Walgreens Stock Rebounds After Q1 Earnings Show Some Promise of Turnaround in 2025

Despite posting a net loss of $265 million, or 31 cents a share, during its most recent earnings report, Walgreens appears to be stoking some hopes of a turnaround, as CNBC reported. The company is in the process of trimming a huge number of underperforming stores — about 1,200, with 500 of these shutterings slated for fiscal 2025 alone — and streamlining operations to recover from a very rocky 2024.

Walgreens Boots Alliance CEO Tim Wentworth spoke to the future of the company via the press release accompanying the earnings report.

“Our first quarter results reflect our disciplined execution against our 2025 priorities: stabilizing the retail pharmacy by optimizing our footprint, controlling operating costs, improving cash flow and continuing to address reimbursement models,” said Wentworth.

“While our turnaround will take time, our early progress reinforces our belief in a sustainable, retail pharmacy-led operating model,” he added.

Walgreens Stock Soars After Earnings Beat

Investors seemed particularly bullish over the news relayed by Walgreens’ latest earnings report, with the company’s stock surging upward by 23.43% ($11.38 per share) as of 11:20 a.m. ET on Jan. 10, not long after trading was initiated. This pales in comparison to losses in stock value in 2024, where the company saw the stock price crash by nearly two-thirds from January to December.

According to AP News, a large portion of the Q1 net loss loss was chalked up to expenditures attached to the brand’s restructuring activities. While Walgreens is the somewhat abbreviated name familiar to American consumers, Walgreens Boots Alliance operates in several countries worldwide, including 3,700 international stores in countries such as Ireland, Thailand, Mexico, and the UK.

And as CNBC underscored, the company exhibited signs of growth across three different business segments: its retail pharmacy division ($30.87 billion in quarterly sales, ticking upward by 6.6 YoY), its health care unit ($2.17 billion, up over 12% YoY), and its international unit (posting $6.43 billion in sales, up 10.2% YoY).

The results also come amid speculation that Walgreens is in talks to sell to private equity firm Sycamore Partners, as Seeking Alpha outlined, though nothing concrete on that score has as yet emerged.