Posted on 10/15/2024 7:30:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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.
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.
Walgreens announced the closures as part of its fiscal fourth-quarter and full-year earnings, which beat Wall Street's expectations. In a statement, CEO Tim Wentworth acknowledged the company was in the midst of a "turnaround" that would "take time."
"We are confident it will yield significant financial and consumer benefits over the long term,” Wentworth said.
In June, Walgreens said it planned to close a “significant” number of its underperforming stores by 2027. Tuesday’s announcement appears to be the company’s first exact estimate of how many locations it will shutter.
Both Walgreens and rival CVS are facing a difficult operating environment, fighting to be profitable as consumers shift their habits.
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.
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.
PBMs have been recently accused of inflating drug costs and are the target of multiple legislative and regulatory reforms and actions.
The end result has been a greater number of "pharmacy deserts" across the U.S.
“The retail pharmacy industry is going through a period of soul-searching, trying to understand the best model to reach the consumer,”
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
How . . . interesting.
“Consumer behavior”. That’s an interesting way to phrase it. The stores they are closing are in the areas where shoplifting is off the charts and allowed with no repercussions.
Our recent experience with Walgreens is that most of their prices have gotten very high. Not worth it.
And yet Rite-Aid is gone.
My recent experience in Walgreens in the Bronx was that a lot of their items were behind padlocked cases, even Zirterc, the anti-allergy pill.
I had to call an attendant to open the case for me to buy the item.
YES!
If you can’t actually get the item into your paws, you won’t be purchasing it.
We’ve gone from:
1. the old days where most merchandise was behind the counter and the proprietor was only too happy to assist you and place whatever you wanted into your hands or on the counter for purchase — result: easy shopping with assistance
2. the days of most of our lives where stores put the merchandise out in reach of the shoppers, who then could easily pick up what they wished to purchase and take it to the counter to pay — result: easy shopping but without assistance
3. today... where Walgreens and other stores lock up the merchandise so the shoppers can’t get it. And then provide no customer assistance (or next to none) with opening up the locked cases to liberate the merchandise from its incarceration ... result: shopping now basically impossible so the lack of assistance doesn’t matter anyway
is it any wonder that sales are DOWN? what kind of geniuses are these stores hiring into bananagement positions, anyway?
3.
All the more reason to move your prescriptions now to a local, family-owned drug store and support small business in your economy...
I actually asked the attendant, why they’re doing this when it wasn’t like this in the past.
She had just one answer: RAMPANT SHOPLIFTING !
“In 2021, CVS said it would close about 900 stores, or about 10% of its U.S. locations, from 2022 to 2024.”
CVS owns the pharmacy/clinic services inside Target.
yes, the shoplifting has gotten insanely out of hand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY_q0IfIJHY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnru2z7Ljz4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4OYU73Ht0o
I liquidated my Walgreens stock back in early 2019 - at 70 a share....
Why? You see, in 2018 - they signed a huge deal with a company called “Cooler Screens” (which happened to be run by a former Walgreens executive) that created “video screen doors for cooler cases”. Sure, sure - the company *promised* something like those tailored ads out of Minority Report but the reality is that Walgreens spent like, 9 figures, to replace their store cooler doors with new technology that... MIMICKED TRANSPARENT GLASS!
That was the point when I knew - didn’t know how long it would take, but knew with certainty - it was company run by idiots.
And I never invest in companies run by idiots because idiots *never* make you money in the long term. It may take time, but eventually - the stupidity just catches up and sinks the company.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/walgreens-confirms-it-will-buy-rite-aid-for-9-41-billion/
Both them and CVS would keep properties from competitors they bought out so competition couldn’t move in. That’s how you’d end up with two within blocks of each other
Walgreens deserves to go out of business in my opinion. Their pharmacy sucks.
Another area is that prescription drug refills, and such are increasingly going online. Amazon has stepped into this with unique packaging for people taking medication’s. I suspect this trend will continue. Also, I think a lot of people are using local pharmacies. More than chain pharmacies I know I do.
Prices have gone up everywhere not just at the pharmacies
Expect accusation of racism over which stores close.
True, prices have shot up everywhere (especially groceries, diners, and rents)
but Walgreen used to have quite decent (not deep discount but reasonable) prices on most of its merchandise
now, it is among the highest priced stores for many or most of the items
it is a quite noticeable shift in business, pricing strategy
... above the price levels of some other stores
just saying. it really doesn’t matter much since Walgreen locked up much of its inventory and usually has no customer assistance to get at the things we want to buy. we just go next door or order online (no locked display cases and Amazon boxes almost fall apart on their own initiative so easy access to our purchases, smiles smiles)
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