Walgreens sales gain as it adds almost 2,000 Rite Aid pharmacies

The retail industry may be ailing, but for Walgreens Boots Alliance, the cure is more pharmacies.

The Deerfield-based drugstore chain said Wednesday that it had completed its takeover of 1,932 new stores that it agreed last year to buy from Rite Aid Corp. While same-store sales in the front of Walgreens' U.S. drugstores, where customers buy items like toilet paper and toothpaste, fell 2.7 percent in the fiscal second quarter, sales at the pharmacy counter in the back of the store grew 5.1 percent.

"Our growth strategy of increasing and consolidating volume, differentiating ourselves through value and quality of service, and controlling costs is bearing fruit across our businesses," Chief Executive Officer Stefano Pessina said in a statement announcing the results.

Walgreens' adjusted earnings were $1.73 a share, beating analysts' estimates. The company also raised its fiscal 2018 adjusted earnings outlook to $5.85 to $6.05 a share.

Pharmacy sales make up about 70 percent of Walgreens' U.S. business, and as Walgreens doubles down on its retail drugstore strategy, the rest of the health care industry is changing more fundamentally.

Its biggest retail competitor, CVS Health Corp., is buying health insurer Aetna Inc. for about $68 billion in a bid to create a vertically integrated medical giant that will try and tame health care costs. In March, Cigna Corp. cut a deal to buy Express Scripts Holding Co., a drug benefit manager, for $54 billion.