Walgreens Boots Alliance Rises Despite Earnings Miss

(RTTNews) - Shares of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (WBA) are climbing more than 3% Thursday morning in spite of its quarterly earnings missing the Street view.

Net loss in the fourth quarter was $180 million or $0.21 per share compared with net loss of $415 million or $0.48 per share in the year-ago quarter.

Excluding one-time items, the company reported earnings of $0.67 per share, that missed the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson-Reuters of $0.69 per share.

Sales for the quarter increased 9.2 percent year-over-year to $35.422 billion. The consensus estimate was for $34.78 billion.

For the full year, the company expects sales to be in the range of $141 billion to $145 billion. Adjusted EPS to be $3.20-$3.50.

Analysts expect the company to report earnings of $3.72 per share on revenue of $144.24 billion for the year.

WBA is at $23.66 currently. It has traded in the range of $20.58 - $42.29 in the last 1 year.