Walgreens Boots Alliance - WBA Stock Forecast, Price & News

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.

Walgreens Boots Alliance Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ:WBA traded up $0.46 on Monday, hitting $39.45. The stock had a trading volume of 296,274 shares, compared to its average volume of 6,872,629. Walgreens Boots Alliance has a twelve month low of $36.57 and a twelve month high of $55.00. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.35, a quick ratio of 0.43 and a current ratio of 0.78. The firm's 50 day moving average price is $39.92 and its 200-day moving average price is $44.01. The company has a market capitalization of $34.09 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 6.29, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.55 and a beta of 0.60.

Walgreens Boots Alliance (NASDAQ:WBA - Get Rating) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, June 30th. The pharmacy operator reported $0.96 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.95 by $0.01. The company had revenue of $32.60 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $32.23 billion. Walgreens Boots Alliance had a net margin of 4.00% and a return on equity of 16.20%. The firm's revenue for the quarter was down 4.2% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company earned $1.51 EPS. On average, equities research analysts predict that Walgreens Boots Alliance will post 5.02 earnings per share for the current year.

Walgreens Boots Alliance Increases Dividend

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, September 9th. Investors of record on Friday, August 19th will be given a dividend of $0.48 per share. This is an increase from Walgreens Boots Alliance's previous quarterly dividend of $0.48. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, August 18th. This represents a $1.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 4.87%. Walgreens Boots Alliance's dividend payout ratio is 30.81%.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of equities analysts have recently commented on WBA shares. Morgan Stanley dropped their price target on shares of Walgreens Boots Alliance from $43.00 to $39.00 and set an "underweight" rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, July 6th. Cowen dropped their target price on shares of Walgreens Boots Alliance to $49.00 in a research report on Thursday, June 9th. TheStreet lowered shares of Walgreens Boots Alliance from a "b-" rating to a "c+" rating in a research report on Monday, May 2nd. Truist Financial decreased their price target on shares of Walgreens Boots Alliance from $50.00 to $42.00 and set a "hold" rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, July 1st. Finally, StockNews.com downgraded shares of Walgreens Boots Alliance from a "buy" rating to a "hold" rating in a research note on Friday, July 1st. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating and nine have assigned a hold rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of "Hold" and an average price target of $46.25.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, major shareholder Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. sold 6,000,000 shares of the company's stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, May 11th. The shares were sold at an average price of $150.00, for a total transaction of $900,000,000.00. Following the transaction, the insider now owns 52,854,867 shares in the company, valued at approximately $7,928,230,050. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. 17.40% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.