Rite Aid sells pharmacy assets from 1K stores to – Business News
Rite Aid has offered the pharmacy companies of more than 1,000 areas throughout the nation to competing chains — together with longtime archrivals CVS and Walgreens.
In addition to the No. 1 and No. 1 drugstore chains, opponents together with Albertsons, Kroger and Giant Eagle snapped up a number of areas from the struggling drugstore chain, which earlier this month filed for chapter for the second time in two years.
“These agreements ensure our pharmacy customers will experience a smooth transition while preserving jobs for some of our valued team members,” Rite Aid CEO Matt Schroeder stated in a assertion on Thursday.
Rite Aid has offered the pharmacy companies of more than 1,000 areas throughout the nation. Getty Images
CVS got here away with the largest quantity of acquisitions, set to take over 625 Rite Aid pharmacies throughout 15 states, in addition to 64 Rite Aid stores in Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
The offers await approval from the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey.
In the meantime, Rite Aid stated its stores and pharmacy companies will stay open, so clients can proceed choosing up their prescription refills and scheduling vaccines.
The Pennsylvania-based chain’s chapter submitting earlier this month got here much less than a 12 months after it exited its earlier Chapter 11 course of, rising as a non-public company.
Rite Aid first filed for chapter in October 2023.
Like many different pharmacies, it fell sufferer to shifts in client habits, with more clients refilling their prescriptions online and skipping the additional purchases made all through the remaining of the drug store.
CVS is set to take over 625 Rite Aid pharmacies throughout 15 states. Christopher Sadowski
Drugstores have additionally complained that their prescription companies have grown much less profitable as pharmacy benefit managers cut reimbursement charges.
PBMs have argued that they help keep drug costs down.
Rite Aid additionally noticed its debt leap to practically $4 billion following legal challenges and a multi-million greenback settlement with the US authorities over claims its pharmacies crammed pointless prescriptions for addictive opioids.
The company has about 1,240 stores remaining throughout the nation – nearly half what it operated two years in the past, and it’s set to shutter practically 10% of these remaining areas as half of the chapter course of.
It has advised staff it is going to cut jobs after failing to secure further financing from lenders, Bloomberg reported earlier this month.
