Walgreens said Tuesday it plans to close 1,200 stores over the next three years as it seeks to further downsize its footprint amid flagging sales and changing consumer behavior. <\/p>\n
The pharmacy chain said 500 of the closings would occur over the next 12 months. It estimates a quarter of its 8,700 stores in the U.S. are unprofitable.<\/p>\n
Walgreens announced the closures as part of its fiscal fourth-quarter and full-year earnings, which beat Wall Street\u2019s expectations. In a statement, CEO Tim Wentworth acknowledged the company was in the midst of a \u2018turnaround\u2019 that would \u2018take time.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018We are confident it will yield significant financial and consumer benefits over the long term,\u201d Wentworth said. <\/p>\n
In June, Walgreens said it planned to close a \u201csignificant\u201d number of its underperforming stores by 2027. Tuesday\u2019s announcement appears to be the company\u2019s first exact estimate of how many locations it will shutter.<\/p>\n
Both Walgreens and rival CVS are facing a difficult operating environment, fighting to be profitable as consumers shift their habits. <\/p>\n
In 2021, CVS said it would close about 900 stores, or about 10% of its U.S. locations, from 2022 to 2024. Rite Aid recently emerged from bankruptcy and will operate as a privately owned company.<\/p>\n
Pharmacy chains have been squeezed in part by changes to the prescription drug market, including lower reimbursements from pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), the third-party companies that manage prescription drug benefits for health insurance companies. <\/p>\n
PBMs have been recently accused of inflating drug costs and are the target of multiple legislative and regulatory reforms and actions. <\/p>\n
The end result has been a greater number of \u2018pharmacy deserts\u2019 across the U.S. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe retail pharmacy industry is going through a period of soul-searching, trying to understand the best model to reach the consumer,\u201d Neil Saunders, GlobalData\u2019s retail managing director, told CNBC in August. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Walgreens said Tuesday it plans to close 1,200 stores over the next three years as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5236,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}