Walgreens Boots Updates On Rite Aid Deal; Explores Divestiture Remedies

(RTTNews) - Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. (WBA) and Rite Aid Corp. (RAD) said that they remained actively engaged with the Federal Trade Commission or FTC regarding review of the pending acquisition of Rite Aid by Walgreens Boots Alliance . As a result of the progress of these discussions with the FTC staff, Walgreens Boots Alliance is exploring potential divestiture remedies to address certain issues raised in those discussions.

In order to expedite that process, Walgreens Boots Alliance now expects that the most likely outcome will be that the parties will be required to divest more than the 500 stores previously communicated, but still continues to expect that fewer than 1,000 stores will be required to be divested.

In addition, Walgreens Boots continues to believe that the acquisition will close in the second half of calendar 2016.

Taking into account its current expectation of store divestitures, Walgreens Boots Alliance continues to expect that the acquisition will be accretive to its adjusted earnings per share in the first full year after closing of the transaction. The company also continues to expect that it will realize synergies from the acquisition in excess of $1 billion, to be fully realized within three to four years of closing.