Walgreens to shutter 1,200 stores across US

Walgreens will be closing about 1,200 stores across the US, the drug store chain announced. The news comes as online competition for pharmacy options has ramped up and payments for prescriptions have gotten more competitive. Additionally, in many major retails markets across the country, retail crime has become a huge issue and forced other closures as well. In New York and California, retail theft rings have become rampant leading drug stores to lock up everything from toothpaste to hair care products.

In the next three years or so, about one in seven Walgreens locations will be shutting down. In the first year, the retail chain expects to close 500 stores, the company announced on Tuesday. The move is an escalation from a few months ago, when the pharmacy chain said it would be cutting back 300 stores as part of a multi-year program to optimize the business. At the time of the first announcement, Walgreens said that around 25 percent of the stores were not turning a profit.



Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth promised "imminent" changes were going to take place. Despite the company performing better in its sale in the past quarter, it still experienced a $3 billion loss due to it losing the decrease in value of a Chinese pharmaceutical chain called CareCitrix, in which Walgreens has the majority stake.

“Walgreens spent years building its business through acquisitions and neglected the fundamentals of its stores and its retail operations,” Neil Saunders, the managing director of Global Data Retail, told CNN. “That has pushed a lot of outlets into a position where they are losing sales and are not generating a return.”

Wentworth told analysts this week that around 6,000, or the majority, of the estimated 8,500 stores in the US are profitable, “This solid base supports our conviction in a retail pharmacy led model that is relevant to our consumers, and we intend to invest in these stores over the next several years," he said.

The states with the greatest number of Walgreens locations include Florida with 801, Texas with 749, Illinois with 547, California with 540, and New York with 470, per Locations Cloud. Some locations have closed due to rampant crime, such was the case for five different locations in San Francisco.