Walgreens Boots Alliance sold more shares of drug distributor Cencora, formerly AmerisourceBergen, for proceeds of $674 million, which will be used for debt repayment and general corporate purposes.
The stock sale, which comes less than a month after former Express Scripts executive Tim Wentworth became chief executive of Walgreens, brings the drugstore chain’s stake in Cencora down to 15%, well that Walgreens remains the drug distributor’s largest shareholder.
The transaction represents another decisive move to further simplify the company’s portfolio while improving its cash management, Walgreens said in a statement Friday.
Walgreens began reducing its stake in the retailer and other companies over the past two years under former Chief Executive Roz Brewer to raise money for other priorities such as its multibillion-dollar bet dollars on primary care clinics staffed by doctors and attached to pharmacies.
In May, Walgreens sold shares of Cencora, then known as AmerisourceBergen, for proceeds of $694 million. The transaction followed another sale of the retailer’s shares last December for proceeds of $1 billion, bringing its stake in the company to less than 20%.
The divestiture strategy continues under Wentworth even as he builds his new management team. Walgreens earlier this month named Neal Sample as its new executive vice president and chief information officer, even as the company this week continued to reduce its workforce at the company’s headquarters, eliminating more than 260 jobs.
Examples of experience include positions as chief information officer at Northwestern Mutual and Express Scripts, where he was chief operating officer and chief information officer when Wentworth was CEO of Pharmacy Benefit Managers. Wentworth and Sample led Express Scripts through its $54 billion acquisition by health insurance giant Cigna in 2018.
Walgreens has spent billions of dollars to expand its primary care business and has used a combination of equity and debt to do so. Walgreens has notably invested in VillageMD, which last year announced plans to buy Summit Health for $8.9 billion to expand physician-staffed clinics across the country. That deal included investments from Walgreens, which already owns about half of VillageMD, and health services company Cignas Evernorth.
Walgreens and rivals CVS Health, Walmart and Amazon are working to provide medical care in pharmacies and other retail outlets.
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