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Walgreens Boots Alliance is being taken private in a deal valued up to $23.7 billion, following a largely disastrous run on the public markets where its market cap has lost billions and more than 10% of its locations have closed.
It brings an end to nearly 100 years as a publicly traded company. After opening its 100th store in Chicago, Walgreens went public the following year in 1927.
Private equity firm Sycamore Partners agreed to pay $11.45 a share in cash, according to a statement from Walgreens. Including debt and other potential future payouts, the company said the full value of the deal could reach up to $23.7 billion.
Walgreens’ (WBA) shares have lost nearly 80% of their value over the past five years, but have perked up in recent months following reports that the company was in talks to go private.
Sycamore specializes in consumer and retail services, and the company said it would continue to operate under its portfolio of brands out of the Chicago area.
“While we are making progress against our ambitious turnaround strategy, meaningful value creation will take time, focus and change that is better managed as a private company,” WBA CEO Tim Wentworth said in a statement Thursday. “Sycamore will provide us with the expertise and experience of a partner with a strong track record of successful retail turnarounds.”
Similar to rivals CVS and Rite Aid, Walgreens has closed hundreds of stores and struggled with declining prescription reimbursements in recent years, sending its value plummeting to just around $9.5 billion from $100 billion a decade ago.
Walgreens has slipped behind CVS because it’s smaller than CVS, giving it less scale to negotiate prices with insurers and other health care entities that pay for most of the prescriptions people pick up.
Last October, Walgreens announced it was closing approximately 1,200 locations. About one in seven Walgreens currently open will close its doors by 2027. It currently has around 8,500 locations across the United States.
Those closures represent a significant escalation from June 2024, when the company announced it was shutting 300 underperforming locations as part of a multiyear optimization program under CEO Tim Wentworth. At the time, the company had said about a quarter of Walgreens stores were unprofitable, and the chain promised “imminent” changes.
Walgreens took over New York-based drugstore chain Duane Reade in 2010. In 2014, it bought the remaining 55% stake in European drug store operator Alliance Boots for $5.3 billion in cash, keeping its corporate offices in the United States.