Walgreens narrows 2024 outlook on difficult retail environment

Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) released its second quarter earnings, revealing $37.05 billion in revenue for the quarter, beating expectations of $35.86 billion. The company also reported a net loss of $6 billion due to the decline in the value of its investment in VillageMD. Citing a challenging retail environment, Walgreens narrowed its 2024 earnings outlook.

Yahoo Finance Reporter Anjalee Khemlani joins The Morning Brief to contextualize the earnings beat and the new leadership's priorities.

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Editor's note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

- Well, time for today's stock to watch. Walgreens second quarter revenue beating expectations but narrowing its adjusted EPS guidance for 2024 amid what they're calling a challenging retail environment. Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani has the details here. Hey, Anj.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: That's right. Of course, their retail environment, not a surprise for those who have been following the story. They've been challenged on the front end for quite some time. And that story continues to put pressure on the company, as we see in this earnings.

They did beat estimates with a billion more dollars than estimated, with $37 billion coming in. But we also know that some of that came from the majority of that beat analysts' have said have come from the favorable tax rate that they got.

They've also been doing a lot of scaling back. We know that the new leadership has really been focused on rightsizing what the company is focused on pulling back on clinical services with shutting down 160 VillageMD clinics. So there's a lot going on behind the scenes for the company.

Meanwhile, they have seen prescription volumes increase, which is giving investors some hope that the balancing act that they're trying to do with this back-to-basics focus on pharmacy will continue.