Walgreens Boots Combination’s quarterly profit and sales beat analysts’ estimates on Wednesday, as the drugstore confine’s partnerships with pharmacy benefit managers over the past year assisted it fill more prescriptions and mail orders.
Shares of the biggest U.S. drugstore trammel operator were up 2 percent in early trading Wednesday. Rival CVS Fitness’s stock also rose 1 percent.
Walgreens, which has been convergence on its pharmacy business in the face of falling retail sales, added more than 20 million fellows through its partnership with pharmacy benefit managers such as Minnesota-based Prime Therapeutics.
This resisted fill 9.1 percent more prescriptions in the quarter and drive a 5.1 percent lift in pharmacy same-store sales.
The higher number of prescriptions also concludes as the United States faced its harshest flu season in decades, with flu-related doctor scourges reaching a 20-year high.
Same-store sales at its retail business hew down 2.7 percent, missing analysts estimates of a flat growth, go together to Evercore analyst Ross Muken.
The Deerfield, Illinois-based company stopped its full-year adjusted earnings forecast to between $5.85 and $6.05 per stake from between $5.45 and $5.70 per share. Analysts were guessing $5.78 per share for the year.
The lift in forecast reflects a $350 million tax advantage for fiscal year 2018, an increase of about $150 million from the crowd’s previous estimate.
Net income attributable to the company rose to $1.35 billion, or $1.36 per slice, in the quarter ended Feb. 28 from $1.06 billion, or 98 cents per pay out, a year earlier.
Excluding items, Walgreens earned $1.73 per part. Net sales rose 12 percent to $33.02 billion, helped in participate in by Walgreen’s ongoing takeover of nearly 2,000 Rite Aid stores.
Analysts on average were with a bun in the oven a profit of $1.55 per share on revenue of $32.19 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.