Not much has gone right for Walgreens. Facing tough headwinds, the brand has been playing catch up to other U.S. pharmacy retailers for years. WSJ’s Joseph Walker on what went wrong for Walgreens and the private equity deal that could sell the company for parts.See The Journal live! Take our survey! Further Reading: - Walgreens Goes From $100 Billion Health Giant to Private-Equity Salvage Project - The Walgreens Billionaire Watching His Empire Come Apart Further Listening: - How Target Got Off Target - What Went Wrong at Bed Bath & Beyond? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Walgreens, the store with the red squiggly W, has been an American institution for more than a century. It's a place where you can fill your prescriptions, buy deodorant, toothpaste, shampoo, or pick up a pint of ice cream late at night. And it's everywhere. 70% of Americans live within five miles of a Walgreens-owned pharmacy. But this American institution is now at risk of falling apart.
Walgreens, which has been a publicly traded company for close to 100 years, agreed to sell itself to a private equity firm called Sycamore Partners for about $10 billion, or something like $90 billion less than it was worth about 10 years ago.
That's our colleague Joseph Walker. He's watched Walgreens go from a company worth more than $100 billion down to worth $10 billion today.
You know, a great American brand, over 100 years old, you know, really have this sort of ignominious demise or decline over the past, you know, five, 10 years in the way that it struggled to adapt to the market forces that were affecting its competitors, but didn't quite end up moving in the right direction.
And you can add into it, you know, the Italian billionaire who stepped in and tried to help with that turnaround and, you know, so far has also failed to make it happen.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Leinbaugh. It's Monday, March 10th. Coming up on the show, the collapse of Walgreens.
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Walgreens was founded in Chicago in 1901. That was the same year that President William McKinley was assassinated and Teddy Roosevelt took over. Roast beef cost 15 cents a pound and a dozen eggs cost less than a quarter. Ford's Model T wasn't even built yet.
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