Walgreens sales jump about 4% in November

Walgreen Co.'s same-store sales climbed nearly 4 percent in November.

The company reported that store sales were negatively impacted by the slowing demand for cough, cold and flu products compared with September and October. Walgreen's is also seeing a continued weakness in demand for discretionary goods with the Thanksgiving weekend notably softer than the past few months.

Deeerfield-based Walgreen reported front-end sales increased .8 percent. The industry has generally been reporting weak non-pharmacy sales for some time.

Pharmacy sales increased 5.7 percent while prescriptions filled increased 7.4 percent in November, with some of that gain due to more patients filling 90-day prescriptions. Pharmacy sales accounted for 65 percent of total sales for the month.

The company added that November results were better than they otherwise would have been because the results had one more Wednesday and one less Saturday compared to a year earlier.

At the end of November, Walgreens operated 7,648 locations in 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam. That includes 7,147 drugstores, 517 more than a year ago, including 60 stores acquired over the last 12 months.