Walgreens achieves record sales, Rx growth

DEERFIELD, Ill. — Walgreens announced on Tuesday record sales and earnings for the second quarter as it celebrated a milestone of filling 1-in-every-5 retail prescriptions for the first time in the company's history.

Net earnings for the quarter were $739 million, or 80 cents per diluted share, compared with $669 million, or 68 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

Sales during the quarter rose 8.9% to a record $18.5 billion. Same-store sales rose 4.1%, as front-end same-store sales rose 4.3%. Duane Reade stores are not included in the same-store sales results. Pharmacy same-store sales rose 3.9%.

The company filled 205 million prescriptions, an increase of 6.9% over last year's second quarter. Prescription sales, which accounted for 62.9% of sales in the quarter, climbed 7.7%. The company exceeded by 3.1 percentage points the industrywide prescription growth rate, excluding Walgreens, during the same period, as reported by IMS Health. For the second quarter, Walgreens increased its retail prescription market share to 20.1%.

"We achieved a milestone during the quarter by filling 1-of-every-5 retail prescriptions for the first time in company history," stated Greg Wasson, president and CEO of Walgreens. "Our front-end sales were led by great execution from our merchandising, marketing and operations team, resulting in a strong holiday season in December and a strong Valentine's Day performance in February. A later onset to the cough-cold and flu season, compared with a year-ago also helped front-end comparable-store sales show solid increases for the quarter as both customer traffic and basket size increased."