Rite Aid Corp. (NYSE: RAD) is set to release its fiscal first-quarter financial results before the markets open on Thursday. The Thomson Reuters consensus estimates are $0.05 in earnings per share (EPS) on revenue of $8.26 billion. In the same period of last year, the retailer posted EPS of $0.02 and $6.65 billion in revenue.
Management believes that Rite Aid’s positive fourth-quarter results helped it deliver a successful fiscal year that reflected the tremendous progress it is making to expand a retail health care offering. This was one of many key highlights from the previous fiscal year, which was a transformational year that saw the company acquire EnvisionRx, launch the ground-breaking wellness+ with Plenti program, complete its 2,000th Wellness store and exceed $30 billion in revenues for the first time.
In the past quarter, the company’s same-store sales for the quarter fell 0.6% from last year, driven by a 0.8% decrease in pharmacy sales and a 0.4% decrease in front-end sales. The number of prescriptions filled in same stores barely increased 0.1%. Prescription sales accounted for 68.1% of total drugstore sales, and third party prescription revenue was 97.9% of pharmacy sales.
Rite Aid only had a few analysts weigh in on it during its fiscal first-quarter:
- Evercore ISI downgraded it to a Hold rating from Buy.
- Credit Suisse reiterated an Outperform rating with a $9 price target.
- Deutsche Bank downgraded it to Hold from Buy and raised its price target to $9.
- S&P Capital IQ reiterated a Buy rating with a $9 price target.
So far in 2016, Rite Aid has performed relatively flat compared to the broad markets. However, over the past 52 weeks the stock is down 10%.
Shares of Rite Aid were trading at $7.84 on Wednesday, with a consensus analyst price target of $8.94 and a 52-week trading range of $5.88 to $9.47.
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