Caltex expresses interest in buying 530 Woolworths’ petrol stations

Caltex Australia may have exited it oil refinery operations in Sydney in October 2014, but the company is still wants to expand the number of its petrol stations in the country. It is interested in acquiring the 530 Caltex stations owned by Woolworths which the supermarket giant wants to sell.

Woolworths is still evaluating if it would keep or sell its petrol business, reports Sydney Morning Herald. It has received proposals, both incomplete and conditional, from several interested buyers of the stations, some of which have convenience stores.

In August, Caltex Chief Executive Julian Segal was quoted as saying, “It's clear we've had a good relationship with Woolworths since 2003 and would like to continue that relationship … If the petrol business is for sale, we would naturally be interested in it.”

In the last 12 months to June, the petrol stations earned for Woolworths $4.6 billion in sales. But the underlying volume of petrol sold was 2.4 percent lower because of redrawing of Woolworths’s tie-up with Caltex, resulting in the exclusion of 113 sites operated by Caltex from inclusion in Woolworths’s numbers.

Besides its petrol business, Woolworths also started to sell its hardware business, Masters Home Improvement, from which it would gain about $1.5 billion if the store as well as the property is sold, reports Business Insider Australia. Masters has an ongoing fire sale wherein products are discounted with the aim of disposing its inventory by early December 2016.

Woolworths reported a full-year net loss of $1.23 billion which explains why it is selling some of its businesses as part of the company’s $1-billion restructuring strategy.

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Source: Livewire Markets