Walgreens Was the Dow’s Biggest Loser in 2019

Started by mentos
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Man Rite Aid stock is hitting over past 2 weeks but they reall only had one direction it could go in.
 
VA77 said:
Man Rite Aid stock is hitting over past 2 weeks but they reall only had one direction it could go in.
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The shorts on that got burrrrrned. Must have been brutal buying to cover that position! Hahah


Sent from my iPhone using SDN
 
mentos said:
Rite Aid stock is still a thing? I just looked and it's back to 2009 levels. Talk about a lost decade!
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It was a good stock to watch in December because the people shorted the hell out of that stock lost a collective $187M

I lol’d


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Walgreens appears to be near it's bottom, little reason for it to not be one of the better performers next year.

Disclaimer: I own zero stock other then what is in my index funds.
 
wagrxm2000 said:
Walgreens appears to be near it's bottom, little reason for it to not be one of the better performers next year.

Disclaimer: I own zero stock other then what is in my index funds.
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The question becomes..what will WAGS so called management do to try and hit the new and improved goals? Same with these grocery chains....grocery margins are thin....does a grocery pharmacy even HAVE a margin? Probably make more off of a cut rate gas stop in the parking lot....
 
wagrxm2000 said:
Walgreens appears to be near it's bottom, little reason for it to not be one of the better performers next year.

Disclaimer: I own zero stock other then what is in my index funds.
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Why wasn't it a better performer this year? What's stopping it from going to zero? I'm generally curious because I don't know much about stocks.
 
mentos said:
Why wasn't it a better performer this year? What's stopping it from going to zero? I'm generally curious because I don't know much about stocks.
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I think it might be a buy just from the fact people love to buy Dow stocks that underperform.

Do I think it should go up next year, no there is no reason.
 
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When I was an intern, Walgreens hired anyone. They also let interns work whenever they felt like it. The shortage was so bad and they ended up hiring a boatload of lazy pharmacists and the stores under performed. The results are in on the quality of the hiring process. Is anyone surprised? I use to work there and they hired anyone from my school who had a pulse, so of course I am not surprised. I expected this.
 
But it also kind of shows that screwing pharmacy and making it a toxic place to work clearly isn't "the answer" that the bigwigs think it is. If it was, they should have led the market in gains this year!
 
mentos said:
That means less tech hours, less pharmacy overlap (if any) and more layoffs are coming.
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Not sure about more layoffs unless you mean closing more slow Rite Aid stores and forcing pharmacists to "reapply" for their current positions at a lower wage. It's just supply and demand. We have to accept it. If you work as a pharmacist and are getting paid more than $15 an hour you are lucky. I personally know many pharmacist earning $0.00 an hour.
 
LivingMyBestLife said:
Not sure about more layoffs unless you mean closing more slow Rite Aid stores and forcing pharmacists to "reapply" for their current positions at a lower wage. It's just supply and demand. We have to accept it. If you work as a pharmacist and are getting paid more than $15 an hour you are lucky. I personally know many pharmacist earning $0.00 an hour.
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Yes more layoffs are coming. Stores are closing, not opening. 24 hour stores become non 24 hour stores.
 
Xenophylia said:
But it also kind of shows that screwing pharmacy and making it a toxic place to work clearly isn't "the answer" that the bigwigs think it is. If it was, they should have led the market in gains this year!
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Except the conclusion they will make is "let's squeeze some more money out of them stores while we can, before we golden parachute out of this mess and leave it to someone else to sink or swim with".
 
hahah good job walgreens. glad i got out of that mess. christ, i worked there for a year and what a cesspool it was. i have nothing good to say about the place. other than the few techs i worked with in various stores that were really nice and excellent. in terms of the management though? completely and absolutely awful. it's a toxic mess. the worst of the worst at everyone's throats. and turning people against each other. the place deserves to rot
 
APN-59 rph said:
The question becomes..what will WAGS so called management do to try and hit the new and improved goals? Same with these grocery chains....grocery margins are thin....does a grocery pharmacy even HAVE a margin? Probably make more off of a cut rate gas stop in the parking lot....
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I cant speak for other grocers, since many seem to be contracting their pharmacy footprint, but I work for a regional grocer and we do pretty well. All PICs get a full accounting report of how their locations do each month and we are making a healthy profit. It has flattened a bit due to DIR fees, but I have no concerns about remaining open. Other grocery companies must have terribly mismanaged their pharmacies (out of control staffing, poor inventory control, crap supplier contracts and discount drug lists, etc).
 
APN-59 rph said:
The question becomes..what will WAGS so called management do to try and hit the new and improved goals? Same with these grocery chains....grocery margins are thin....does a grocery pharmacy even HAVE a margin? Probably make more off of a cut rate gas stop in the parking lot....
Click to expand...

When I worked at Target, my PIC told me their pharmacies were loss leaders and look what happened. I imagine most grocery pharmacies are the same. I've never seen a line at a grocery store pharmacy. If entire grocery stores are closing then there's no way their pharmacies are profitable.
 
mentos said:
When I worked at Target, my PIC told me their pharmacies were loss leaders and look what happened. I imagine most grocery pharmacies are the same. I've never seen a line at a grocery store pharmacy. If entire grocery stores are closing then there's no way their pharmacies are profitable.
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Target was also widely known in the industry for terribly running their pharmacies....they aren't the best example for grocers. They paid more than any other chain, had a terribly inefficient system, and staffed way too much. I did a rotation in school at one.....place did like 120rx/day and had 4 hours of RPh overlap, two techs and a clerk most of the day. No way you're going to be profitable that way. Theres a reason everyone in school wanted to work for them, because they paid more to do much less than anyone else.

Kroger was similar, with free antibiotics and an out of control discount drug list. They were designed to just barely break even when reimbursements were much higher, giving them no wiggle room at all when things changed. Grocers can still be profitable in pharmacy, just dont be idiots in how you run things.
 
WBA stockholder here. It hasnt been fun to watch my money disappear without hope of it rebounding. Trying to assess the impact of a potential sale to KKR. Any opinions? Would you just dump it now?
 
johnpharm01 said:
WBA stockholder here. It hasnt been fun to watch my money disappear without hope of it rebounding. Trying to assess the impact of a potential sale to KKR. Any opinions? Would you just dump it now?
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Sell it immediately for VTI, what kind of gains do you really think you can get out of it? In 10 years can you honestly expect walgreens to have outperformed the S&P 500? Go read the call transcripts for their latest quarterly report and see how much confidence you have in them.
 
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johnpharm01 said:
WBA stockholder here. It hasnt been fun to watch my money disappear without hope of it rebounding. Trying to assess the impact of a potential sale to KKR. Any opinions? Would you just dump it now?
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Gombrich12 said:
Sell it immediately for VTI, what kind of gains do you really think you can get out of it? In 10 years can you honestly expect walgreens to have outperformed the S&P 500? Go read the call transcripts for their latest quarterly report and see how much confidence you have in them.
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Great advice. Don't do what I did. I bought CVS at $83/share average in 2016 and it never recovered. If I took the loss and bought an index fund, I would have been in the green and then some. Look at Rite Aid stock price in 2009 and see how much it is today.
 
VA77 said:
The Wags 2020 death spiral continues. If this company was a patient they would be listed as a hospice DNR.

Walgreens (ticker: WBA) slid 32.8% this year, making it the second-worst performer in the Dow

www.barrons.com

Walgreens Had Another Bad Year. Hopes Arenât High for 2021.

A challenge from Amazon.com has raised concerns about the outlook for the pharmacy chain.
www.barrons.com
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The amount of kickback they are receiving for the partnership in operation warp speed will give them a massive capital infusion. It’s nit just about reimbursement for individual doses (that’s just icing).. they are being handed massive amounts of money to meet’ “logistical challenges” related to distribution of vaccine.

“Operation warp speed” was somewhat of a bailout to many healthcare outfits as long as they figure out how to get the vaccine in 350 million peoples arms .... twice....

Not exactly saying that this is a game changer for wallgreens - instead, it’s a means to keep them afloat for the time being.
 
VA77 said:
I think it is still Boeing with 1 week to go but they got the Max coming back and this just been a bad year of travel and bad luck. Wags has been in free fall for over 5 years with only the ground to stop them.
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That is correct. Most losers are Covid beaten stocks.


The biggest surprise for me is Intel. May be a good buy.
 
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It is sad that logistics challenge boils down to refilling shipping container with dry ice every 5 days and finding someone everyday to drive around with a cooler.
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
AMD is whooping them right now.
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Been happy with Intel for over ten years. When I was shopping for laptops, the equivalent AMD versions of the i5 and i7 cost way more. IDK why people want to pay more for the same performance. I guess that's why Apple is so successful.
 
mentos said:
Been happy with Intel for over ten years. When I was shopping for laptops, the equivalent AMD versions of the i5 and i7 cost way more. IDK why people want to pay more for the same performance. I guess that's why Apple is so successful.
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www.tomshardware.com

Intel vs AMD: Which CPUs Are Better in 2025?

We put Intel vs AMD in a battle of processor prowess.
www.tomshardware.com www.tomshardware.com

It's really not even close. AMDs offer better value right now.
 
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mentos said:
I don't know what any of that stuff means. I mainly use my laptop for trading, Excel and YouTube so don't need all that power.
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Ok. Perhaps this chart speaks to you more.

AMD vs INTC.png
 
johnpharm01 said:
WBA stockholder here. It hasnt been fun to watch my money disappear without hope of it rebounding. Trying to assess the impact of a potential sale to KKR. Any opinions? Would you just dump it now?
Click to expand...
Mine aged well. I sold my stock months ago, cutting my losses. It's my only investment that did not post gains. Walgreens is just a big outdated company that hasn't overhauled its operations but just tinkers with small projects like fed ex pick up, etc. I see large cuts in the future, store closures which will prolong it's existence but not change it's course.

Could you imagine having WBA as a large part of your profile? The losses would be crushing.
 
johnpharm01 said:
Mine aged well. I sold my stock months ago, cutting my losses. It's my only investment that did not post gains. Walgreens is just a big outdated company that hasn't overhauled its operations but just tinkers with small projects like fed ex pick up, etc. I see large cuts in the future, store closures which will prolong it's existence but not change it's course.

Could you imagine having WBA as a large part of your profile? The losses would be crushing.
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I started my employment with WAGs just before it became WBA, so I've pretty much never seen the stock perform well aside from my first 6 months or so as an employee.

Even during Covid with literally every district in my area having double digit front end sales growth, the pharmacies being up ~5% in sales, flu shots being 50% higher YoU, hours being cut, and the massive infusion of cash and goodwill from the vaccine announcments, we somehow managed to have the stock value drop AND post terrible earnings.

Boots has really been a boot on this companies throat.
 
What Walgreens should do is what they won't do, make a 90 degrees turn redesigning the pharmacies and cutting tons of management. New store floorplans should be a fifth their current size just big enough for the pharmacy and a couple aisles for otcs. Why won't they? Pessina is no entrepreneur and the company is too high profile. So instead it will be a slow death.
 
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