Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. (Nasdaq: WBA) is reportedly in talks to sell itself to the PE firm Sycamore Partners. The move would take the retailer private, as its shares have dipped in value over recent years.
The deal may be signed by early next year, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Sycamore is a New York-based firm that specializes in retail, consumer investments and more.
On its end, Walgreens operates more than 12,000 stores across the U.S., Latin America and Europe. Of late, the company has begun playing a more active role in the home-based care and senior care space.
Specifically, the company has heavily invested in primary care provider VillageMD, and also acquired the health-at-home solutions platform CareCentrix in 2022.
This year, however, Walgreens has begun moving away from health care services.
“We believe our reorientation to retail pharmacy has a bright future,” Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth said in October. “We’re engaging in a multi-year program with a long-term goal of an appropriately sized and well positioned fleet of stores, and an industry-leading customer experience in both retail and pharmacy across consumer channels. And we continue to believe that the adjacent strategic businesses in which we’ve invested can incrementally contribute to value creation over the longer term.”
The company also announced plans to close up to 1,200 retail stores in the next three years and reduce VillageMD’s physical footprint.
Wentworth previously asserted that VillageMD was “not a crucial part of the business moving forward.”
Plus, the investment firm KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE: KKR) agreed to acquire 11,619,998 shares of BrightSpring Health Services (Nasdaq: BTSG) stock from Walgreens in September.
Despite Walgreen’s market value skyrocketing to over $100 billion in 2015, it fell to about $7.5 billion as of Monday, according to The Wall Street Journal.
This reported sale to Sycamore isn’t Walgreens first time considering the private route. The company first explored the opportunity in 2019, according to reports from Reuters.
Companies featured in this article:
