Walgreens (WAG $34.61 -1.42) reports fourth quarter earnings of $0.57
per share, excluding a $0.30 tax benefit but including a $0.02 negative impact
from the drugstore.com acq. and a $0.01 negative impact from the Rewiring and
Growth initiatives, $0.01 better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of
$0.56.
Revenues rose 6.5% year/year to $17.97 billion versus the $17.88 billion
consensus.
Total sales in comparable stores (those open more than a year) increased 4.4% in
the quarter, while front-end comparable drugstore sales increased 4.6% in the
quarter. Customer traffic in comparable stores increased 1.6% for the fourth
quarter, while basket size increased 3.0%.
Prescription sales, which accounted for 65.4% of sales in the quarter, climbed
5.7%. Gross profit margins decreased 0.2% point vs. the year-ago quarter to
28.2%. Lower front-end margins negatively impacted overall margins in the
quarter, while retail pharmacy margins were flat. There has been no substantive
progress in the contract renewal negotiations with Express Scripts (ESRX).






