Boots may close up to 69 more stores as part of its owner Walgreen Boots Alliance’s (WBA) years-long cost reduction plan, WBA’s filing with the US securities and exchange commission (SEC) yesterday (June 27) revealed.

WBA’s quarterly financial report said that the multinational “plans to reduce its presence by up to 650 Boots stores” as part of its “transformational cost management program” (TCMP), according to the SEC filing.

Read more: Revealed: 300 Boots branch closures to begin this month

It added that it had so far closed 581 stores in the UK as of the end of last month.

The TCMP was “expanded and extended” in October 2021 and is planned to run “through the end of fiscal 2024” - by which time WBA hopes to find $4.5 billion in “annual cost savings”, the documents said.

It remains unclear when exactly the closure programme of 650 pharmacies began.

Up to 25% US store closures

 

But the Boots closures paled in comparison to the news that WBA plans to close up to a quarter of its pharmacies in the US over the next three years.

WBA did not reveal the exact number, which could exceed 2,000 pharmacies with its total US footprint at 8,701 branches at the end of August 2023, according to the company’s website.

At its earnings conference call yesterday (June 27), WBA chief executive Tim Wentworth said that “plans to finalise this number [of closures] are in motion”.

Read more: Around 200 loss-making Boots pharmacies to close in 18 months

Wentworth added that WBA plans to “redeploy the vast majority of the workforce” in the “underperforming” stores that it will close.

The market’s reaction to the news was to match the cut, with WBA’s share price falling “to a 27-year low” by “as much as 25% on Thursday afternoon” compared to the previous day, according to the Financial Times.

 

Boots sale?

 

Meanwhile, chatter about WBA selling Boots is an ever-present feature of the UK community pharmacy rumour mill.

Wentworth reiterated that “everything has been on the table” as the company conducted a strategic review of its business, adding that WBA had “attractive options to unlock value” in Boots UK.

Read more: Boots on the table - what happens next?

But he appeared to downplay  the chance that Boots could be sold in the short-term, as he said that WBA was “committed to continuing to invest in Boots UK” and looking to “find innovative ways for this business to fulfil its potential”.

“While we believe there is significant interest in Boots at the right time, its growth, strategic strength and cashflow remain key contributors to the company,” he added.

 

“Positive momentum”?

 

Wentworth said that WBA’s international business “continues to perform strongly and in line with expectations” as he noted that Boots’ total sales grew 1.6%.

But WBA’s filings show that its international businesses’ pharmacy sales dropped by 5.5% in the third quarter of 2024, compared to the third quarter of 2023.

In a press release issued yesterday, Boots UK chief executive Sebastian James said that Boots had posted “a thirteenth consecutive quarter of market share growth”, with “comparable retail sales up 6%”, “pharmacy sales up 5.8%” and “growth across all categories”.

Read more: UPDATED: Boots reports 60% profit spike as sales surge

C+D understands that the disparity between Wentworth’s figure of 1.6% total growth and the higher figures is because James’s figures have been adjusted to account for all of the stores that Boots has closed.

James said that the increase in the largest multiple’s retail and healthcare sales showed “positive momentum”.

 

Boots closure history

 

Boots claimed that the closures had all previously been announced, though C+D has not previously reported that WBA plans to close a total of 650 stores.

In June last year, Boots announced that it would close “300 pharmacies across the country over the next year”.

And in April, C+D exclusively revealed the locations of 245 Boots branches that closed in England between March 2023 and March 2024.

Read more: Revealed: Locations of 245 Boots store closures over the last year

In its latest annual report for the year ending in August 2023, Boots said that “continuing the reorganisation programme in-year resulted in 55 store closures, taking the total programme to 290 store closures to date”.

It is unclear whether these 55 store closures were part of the announced 300, and from when the 290 closures were recorded.

Back in June 2019, C+D reported that Boots planned to close around 200 branches across the UK “over the next 18 months” as it announced it would “reduce [its] store count by 8%” in the UK. By October 2020, it had closed 138 of that number.

Read more: ‘It terrifies me’: Girl landed in A&E after buying Wegovy from Boots

Meanwhile, C+D exclusively revealed this month that a “young girl” had to be treated in A&E after presenting with life threatening symptoms after taking weight loss drug Wegovy obtained through Boots Online Doctor.

In March, the multiple reported a 1.7% pharmacy sales increase for the year’s second quarter, attributing it in part to increased online services, as its parent company WBA posted $5.9bn in losses.