(Radio Iowa) – The Ankeny-based Casey’s convenience store chain is upping its projection for expansion in this fiscal year. Casey’s Vice President for Investor Relations Brian Johnson talked about the change in a conference call on their first quarter results. “We now expect store growth to be approximately 270 units for the fiscal year, and that’s up from our previously disclosed 100 units,” Johnson says. The increase comes as Casey’s moves toward completing the acquisition of a group of 148 stores in Texas and 50 in Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi.
The large scale acquisition of those stores from the FIKES Wholesale company push them ahead of their timeline for expansion.

Casey’s C-E-O Darin Rebelez says he’s not sure if they would buy another large group because of the cost. “We probably have to think really hard about going down that path just to just from a balance sheet perspective, we have a capacity to do it,” he says, “it is whether we want to take on that amount of leverage?” Rebelez says the acquisition team will be looking at options for smaller groups of stores. “We’ll also continue our organic growth, our new to industry stores. We’ll pull back a little bit, just to help us manage the balance sheet a little bit,” he says. He says they will check out opportunities for growth as they become available.

“Deals take time, and you have to be in the market to be in the market, so so to speak. So we will continue to be looking and see what’s out there,” Rebelez says. Casey’s will have 29-hundred stores once the FIKES acquisition is completed by the end of the year. The company reported an increase in net income compared to the same quarter last year with an increase in same store sales and a more than 31-percent increase in gross fuel profit.