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On Thursday, it filed a notice to the US Securities and Exchange Commission saying it would be unable to file its latest quarterly financial report because it was looking at “strategic alternatives,” which is Wall Street speak for “considering bankruptcy.” In that filing, the company said it expected its losses would increase significantly in the past quarter, which is saying something, considering it lost about three quarters of a billion dollars between March 2022 and March 2023 — and another $307 million between March and May this year. Over the past six years, Rite Aid has tallied nearly $3 billion in losses.

At the beginning of June, the last time the company filed a financial report, Rite Aid had just $135.5 million of cash on hand -— and $3.3 billion in long-term debt, which exceeded the value of the company’s assets by nearly $1 billion. With rising interest rates, that debt wasn’t cheap to finance.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/15/business ... index.html

The article goes on to say that they're going to stay in business as they've secured $3.5 billion in financing and debt reduction. Who in their right mind would lend that kind of money to a company that at the moment is losing a billion dollars a year?

Once upon a time their stock hit $1000 plus a share for a brief period back in 1999.

Kinda funny. Rite Aid is the closest drug store to my house. I rarely ever go in there. I'll drive another mile to the Walgreens. No particular reason.

Does this mean my flu shot is no good?

Can't remember the last time I was in one. I go to Kroger for prescriptions and Walmart for anything else.

Rite Aid is down the street from my house. It's not my favorite, but when I need to deal with prescriptions, all the other pharmacies are out of my way, and I'm likely already frustrated or feeling like crap if I have a prescription, so proximity wins.

Some years ago, there was a deal in place for Walgreens to buy out a large number of Rite Aid stores, but I believe that deal was terminated.

All of the big 3 brick and mortar pharmacies - CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid & their subsidiaries - are shuttering stores right now. Competition from in-store pharms (like Target, and the aforementioned Kroger, amoungst others), as well as mail-order (w/Amazon expected to join that fray) are cutting in.

I read soewhere that Walgreens has been closing stores due to heavy losses from shoplifting.

I was in one for a passport photo last winter, it reminded me of a K-Mart.

Bring back Arbor Drugs. Bringing back William Schallert would be nice but I don't think that will happen.

Why? I don't get Drug Stores.

Pharmacies and Dollar General is all we need

Rite-Aid fucked up when it reconfigured the floor plan of most of its stores in the early 00s to a bizarre V-shaped aisle configuration, with a center aisle bisecting diagonally from the store entrance to the back of the store. The aisles often seemed cramped, too. Trying to move from one side of the store to the other when searching for a specific item was enough to induce dizziness.

Rite-Aid also had a ghetto vibe in the 90s into the 00s, touting hard liquor and crappy beer in its ads very prominently.

They should've been devoting that ad (and store space) to cosmetics and "impulse buy" general merchandise products. Ya know, stuff women like to buy. They also have failed at marketing their private label OTC pharmaceutical and H&BA products proficiently.

In terms of OTC pharmaceuticals, Costco, Kroger and potentially Walmart blow everyone away on price.

For prescriptions, especially when using GoodRx, Kroger often has terrific pricing. Walgreens, Rite-Aid and CVS are often the most expensive. Meijer is usually somewhere in the middle.

Frankly, I thought Rite-Aid started going downhill in terms of store experience not long after it acquired Perry.

Rite Aid has closed a few of their stores in Toledo as of late.

I tend to use Kroger for my pharmacy needs.

The dirty Rite-Aid on Adams Rd. in Birmingham, MI near the post office was the first one near me to close. The floors were filthy the last time I shopped there (probably 2021), and the decor and fixtures inside the store were of mid 90s vintage.

On the bright side, that store thanks to its dimensions never adopted the hideous floor plan mentioned in my earlier post.

ZenithCKLW wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 16, 2023 4:09 pm

Rite Aid is down the street from my house. It's not my favorite, but when I need to deal with prescriptions, all the other pharmacies are out of my way, and I'm likely already frustrated or feeling like crap if I have a prescription, so proximity wins.

Now that I've had time to ponder it, I remembered why I don't use the Rite Aid by me. The pharmacy closes for lunch for an hour. And the pharmacy has shorter hours than other places.