5 inside the store, save $0.05 on gas as part of that new customer journey. What we are seeing is that has been very successful. We are also encouraged that those new members are engaging more with the program more often, and we know that they are going to be able to exhibit those loyal behaviors even sooner. We are thrilled with what we are seeing with the higher sign-ups.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

That is obviously expanding the top of the loyalty funnel, we are enhancing our ability to create positive customer relationships that we know is going to help drive future growth. We are continuing to refine the platform, by the way, continuing to upgrade it, make it better for our customer. Thanks for the question.

[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]

Hey, Mindy and team. Thanks for taking the time and the questions.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

I love it.

[Bobby Griffin, Analyst at Raymond James]

I appreciate all the detail on the volumes given in your script, and I think it's interesting you're getting more and more states flipping to positive volume with really two as the drag, big ones, Colorado and Florida. When you look at the numbers you gave us in that prepared remarks, where do you think you are on that competitive curve? I know that's almost impossible probably to answer, but is that drag getting better or worse sequentially from those two states? Is there any gleanings from other states that tell you you're getting towards the bottom of that competitive drag and we might be starting to lap it?

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

I would hate to call the bottom because I might be surprised with new competitive intensity in other areas. I like that you mentioned Colorado because that does represent at least some hope while volumes are down. Our total volume is down much less than that as we are continuing to open new stores and grab share as well. Margins, just like last quarter, showed improvement actually up over 20%, just like they were in the first quarter. Competitive entry even there does remain high. We're seeing improvement to margins as volumes are redistributing across the new stores. Seeing some of that in Florida too, where volume continues to be down, but margins are actually healthier, so that may indicate a turn in things.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

In Texas, as we referenced, which is a large market for us, our volumes are up as that represents a more mature, steady market where we've had a lot of competitive entry, but that entry has normalized and everybody now has their share and knows their place in how to play the game. Not ready to call the thing and say it's over because I think we're still going to have competitive pressures, whether it be in Colorado, Florida, or some new location. The recipe continues to endure over time where it's painful in the beginning when those competitors come in, same as it is when we come in because everybody's competing for that share, and we're going to fight to retain our share of that too, which results in lower margins for us as those volumes get redistributed.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Over the course of time, as the competitive entry happens and volume gets reallocated, things get to a new normal with margins actually stabilizing at a higher level than they were before the competitive entries. Hopefully you're right, but I do appreciate your question. We are seeing some green shoots at least to be able to talk about.

[Operator]

Your next 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]

Good morning, congrats on the strong results. Bonnie kind of touched on the NTI cadence, but I wanted to reconcile it with the capital spending. NTI is down to 45 and RNR is at approximately 10, but you moved CapEx up. Can you quantify what that additional CapEx is going to, like land, construction pull forward, et cetera, and how much of it is timing versus others? Just as a corollary, how should we think about share buybacks in that context?

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Okay. Great dual questions. Yes, CapEx is trending to the high end of the range as we want to make sure that we deliver on our NTI program, and we will pull forward stores if we need to, so that's part of the estimate in case we're able to do that. We're also making some very proactive life cycle investments in our existing stores. Proactively replacing dispensers, HVAC units, safes, things like that. Rather than fixing a dispenser four times, we're going ahead at a dispenser that we know is nearing the end of life and going ahead and replacing those. We are deliberately refunneling some of our CapEx to those activities. We're also intent on ensuring that we have future growth by investing in our land bank.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

That is a clear priority for us going forward too, which again is taking us towards the high end of the range, even absent the raze and rebuild activities. When we think about capital allocation and in particular share repurchase, we are definitely going to lean into share repurchase as our capital allocation strategy has not changed. We're going to deliver capital for growth, and we have a slate of opportunities to do that. Share repurchase does remain one of our main levers, and we will continue to emphasize that as well. The good news is the business throws off enough cash flow for us to be balanced at that over the sweep of time, and we can easily afford to continue to grow and accelerate growth with new-to-industry sites while at the same time maintaining disciplined share repurchases.

[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]

Good morning. Thanks for taking the question, and congrats on the quarter here. I had a couple of things I wanted to ask about the same-store fuel volumes. Mindy, hate to make this a multi-parter, but I'm wondering if you'd give us a little color on, for one, how that trended through the quarter and has been tracking as we've gotten into August. How you think about retaining these incremental customers that you're bringing in, if you are seeing incremental customers as a part of that higher volume. Maybe what efforts might be new to retain those customers that perhaps didn't exist in the past when you sometimes saw a benefit from these spikes in gas that led to incremental customers for you. Thanks.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Okay. That's a very clever way of turning one question into three. I hope I remember all that you wanted me to cover here. I think your first question was to talk about same-store volumes. Look, we view what we did in the second quarter volume performance of a positive 0.5% as very encouraging, especially given the pricing environment. While RBOB prices finished the quarter down 2%, the quarter itself was characterized by a lot of extreme offsetting movement. We saw a run up in April, down in May, versus a flat June. We know that absolute price level matters. We saw stores above $4, though only 18% of the time during the quarter, which we called out on our script.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Also, price direction matters just as much as the absolute price level, if not more, as you know, in a rising environment, competitors move higher in response. That compresses spreads across the market, limits our ability to create that important separation. We saw that in April volume for same store, whereas we were essentially flattish to slightly down with that upward increase in prices. When prices fall, competitors are going to react at different speeds. That gives us the opportunity to create separation and drive incremental volume. That's exactly what we saw in May. RBOB declined 16%. Our same-store volume increased 1.6%, which was even more pronounced during the last half of May. RBOB fell actually 18%, same-store volume ticked up over 2% versus prior year.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

When we look at July, again, July itself started a bit soft with Fourth of July holiday impacted by rain throughout a lot of our network. The run-up in price that you saw during the month impacted our ability to differentiate based on price, analogous to two out of the three months that we saw in the second quarter. As we look into August, which granted, we only have five days of results, volume is actually up 1.5% as the market has dropped some. Key point here is I think volume is performing exactly as we would expect. We opened today, by the way, also, in the high 30s, the margin isn't bad either. I think May demonstrated, and so far August has as well, our ability to capture volume when falling wholesale allows us to differentiate on price and meaningfully drive it.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

When we think about our capabilities versus prior year, I go back again to the MDR that we just talked about. We just have an increased ability to be able to communicate with our customer, know our customer, understand the frequency of the trips, where we may be leaking a trip or two with that customer, and be able to drive more targeted promotions to that customer to drive that incremental behavior that we want to see. I think we're in much better shape now that we've got these new customers here, yes, we do have evidence that customers are trading down to a Murphy platform. We now have a greater ability to keep them and make them more sticky to us than what we have ever had in the past. Hopefully that answered all that you wanted me to.

[Operator]

The queue is open for additional questions and follow-ups. 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. Our next question is from Corey Tarlowe with Jefferies. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

[Corey Tarlowe, Analyst at Jefferies]

Great. Thanks. Mindy, I have one question then just a quick follow-up to the question that was just asked, if that's okay. First, I think you said August, I just wanted to clarify, was in the high 30s. RBOB, I think, started to gap down pretty materially with the start of August. I'm wondering what changed versus the second quarter, and then also as my broader question, during periods of prior volatility, fuel supply does tend to be a pretty meaningful earnings benefit. It would just be helpful to get your perspective on what you saw in the quarter, and then any commentary on how we might be able to think about that versus what you've seen quarter to-date. Thanks so much.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Thanks, Corey. Yes, your question about August, yes, you're correct. Opening today with margins in the high 30s, which is actually higher than what it was when we began the month, because remember, margins are a function not just of the direction of prices, but reflective of what is the competition doing and how is the market restoring and how quickly is that happening. Which can vary from week to week or month to month, and also dependent on when that price increase or decrease happens, because if it happens close to a weekend, people are already positioned where they're going to be, so you really don't see any incremental new behavior until you begin the next week's. That just gives you an example of what August is doing.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

I do think it's important that as we're seeing this fall-off in price, we are getting that separation and our volumes are ticking up just exactly as we would expect given those conditions. Asking about fuel supply, yeah, we do know that we're advantaged in this environment. Again, this is a crisis that actually has impacted supply of movement and availability. What we're seeing is this is exactly the type of environment that underlines why we value the assets and capabilities that we have, because our ability to acquire at the ship channel direct from refinery, ship it up the pipe, hold it either in our terminals or in the 100 terminals where we have access from third parties is something that gets magnified during periods like this. Versus a time period when you think about last year when product was ample, it was everywhere.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

You could buy at the rack and not be really that much disadvantaged versus us having these assets. I think what you saw in the second quarter identifies that because what we call the controllables piece of the business, which is our ability to acquire product and through all these various mechanisms, what it would be versus buying at the rack was advantaged during this quarter versus what you saw same time last year, where product was long and loose. We were returning from the controllables part of our business only about $0.025 versus the over $0.07 that we posted this quarter. Uncontrollables, as we went into great detail to explain during the last quarter, that's going to be a function of is the market rising or falling?

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

It's that controllables piece that really tells you a lot about what's going on in the fuel supply market and whether product is plentiful or scarce. When product is scarce, again, that really underlines why we value the assets and the capabilities that we have.

[Operator]

Your next question from the line of Irene Nattel with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

[Irene Nattel, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Thanks, thanks for the additional questions. Listening to everything that you're saying and taking into consideration that we're likely going to be in a tight supply environment into some point next year, recognizing we don't know when, I'm recognizing it's early. The $0.35 all-in margin that you're conservatively guiding to in the back half of the year, I think is higher than what many of us would have expected. Should we be thinking about a similar kind of level next year as potential, as a floor? How should we be thinking about it?

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Great question, Irene. Thank you for your patience getting back in the queue when you could have asked a multiple-part question from the beginning. Thank you for getting back in line. I think what we're seeing is we're getting good margins absent a sustained price fall-off. What we're seeing is margins are stabilizing at higher levels when they find where the bottom is, more so than what we've seen previously. I think us saying that $0.35 is doable for the back half of the year, it's because we're seeing that we have a very stable margin structure. Restoration activity has been very rational. While we may see margins fall more quickly from the peaks, they are stabilizing at much higher levels, that's raising the floor. When we think about peak to peak, we've seen higher margins before.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

We saw them in 2022, we're seeing them higher than what they were in 2022. When we think about last year, I know a lot of people think that over time, results are going to conform to the mean, return to normal. I would remind everyone that 2025 was not normal. It was an abnormal year, just the opposite that this one is, but there was nothing normal about it. It just was abnormal in the opposite direction. I think that the fuel margin story continues to be those marginal retailers whose costs are increasing, who are passing that on through the form of higher margin. That's why we're seeing the floor continue to rise every year, giving us at least some confidence that through the back half of this year, that $0.35 is achievable.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

If you ask me could we outperform that and where would we do it? It would probably be on the fuel margin side and maybe even the volume side if we saw a pronounced price fall-off during that time.

[Irene Nattel, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

That's very helpful. Do you think, Mindy, that it's sustainable as we look ahead to 2026, 2027? Do you think that this is another sustainable leveling up?

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

That's a great question. I think we're just continuing to see that virtuous cycle that we've talked to about breakeven equilibriums continuing to move higher. I think, yes, we will continue to see that happen. We don't see any evidence why that would not happen. Obviously, we're not ready to come out with next year's guidance. We're going to have a lot of factors that we need to work in. I think the support we're seeing in retail margins is incrementally positive to our long-term view of the business, all else being equal. Can't predict the macro, but I can also speak to the health of our business. We're executing well, and we're seeing the margin even without that price fall-off. I think that is significant.

[Irene Nattel, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

That's really helpful. Thank you.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Thank you, Irene.

[Operator]

Your next question from the line of Daniel Guglielmo from Capital One Securities. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

[Daniel Guglielmo, Analyst at Capital One Securities]

Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. On the organic growth, have there been any noticeable changes in construction costs that you've seen at NTIs or raise and rebuilds this year?

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

On order of magnitude, not huge. Inflation continues to tick up, that's been the case over the last several years, that has been more than compensated for by what we just talked about, what's going on with the retail fuel margin. The returns that we're generating versus what you would've seen us have five years ago, while the stores are costing more, they're actually higher returning just due to this fuel margin impact that we're talking about. Yes, they're trending higher, certainly, not at a alarming pace, and certainly well within the boundaries of what we're seeing on the overall return profile with the fuel margin.

[Daniel Guglielmo, Analyst at Capital One Securities]

Great. Thank you. Appreciate it.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Thank you.

[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, Mindy. I'll try and make this an easy one here after my multi-part earlier.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Hi, Brad.

[Brad Thomas, Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Just hoping for an update on QuickChek, its performance, and how you're thinking about their EBITDA in the second half. Thanks.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Yeah. Great question, Brad. Thank you. What I would say is QC performance is stabilizing. We're seeing food and beverage sales and margin turning positive, and we're doing some deliberate things to cause that. We're growing the sandwich category. That's critical to improving performance. We're also seeing higher margins as we are intentionally focusing on the economics of those offers. We're seeing growth in bakery, employing some new recipe engineering for our buttered roll. We had a line extension. We now offer croissants. Hot and iced coffee results are improving. We've relaunched Free Coffee Fridays, so we're seeing sales and units up while the broader market struggles. We're continuing to evolve. I mentioned this in first quarter, evolve QC into a sales-first culture similar to Murphy. We're seeing stronger promotional response as a result of that. During the second quarter, QC had a fantastic candy contest.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

They executed a BOGO, and it was truly Murphy-like performance, so super proud of them for that. Our leadership structure continues to make positive changes from both a culture and store performance perspective. We're focused on improving the basics of the business, labor shrink, improving margins, simplifying the operating model, deliberate things that we're doing. Is it back to where we want it to be? No. I think we're turning and headed in the right direction, focused on the right things with the right leadership in place. I'm happy with what we're seeing so far.

[Brad Thomas, Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Very helpful. Thanks so much.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question from the line of Corey Tarlowe with Jefferies. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

[Corey Tarlowe, Analyst at Jefferies]

Great. Thanks. Mindy, I had one more, and it was just as related to merchandise performance, specifically if you could talk about Murphy's stores. I recall the performance, I believe, last quarter was a bit better than what you had seen versus the overall fleet in QuickChek. Was curious if you could highlight any trends there for us. Thanks so much.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Are you talking nicotine, non-nicotine?

[Corey Tarlowe, Analyst at Jefferies]

Non-nicotine would be ideal.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Yeah. Non-nicotine, it's reflecting strength in our core center of the store categories, but being offset by pressures and things like lottery and beer, which are not unique to Murphy USA, by the way. We managed to hold or gain share across all our major merchandise categories, and I think that is enormously important. We were able to also grow overall merchandise contribution dollars, deliver positive margin growth, all that within a customer environment that is under pressure and that customer's remaining selective. When you peel under the apple a little bit, we saw strength in packaged beverage, anchored primarily in energy. Candy faced a tough comp, and we are creatively finding ways to boost that category, finding success in chocolate and also non-chocolate promotions. Had a Hi-Chew promotion in the second quarter that was hugely successful following a really successful Mamba promotion last year.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Lotto lottery remains a challenge. As consumers' wallets are pinched, they're not spending as much on that typical product. They also have other ways in which they can gamble online. Beer remains a challenge, and major suppliers are saying that, too. Consumer preferences are just moving away from alcohol. That's an industry trend, not just for us. Overall, I think our results, both at Murphy USA center of store and QuickChek center of store, are strong. Remember, nicotine is merchandise, too, and we are continuing to take share and drive that category. I think our momentum in the second quarter demonstrated improved cigarette performance, exceptional pouch momentum, and reinforces our ability to continue to grow share, and hold share across the entire store, not just nicotine.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

I think it demonstrates the strength of our offer and the consistency of demand from that customer for whom price matters, and we do identify with them as being low cost.

[Corey Tarlowe, Analyst at Jefferies]

Great. Thank you so much, and best of luck.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Thank you.

[Operator]

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

[John Park, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Hey, it's John Park on again. Can you talk about the unchanged down guide? You're clearly better in the first half. Anything that suggests you wouldn't be towards the higher end of that range here in 2H or for the year?

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

I'm sorry, you cut out. Which guidance piece were you talking about when you say unchanged down?

[John Park, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

The gallon guide of down one to down three. Same store gallon guide.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Oh, the retail margin. Yeah. We've kind of already addressed Cents per gallon or margin? Cents per gallon, I'm sorry, or volume?

[John Park, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Sorry. It was just the volume.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Okay. Volume, because again, we don't know what's going to happen in the second half of the year. If we continue to have upward swings in price, again, that's not conducive to us creating separation versus our competitors. What we are not baking in at all is any prolonged decrease in prices where we would have the ability to attract both volume and margin. Again, you can call the results conservative, and that's fair, because if prices do fall for an extended period, we would expect our volume performance to outperform these assumptions. We would also likely think our margin performance would outperform these assumptions, but we would rather guide to the conservative side and hit it, or beat it versus disappoint. Happy with first half performance, and we will see total volumes grow as we add new stores to the network in the fourth quarter.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Again, just don't want to get ahead of ourselves and bank on super high volumes or even extended volumes from what we're seeing. Let's just have something that we feel credible about and know that we can deliver. Hopefully, we're in a great position two calls from now to tell you about how we dramatically beat what we said that we would do here on August the 6th.

[John Park, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Awesome. Thank you.

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Thank you.

[Operator]

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

[Mindy West, President and CEO at Murphy USA]

Thank you guys for your time on the call. We do believe that our second quarter performance demonstrates the resilience of our model. Fuels highlighted the strength of our competitive advantages, while merchandise contribution dollars grew despite category pressures. Those results reinforce our confidence in the business, our ability to continue creating value for our customers and our shareholders for the long term. Our go-forward guidance may seem conservative, but that is intentional. Thank you for your interest in Murphy USA, and thanks for joining our call. Look forward to talking to you next time.

[Operator]

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

Participants

Executives

• Christian Pikul, VP of Investor Relations and FP&A
• Mindy West, President and CEO

Analysts

• Irene Nattel, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets
• Pooran Sharma, Analyst at Stephens Inc
• Bonnie Herzog, Analyst at Goldman Sachs
• John Park, Analyst at Wells Fargo
• Analyst at JPMorgan
• Bobby Griffin, Analyst at Raymond James
• Jacob Aiken-Phillips, Analyst at Melius Research
• Brad Thomas, Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets
• Corey Tarlowe, Analyst at Jefferies
• Daniel Guglielmo, Analyst at Capital One Securities