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.