People stroll by a Walgreens on November 3, 2024 in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Danielle DeVries | CNBC
Shares of Walgreens jumped almost 25% on Tuesday on a report that the corporate is in talks to promote itself to non-public fairness agency Sycamore Partners.
Walgreens and Sycamore have been discussing a deal that may very well be accomplished early subsequent yr, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing individuals acquainted with the matter.
A Walgreens spokesperson declined to touch upon the reported talks.
The report comes throughout a tough interval for the retail pharmacy big. The firm’s inventory was down greater than 60% for the yr earlier than its climb Tuesday.
Walgreens – squeezed by the transition out of the Covid pandemic, a management shakeup, pharmacy reimbursement strain and its wobbly push into health-care – has underperformed Wall Street’s earnings expectations for 2 straight quarters.
In October, Walgreens stated it plans to shut roughly 1,200 of its drugstores over the subsequent three years, which incorporates 500 in fiscal 2025 alone. Walgreens has round 8,700 places within the U.S., 1 / 4 of which it says are unprofitable. The firm has additionally scaled again its push into major care by chopping its stake in primary-care supplier VillageMD.
Walgreens has reportedly been seen as a possible personal fairness goal previously.
In 2019, personal fairness agency KKR made a roughly $70 billion buyout supply to the corporate, the Financial Times and Bloomberg reported on the time.
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