So Rite-Aid continues to do well:
Shares of Rite Aid were up slightly Thursday morning by 3% to more than $8.85 in early morning trading, following the company’s report of March results.
For the four weeks ended March 28, overall same-store sales increased 4.3%, with a front-end same-store sales increase of 2.5% and pharmacy same-store sales increase of 5.1%.
And Walgreens is on fire, although they’re closing 200 stores (while adding 200 more):
Walgreens Boots Alliance on Thursday reported quarterly earnings for the first time as a merged company, posting $21 billion in sales across its U.S. retail operations, up 7.4%, for its second quarter ended Feb. 28.
Total sales in comparable stores increased 6.9% compared with the same quarter a year ago. Retail comparable-store sales increased 2.5% in the second quarter with improved retail product margins compared with last year’s second quarter.
Pharmacy sales, which accounted for 64.4% of division sales in the quarter, increased 10.1% compared with the year-ago quarter, while pharmacy sales in comparable stores increased 9.7%. The division filled 224 million prescriptions (including immunizations) on a 30-day adjusted basis in the quarter, an increase of 4.8% over last year’s second quarter.
No results yet from the 3rd drug store chain (the one with 3 letters in its name.) Will be interesting to see if they’ve recaptured any of the sales lost from not carrying cigarettes (which has helped Rite-Aid quite a bit.)