Walgreen Co., one of the leading drugstore chain operators in the U.S., recently posted that it had its highest quarterly sales in three years brought about increased sales on prescription drugs thus sent its shares up in premarket trading for over 3%.
According to Walgreens, the company filled 211 million subscriptions just this quarter, which is 4.2% higher than that of the year 2013 with most of the help coming from growth in prescription drugs sales for Medicare Part D patients. The company’s records show that the prescription sales accounted for 67.7% of the quarter’s sales, which increased 9.3% compared to that of last year’s fourth quarter.
The company reported a 6.2% increase in fourth quarter sales compared to the year-ago period while the fiscal 2014 year ended 31st of August showed an increase of 5.8% total sales of around $76.4 billion.
From last year’s $17.94 billion total income, the overall revenue at the end of the fourth quarter went up to $19.06 million, while for the net loss data the company had $239 million which is equal to 25 cents per share in the quarter. The figures of the net loss of Walgreen included non-cash losses due to the implementation of the company’s Alliance Boots call option which is around $866 million.
In August, Deerfield which is the Walgreens located in Illinois, bought more than half of the total shares of Alliance Boots, the largest pharmacy chain in Europe. Walgreen posts that it will be paying for 144.3 million shares of Europe’s pharmacy chain for 3.3 billion pounds in cash. This is just one of the first moves of Walgreen on its joint endeavor with Alliance Boots.
In total, Walgreen has lost 14% of its value after it announced that it will be buying out the remaining Alliance Boots shares in August.
Last Tuesday’s trading ended with the shares of Walgreens showing an increase to $61.50 which is equivalent to around 3.2%.
Share this:
