I heard talk that referenced old stocks. I don't think that most Canadians understand how efficient the retailing of petroleum is--how efficient we are as retailers.
If you take Walmart as being the gold standard of retailers, their top-line gross profit is 16% of the sale. They flip their inventories roughly once a month, sometimes a bit less. Allan and I get 5%, and we flip our inventories every 48 hours. The result is we do not have any slack. We hit the rack, we buy the product, and we get what we can on the street. And that's essentially what we get. What we find is that we end up at 5% and it's sufficiently competitive.
Since 1991, in my province we've gone from 940 stations down to 380. If it's so easy and we're making so much money then we would have more stations, not fewer. So how do you understand it? It's hard for most consumers to understand that if you don't carry the inventory and you buy at a higher price, you'll obviously look to raise the price to make a margin out of it. It's a level of competition in inventory flipping and low price margins.
There's a reason Walmart doesn't sell gas in Canada: they can't make money doing it.