An alliance of the top three pharmacy chains announced plans Monday to consolidate their American operations, and many will be closed. Pharmacy chain CVS Caremark said it would close a total of 940 stores nationwide, including 799 CVS locations, some of which will be “vacated” so the leases are not renewed.
The other company in the alliance is Rite Aid, and the total number of their roughly 4,600 locations that could be affected is about 1,000.
CVS, owned by CVS Health Corp., operated 8,297 U.S. locations as of the end of October.
In the short term, CVS will reassign its pharmacists and other customer services to other locations. The company expects to save some $2 billion over the next three years as a result of the closures.
While the pharmacy network is getting bigger, there are still plenty of family-owned local drugstores around.
And I have to say, this strategy is very likely to boost overall retail sales, which are on the brink of a major decline. I’d bet on a recovery coming soon.