Walgreen Co.’s December sales rose 7.5 percent to $6.81 billion, the biggest U.S. drugstore chain said on Wednesday. The performance was helped by Duane Reade, which made up 2.5 percentage points of the total sales increase. Walgreen purchased Duane Reade for $623 million in April 2010.
Sales at stores open at least a year climbed 2.8 percent. This metric is a key gauge of a company’s health because it measures results at existing stores instead of newly opened ones. Duane Reade stores are not included in these results.
Front-end, or non-pharmacy, sales increased 9.5 percent during the month, with front-end sales at stores open at least a year up 3.6 percent — the biggest rise in 14 months. Traffic dipped 0.9 percent, but customer basket size grew 2.7 percent.
Pharmacy sales, which comprised 58.6 percent of total sales, climbed 6 percent. Pharmacy sales at stores open at least a year rose 2.2 percent, but were hurt by 2.6 percentage points because of generic drugs rolled out over the past year.
Prescriptions filled at stores open at least a year gained 2.9 percent last month. About 1.1 percentage points was due to more patients filling 90-day prescriptions.
Walgreen, which is based in Deerfield, gave out more than 380,000 flu shots in December and has provided almost 6 million flu shots for the season to date.
Walgreen had 8,136 locations in 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam as of Dec. 31, 2010.
Shares fell 45 cents to $39.20 in premarket trading.
