Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) And your first question comes from the line of Ben Brownlow with Morgan Keegan.
Ben Brownlow – Morgan Keegan
Hi, good morning. Uzi, can you talk a little bit about the acquisition environment, obviously there are lot of opportunities out there and just kind of tie that in with reduction in CapEx and just your thoughts on maintaining a healthy balance sheet versus growth?
Uzi Yemin
Well, good morning. Are you talking about the C-Store environment or refining or both?
Ben Brownlow – Morgan Keegan
Both.
Uzi Yemin
Okay, let me start with the c-stores. You already know that Exxon announced that they want to sell I think 2,600 stores. And that would put I think pressure on the market with the announcement, apparently they are not going to do any acquisitions this year. We see the multiples coming down. You know as much as I am that the c-stores environment was really tough up to the month of call it July when prices start to decline a little bit. You see many competitors closing their stores. We in the markets that we are in we see many stores just shut down because they don’t have the ability to finance the working capital. All this puts a lot of pressure in the marketplace favorably toward people that want to be acquired.
We are preparing ourselves in that regard by lowering and you don’t have the number is front of you but I can give you that, lowering our debt at the macro side. Ed mentioned that we went down to I think $170 million and with much better margins in the last call it five six weeks, we are able to lower that leverage even much more. That will free up capacity to make acquisitions under the Mapco facility we hope. The leverage on the Mapco is going down dramatically, that’s on that side.
Refining, most refineries in the country as you all know, they make too much money in the last 12 months. Multiples are again down but not only multiples are going down, EBITDA is going down dramatically, and we know of several refineries that are for sale. Today I think Western announced that they are going to sell the Yorktown Refinery and I think with many refineries don’t make money we’ll see more and more refineries coming to the market. I think that sellers still need to adjust to the new number but eventually it will happen. And let me remind all of us 2001, 2002 were very similar in the refining environment to what we see today and that resulted in many transactions that ended up producing a lot of cash and money to the purchasers.
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