The dispute between Walgreen and pharmacy-benefits manager Express Scripts, which ended only last month, weighed heavily on Walgreen in 2012.
We currently estimate Walgreen to make up almost 19.4% of prescriptions filled annually in the US. Sale of Walgreen PBM business brings in close to 85 million additional prescriptions filled at Catalyst.
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Walgreen became available to Express Scripts clients as of Sept. 15, but that does not, however, mean all employers or health plan enrollees in Express Scripts plans have to choose a Walgreen to fill their prescriptions.
AmerisourceBergen is a pharmacy services provider and will distribute branded pharmaceutical products that Walgreen has historically distributed, and it will help Walgreen source and distribute generic drugs internationally potentially bringing both growth and better purchasing power with drug manufacturers.
It isn't clear how many of Walgreen's 7, 700 stores are affected by the move.
Based on the Duane Reade and drugstore.com acquisitions, Walgreen may fancy themselves a multi-brand portfolio manager.
As a kicker, Walgreen has raised its dividend each year for the past 25 years.
Roger Polark, Walgreen's chief financial officer, says that the inventory runup has since been worked off.
"We're concerned about anybody that is healthy competition, " says David Bernauer, Walgreen's chief executive.
Walgreen was slow to join the lobby of retailers and medical societies supporting the bills.
Walgreen competitor CVS Caremark Corporation is down a similar 17.7 percent during the last 3 months.
The dispute was resolved in recent months, but not all customers have returned to Walgreen.
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Roger Polark, Walgreen's chief financial officer, says that the inventory run-up has since been worked off.
All told, Walgreen profit sank by 6 cents in the latest quarter because of the dispute.
Walgreen was targeted and tweeted last Tuesday, after dropping for three days in a row.
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As competition heats up between drugstore giants, Walgreen is expanding its presence in the Big Apple.
The Walgreen acquisition is the not the first major drugstore takeover in recent years.
"We have several substantial clients that don't have Walgreen in their network at all, " says a spokesperson.
Here's the odd thing: Even though it has joined the PBM revolution, Walgreen is also fighting it.
Receivables climbed 30% because Walgreen had trouble collecting on accounts from strapped state governments, such as Illinois.
Beginning calendar year 2014, this will increasingly include generic pharmaceutical products that Walgreen has so far self-distributed.
Walgreen along with Alliance Boots GmbH announced a 10-year distribution agreement with AmerisourceBergen (ABC) beginning September 1.
On July 14, Walgreen Company raised the quarterly dividend 27 percent, upping the yield to 2.3 percent.
Prior to the broad market July advance, shares of Walgreen had been under a lot of pressure.
Most analysts think investors should stand pat on Walgreen, with nine of 17 analysts rating it hold.
Details on this group, which includes Whole Foods, Walgreen, Starbucks and others are in our report.
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Leading pharmacy chains Walgreen and Rite-Aid recently released their monthly sales figures for October 2012.
We're talking about tech stocks like Ebay, medical stocks like MedImmune and even old-line retailers like Walgreen.
Walgreen's (nyse: WAG - news - people ) answer is to start its own version.
One PBM, which declines to have itself named, insists that it can survive without any relationship with Walgreen.
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