James Kehoe
Executive Vice President and Global Chief Financial Officer at Walgreens Boots Alliance
Thank you, Roz, and good morning. We had an excellent quarter with focused execution across all of our businesses.
Adjusted EPS was $1.59, ahead of expectations and on a constant currency basis up 26% versus prior year. We continue to execute strongly in COVID vaccinations and testing. Our US retail comes with the highest in 20 years and our international markets continue to recover nicely. And we increased our investments to build out our Walgreens Health business with an EPS impact of 5 percentage points in the quarter. Operating cash flow was $1.1 billion in the quarter with free cash flow of $669 million. And finally, we are maintaining our full year outlook of low single-digit growth in adjusted EPS.
Let's now look at the results in more detail. Second quarter sales advanced 3.8% on a constant currency basis. Strong growth from Walgreens and the International segment and sales contributions from Walgreens Health more than offset a 570 basis point impact from the sales decline in AllianceRx Walgreens. Overall, if you exclude the negative impact from AllianceRX and the positive M&A activity in Walgreens Health, core sales growth was high-single digits.
Adjusted operating income increased 35.9% on a constant currency basis, driven by strong gross profit performance in both pharmacy and retail in the US and the continued rebound in international sales and profitability. Adjusted EPS was $1.59 in the quarter, a constant currency increase of 26%, driven entirely by adjusted operating income. The result was held back by a higher tax rate, which reduced the EPS growth by 15 percentage points.
GAAP EPS decreased 4.1% to $1.02, reflecting a charge to the company's equity investments related to the impairment of minority investments as well as lapping a $191 million gain on the partial sale of our investment in Option Care Health in the year ago quarter.
Now, let's move to the year-to-date highlights. Year-to-date sales advanced 5.7% on a constant currency basis, including a 400 basis point negative impact from AllianceRx. Without this impact, the year-to-date sales growth was 9.7%. Adjusted operating income increased 42% on a constant currency basis, reflecting strong adjusted gross profit growth across pharmacy and retail in the US and the continued rebound in International segment sales and profitability. Adjusted EPS advanced 39%.
GAAP EPS increased by $4.54 to $5.15, reflecting a $2.5 billion after-tax gain in the first quarter related to the valuation of our prior investments in VillageMD and Shields as well as lapping a $1.2 billion charge net of tax from the company's equity earnings in AmerisourceBergen in the year-ago period.
Now let's move to the US segment. Sales increased 1.2% in the quarter with a strong performance from Walgreens, more than offsetting a 680 basis point headwind from a 43% sales decline in the AllianceRx specialty business. Comparable sales advanced 9.5% in the quarter. Adjusted gross profit increased 13.7%, with both pharmacy and retail growing in the low-teens. Strong sales growth and favorable mix was only partially offset by lower reimbursement rates and higher shrink in distribution costs.
Adjusted SG&A spend increased 8.3%, primarily due to investments relating to vaccinations and labor, partially offset by savings from the Transformational Cost Management Program. SG&A as a percentage of sales increased 120 basis points to 18.3% of sales. And this was almost entirely due to an adverse mix impact as a result of AllianceRx. Adjusted operating income growth of 37% was entirely due to strong gross profit performance.
Now, let's look in more detail at US pharmacy. Pharmacy sales declined 3.3%, held back by a 9.1 percentage point negative impact from AllianceRx. Comparable pharmacy sales were up 7.3%, while comp scripts increased 4.7% with COVID-19 vaccinations accounting for 275 basis points of script growth. We completed 11.8 million COVID-19 vaccinations in the quarter and administered 6.6 million COVID-19 tests.
Pharmacy benefited in the quarter from improved seasonal scripts as well as higher-than-expected flu immunizations. However, scripts continue to be challenged by temporary operating hour reductions due to labor shortages and a surge of Omicron-related absences. Pharmacy adjusted gross profit grew nicely as strong sales growth at Walgreens and favorable profit mix more than offset reimbursement pressure.
Turning next to our US retail business. Comp retail sales increased 14.7%, the highest increase in more than 20 years. Excluding tobacco, comps were up 15.7% with OTC test kits contributing approximately 690 basis points of growth. Compared to the second quarter of 2020 pre-COVID levels, comp sales were up mid-teens. We saw broad growth across all categories, led by a 43% growth in health and wellness, driven by at-home COVID-19 tests and cough cold flu.
Transactions were up 9.5% and discretionary categories performed well with personal care comp sales growing 9.7% and beauty growing 6.5%. While gross margin declined slightly, strong sales growth drove low-teens growth in gross profit.
Turning next to the International segment and, as always, I'll talk to constant currency numbers. Sales increased 7.5% in the quarter, reflecting the ongoing recovery and strong execution across our retail portfolio, particularly in Boots UK where sales advanced 15%. Adjusted operating income was $226 million in the quarter, up 60% versus prior year, led by sales growth and tight cost control. In Germany, the integration of the McKesson wholesale business is very much on track with operational synergy benefits running ahead of schedule.
Let's now look in more detail at Boots UK. Comparable pharmacy sales increased 3.6%, stronger demand for services contributed to the increase with sales up almost 75% year-on-year, benefiting from COVID-19 testing and vaccinations as well as new online healthcare services. Comp retail sales increased 22% despite the headwind created by the Omicron variant. This reflected strong commercial execution and a recovery from the strict restrictions in the comparable quarter.
Market share strengthened across all categories, with beauty performing particularly well. Boots.com sales declined in the quarter as footfall at our physical stores increased 52%. However, the boots.com business remains in a very strong position with sales up 60% compared to the pre-COVID levels. More than 15% of total UK retail sales comes from our digital channel, up from around 9% pre-COVID with an increasing proportion of sales originating from our mobile app.
Turning next to Walgreens Health. As mentioned last quarter, our majority investments in Shields and VillageMD closed on October 29 and November 24 respectively. Segment sales were $527 million in the quarter with $446 million from VillageMD and $81 million from Shields Health. Walgreens Health AOI was a loss of $77 million in the quarter. Organic investments increased sequentially and accounted for $31 million of the $77 million operating loss. Investments at VillageMD more than offset the profit contribution from Shields Health and led to a $46 million AOI loss from majority investments. VillageMD sales advanced 145% on a pro forma basis and they are executing against the planned investments to grow the business and to quickly expand the clinic footprint.
Shields delivered a strong quarter. Pro forma sales growth was 62% with improved operating margins, driven by growth from new and recently signed contracts and from expanding our value-added proposition with existing health system partners.
Let's now look at some of the key metrics for Walgreens Health. We are on track to meet our December 2022 goal of 2 million lives and more than 100 Walgreens Health Corners, with 47 already up and running. The next wave of nine locations is scheduled to launch in California in April.
The rollout of VillageMD continues with 94 co-located clinics opened at the end of the second quarter, up from 81 at the end of the first quarter. As of today, we have 102 co-located clinics opened, progressing towards our goal of 200 by the end of calendar year 2022. Our fiscal 2022 sales goal is now at $2.2 billion, given the delay in the closing of the CareCentrix investment. There are no changes to our underlying sales assumptions. And as you can see, VillageMD and Shields are delivering impressive growth with pro forma combined sales growth of 128% in the quarter.
Turning next to cash flow. We generated $1.3 billion of free cash flow in the first half of the year, $550 million below prior year as we cycled through some exceptional headways. Strong growth in operating income was offset by the working capital impact of a decline in the AllianceRx Walgreens business, the year-over-year impact of COVID-19-related government support and increased capital expenditures behind key growth initiatives, including the rollout of new automated micro fulfillment centers, the VillageMD footprint expansion and continued omnichannel and digital investments.
Turning now to full year guidance. We are maintaining our full year guidance of low-single-digit growth in adjusted EPS. We have, however, raised our estimate for the base business from 5% to 7% growth, to 6% to 8% growth to reflect strong US front-of-store performance and increased testing revenue. This upside is being reinvested in building out our healthcare business, which now represents an estimated 5 percentage points headwind to EPS growth compared to 4 percentage points previously.
In summary, we are confirming our full year EPS guidance of low-single digit growth. And I would remind you that this is better than our original guidance provided at the start of the fiscal year.
With that, let me now pass it back to Roz for her closing comments.