Walgreens CEO: vaccine mandates helped boost results in Q4

Shares of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (NASDAQ: WBA) are up 2.0% in premarket trading after the company reported market-beating results for its fiscal fourth quarter on Thursday.

Walgreens’ financial performance in the fourth quarter

Walgreens reported $627 million in net income that translates to 72 cents per share. In the comparable quarter of last year, its net income was capped at a much lower $373 million or 43 cents a share. On an adjusted basis, the U.S. firm earned $1.17 per share.

Walgreens generated $34.26 billion in sales versus the year-ago figure of $30.37 billion. According to FactSet, experts had forecast $1.02 in adjusted EPS on $33.03 billion in sales.

Other notable figures included an 8.1% increase in U.S. comparable pharmacy sales and an 8.9% increase in comparable retail sales. Boots UK comparable pharmacy sales grew 11.4% in the recent quarter, and comparable retail sales were up 15%.

Walgreens hit its target of slashing annual costs by $2 billion a year ahead of schedule, as per the earnings press release.

Highlights from CEO Brewer’s interview with CNBC’s Bertha Coombs

The pharmacy chain supplied 13.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccinations in Q4 - twice as many as it had expected - that helped boost results. In and interview with CNBC's Bertha Coombs, CEO Roz Brewer said:

The delta variant also lifted demand for vaccination in the recent quarter, she added. Brewer agreed that supply chain and labour shortage issues were a concern for Walgreens as well. The company raised the minimum wage to $15/hour and offered bonuses to deal with the labour shortage.

Also on Thursday, Walgreens invested $5.2 billion to become the majority stakeholder in VillageMD.