Walgreen acquired drugstore.com for $409 million

U.S. based drugstore chain Walgreen Co. has declared its acquisition of online retailer website drugstore.com for $409 million on yesterday to expand the online business. This merger agreement could be more expedient for Walgreen as getting extensive new customer access and other operating websites of drugstore.com for e-commerce business.

Walgreen acquired drugstore.com for $409 million

Walgreens has around 7,689 drugstores in across the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Walgreens has kept its communities stronger since 1901. Per day the company serves its most convenient, multi-channel access to consumer goods and services, cost-effective pharmacy, health and wellness services to almost 6 million customers. On the other hand, since 1998, the drugstore.com provides the health, beauty and wellness products with personal service. As of Feb. 24, 1999 drugstore.com started its web store and now it is referred as a leading online retailer. Its group of brand includes VisionDirect.com, Beauty.com, and SkinStore.com and all are serving private, informative and convenient shopping experience to customers.

By this deal the Walgreens will get drugstore.com’s 3 million existing customers and its other operating websites including Beauty.com, SkinStore.com and VisionDirect.com as well as it will also add about 60,000 products to its list. Main purpose of Walgreens behind this acquisition is to expand its multi-channel product range and the overall customer experience.

Walgreens president and CEO, Greg Wasson stated, "Importantly, drugstore.com's well-recognized presence in the health, personal care, beauty and vision categories, including such strong websites as drugstore.com, Beauty.com, SkinStore.com, and VisionDirect.com, will complement and extend many of our own multi-channel initiatives that have been driving growth in our business."

With acquiring drugstore.com website, Walgreens will also acquire its other properties, even though drugstore.com will preserve its own branding for now. After this big deal, the Bellevue, Washington based drugstore.com’s office will be managed by Walgreens.

About 1,000 employees are working at office, call center, and distribution centers of Drugstore.com. Perhaps, the acquisition will not result in any job losses. Walgreens will set the acquisition with on hand cash and hopes that the merger deal will close by June 2011.

The CEO and chairman of drugstore.com, Dawn Lepore explained, "We believe we have made significant progress over the last six years and built an organization with a broad and deep bench of Internet experience." He also added, "The opportunity to become a part of Walgreens is the right next step in this journey."

The Walgreen’ statement says that as per terms of deal, Drugstore.com shareholders will obtain $3.80 in cash per share of stock. With over $456 million sales in 2010, Drugstore.com has received 8th rank in the U.S.’s largest retailers, as per Internet Retailer magazine. Annually, Walgreens makes $67 billion sales. Walgreens alleged that this deal will hit income of the 4th quarter of financial year 2011 with 3 per cents per share due to one-time costs transaction. Walgreens plans to reinvest in the business therefore Drugstore.com will hit by 3 to 4 per cents per share in the year of 2012 and 1 to 2 per cents in the year of 2013.

Video of Walgreen Purchase of Drugstore.com from youtube:

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