Walgreens Logs Strong Q3

Walgreens Sees Green Q3

An apple a day will keep the doctor away, but for retailers, there’s nothing like a good quarterly earnings report to cure what ails them — not to mention to keep angry shareholders from calling for executive shakeups.

Fortunately, for Walgreens Boots Alliance, Q3 2016 represented another strong quarter for the retail pharmacy chain. With its acquisition of former rival Rite Aid progressing without any serious obstacles, Walgreens announced on Wednesday (July 6) that its net sales for the quarter topped $29.5 billion, with $21.2 billion coming from its retail pharmacy division. This represents a 2.4 percent year-over-year increase, and along with other bumps in same-store, non-pharmacy sales and prescriptions filled in comparable locations, the report paints a promising picture that Walgreens CEO Stefano Pessina believes is just the beginning for a long reign of retail pharmacy dominance for the company.

“We delivered solid results in the quarter, while continuing to make progress in several key areas, including our work to develop long-term strategic relationships and pursue partnership opportunities,” Pessina said in a statement. “I’m pleased to report that, since the quarter end, we achieved our goal set four years ago of at least $1 billion in combined net synergies in fiscal year 2016 related to the strategic combination with Alliance Boots. This provides us with a strong platform to further enhance operating performance, to meet the challenges of the current volatility in many of our markets and to better position our company for long-term success.”

This comes off of news that Walgreens is only planning on shuttering 500 of its newly acquired Rite Aid locations rather than a previous estimate of more than double in order to comply with antitrust regulations, Fortune reported. When all is said and done, Walgreens could operate more than 12,000 store fronts across the country.