Drug stores in Chattanooga
Within a 50-mile radius of Chattanooga: * Walgreens operates 29 stores * Rite Aid operates 15 stores * Fred’s operates 10 stores
This Friday, Oct. 21, 2016, photo shows a Rite Aid location in Philadelphia. Walgreens and Rite Aid will sell 865 stores to rival retailer Fred’s for $950 million, possibly removing the final roadblock preventing the tie up between the nation’s largest and third-largest drugstore chains, in news announced Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2016. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)Merger deal boost stock prices
* Fred’s Inc. rose 81.1 percent, or $9.04 per share, to $20.19 in trading on the Nasdaq exchange * Rite Aid rose 5.4 percent, or 44 cents per share, to $8.61 in trading on the New York Stock Exchange * Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., rose 0.26 percent, or 22 cents per share, to $86.28 in trading on the Nasdaq exchange.
Walgreens and Rite Aid will sell 865 stores to rival retailer Fred’s for $950 million, potentially removing the final roadblock thwarting a tie up between the nation’s largest and third-largest drugstore chains.
Wall Street certainly saw it that way, sending shares of all three companies higher in trading Tuesday.
Walgreens is working to close its $9.4 billion purchase of Rite Aid early next year. It said Tuesday that it’s selling the Rite Aid stores in response to concerns raised by federal anti-trust regulators. The deal still needs to be approved by the Federal Trade Commission.
Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., based in Deerfield, Ill., announced in October 2015 that it planned to buy Rite Aid in a deal that would create about 12,000 U.S. locations. Both companies are major drug store retailers in Chattanooga, often with nearby stores in the market.
The merger would create America’s biggest drug store chain with several thousand more stores than the nearest competitor, CVS Health Corp.
The combination is expected to give Walgreens beefed-up negotiating muscle with drugmakers and other suppliers and to help enlarge its presence in the Northeast and in Southern California. But the nation’s largest drugstore chain also knew it would have to drop some stores to ease regulatory worry about competition.
Shortly after announcing the deal, Walgreens said it was willing to divest up to 1,000 stores to win regulatory approval, but it expected it wouldn’t have to sell more than 500.
Fred’s runs 647 general merchandise discount stores clustered mainly in the Southeast, and it operates 371 full-service pharmacy departments within its stores. It also runs three specialty pharmacies.
Walgreens says its purchase agreement requires Fred’s to buy additional stores if the FTC requires the divestiture of more than 865.
Shares of Fred’s Inc., based in Memphis, nearly doubled in price Tuesday.