Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. operates as a pharmacy-led health and beauty retail company. It operates through two segments, the United States and International. The United States segment sells prescription drugs and an assortment of retail products, including health, wellness, beauty, personal care, consumable, and general merchandise products through its retail drugstores. It also provides central specialty pharmacy services and mail services. As of August 31, 2021, this segment operated 8,965 retail stores under the Walgreens and Duane Reade brands in the United States; and five specialty pharmacies. The International segment sells prescription drugs; and health and wellness, beauty, personal care, and other consumer products through its pharmacy-led health and beauty retail stores and optical practices, as well as through boots.com and an integrated mobile application. It also engages in pharmaceutical wholesaling and distribution business in Germany. As of August 31, 2021, this segment operated 4,031 retail stores under the Boots, Benavides, and Ahumada in the United Kingdom, Thailand, Norway, the Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, Mexico, and Chile; and 548 optical practices, including 160 on a franchise basis. Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. was founded in 1901 and is based in Deerfield, Illinois.
Analysts Set New Price Targets
WBA has been the subject of a number of research analyst reports. Barclays dropped their price target on Walgreens Boots Alliance from $50.00 to $45.00 and set an "equal weight" rating for the company in a research report on Friday, June 24th. Credit Suisse Group dropped their target price on shares of Walgreens Boots Alliance from $52.00 to $43.00 and set a "neutral" rating for the company in a research report on Friday, July 1st. Royal Bank of Canada decreased their price target on shares of Walgreens Boots Alliance from $46.00 to $42.00 and set a "sector perform" rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday, July 5th. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft dropped their price objective on shares of Walgreens Boots Alliance from $46.00 to $44.00 and set a "hold" rating for the company in a report on Friday, July 1st. Finally, TheStreet cut Walgreens Boots Alliance from a "b-" rating to a "c+" rating in a research note on Monday, May 2nd. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eight have issued a hold rating and one has issued a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of "Hold" and a consensus target price of $46.25.
Walgreens Boots Alliance Trading Down 0.1 %
Shares of NASDAQ:WBA traded down $0.02 on Friday, reaching $38.22. 6,898,888 shares of the company traded hands, compared to its average volume of 6,904,902. The stock has a market capitalization of $33.03 billion, a P/E ratio of 6.16, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.63 and a beta of 0.60. The business's 50-day simple moving average is $39.32 and its 200 day simple moving average is $43.34. The company has a current ratio of 0.78, a quick ratio of 0.43 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.35. Walgreens Boots Alliance has a 52 week low of $36.57 and a 52 week high of $55.00.
Walgreens Boots Alliance (NASDAQ:WBA - Get Rating) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, June 30th. The pharmacy operator reported $0.96 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.95 by $0.01. The business had revenue of $32.60 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $32.23 billion. Walgreens Boots Alliance had a return on equity of 16.20% and a net margin of 4.00%. Walgreens Boots Alliance's revenue for the quarter was down 4.2% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the company earned $1.51 EPS. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that Walgreens Boots Alliance will post 5.02 EPS for the current fiscal year.
Walgreens Boots Alliance Increases Dividend
The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, September 9th. Investors of record on Friday, August 19th will be issued a dividend of $0.48 per share. This is a positive change from Walgreens Boots Alliance's previous quarterly dividend of $0.48. This represents a $1.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 5.02%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, August 18th. Walgreens Boots Alliance's dividend payout ratio is currently 30.81%.