WALGREENS

Walgreens

Walgreens

About the Company

Walgreens (Walgreen Co.) is a US-based retail chain with headquarters in Deerfield, Illinois, the pharmaceutical products in the United States sold. Walgreens is in the stock index S & P 100 listed.

The company has about 7,000 sales locations in the United States and Puerto Rico. About 2,000 of these stores are open 24 hours a day. In a typical Walgreens business employs 25 to 30 employees. In addition to the pharmaceutical industry there is a photo sector, a cosmetics department and a general range of sales products. More than 25 percent of the Walgreens' online prescription refills sales are made via mobile app scans, Rich Lesperance, Walgreens director of online marketing, revealed this week at the ShopLocal Summit 2011 in Chicago, according to Internet Retailer.

“Mobile is still a bit of the Wild West,” said Lesperance. “It's not as crowded as the desktop side.” Walgreens, which has more than 7,700 locations, debuted its first iPhone app and m-Commerce site in 2009. The company today offers apps for Android and BlackBerry as well. “All three apps feature the ability to scan the bar code of an existing Walgreens prescription bottle by using the phone's camera,” reports Internet Retailer. “Consumers also can use the app to view the weekly ad and create a shopping list.”

Major competitors

Main competitors are the

CVS

Caremark Corporation,

Wal-Mart,

Rite Aid, and

Target Corporation

Market Share

3 years Ratio Analysis

Profitability

The return on assets and the return on equity are in favor of Walgreens. In both ratios, Walgreens has had higher value than CVS even when it trends downward. In 2008-2009 Walgreens trended downward while CVS trended upward. In 2009-2010, it was the opposite. Even though the numbers differ, they were still relatively close at the close of the 2010 fiscal year: return on assets was 0.13 (W) and 0.10 (C), return on equity was 0.16 (W) and 0.10 (C).

Also with regard to profitability, the profit margin of Walgreens dropped in 2008-2009 from 0.4 to 0.3 where it remained throughout the 2009-2010 fiscal year. CVS also began 2008 with a 0.4 profit margin, which it was able to maintain throughout 2009 and 2010.

Furthermore, the basic earnings at CVS have been slowly and steadily declining while the basic earnings at Walgreens were very slowly trending upward in 2009-2010 after a decline from 0.27 to 0.23 in 2008-2009.

Assets

The inventory turnover ratio at Walgreens has been steadily climbing since end of year 2008 while it has been on the decline at CVS since 2009. If both companies have no change in their trends in 2010-2011, it is possible that Walgreens will be able to have an even turnover and create a wider gap between their turnover and the apparently trending downward CVS turnover ratio. (See chart below.)

Assets are a vital determining element of a company's financial position. Fixed assets, total assets, and even more importantly assets to equity all help reveal the status of a company. Both the fixed and total assets ratios of CVS were roughly double those of ...