Walgreens Boots Alliance - statistics & facts

Walgreens in the U.S. pharmacy and drugstore retail landscape

Walgreens is one of the leading pharmacy retailers in the United States, with an enterprise value of around 85 billion U.S. dollars and almost one-fifth share in the prescription drug market. Walgreens is only rivalled by CVS Health, the market leader in U.S. pharmacy retail. Similar dynamics in the Walgreens – CVS Health competition are observed in retail store presence of respective companies. Both Walgreens and CVS Health operate thousands of pharmacy and retail stores across the United States. But CVS Health takes the upper hand with a store count of 9,962 against 9,021 Walgreens stores.

A recent move towards retail expansion on the part of Walgreens was buying out the drugstore chain Rite Aid. The acquisition of Rite Aid stores was completed in August 2020 and some 1,932 Rite Aid stores were added to Walgreens’ own retail portfolio.

International presence

Walgreens Boots Alliance has drugstores and retail pharmacies in several other countries worldwide, but its leading market is the United Kingdom, where the company operates under the retail name of Boots. Boots UK is the most profitable business of Walgreens Boots Alliance’s international retail division. Yet in recent years, Boots sales were far from impressive, particularly in the retail segment. This had much to do with the declining footfall due to COVID-19 restrictions the government introduced throughout 2020 and in the first few months of 2021. Although drugstores were among essential stores that were allowed to be open throughout lockdowns, the general reduction in high street footfall had an impact on brick-and-mortar sales. Pharmacy sales of Boots UK, on the other hand, were impacted minimally by these restrictions, and in fact recorded growth in the first and second quarters of 2021.

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