CVS Caremark Corp.’s second-quarter net income jumped 18.4 percent, as its drugstores took business from rival Walgreen and an expansion of its pharmacy benefits management segment pushed revenue higher, The Associated Press reports.
The Woonsocket, R.I., company’s earnings topped Wall Street expectations, and it raised and narrowed its 2012 forecast.
0CVS Caremark said a recently settled split between rival drugstore chain Walgreen Co. and Express Scripts Holding Co. sent more customers to CVS drugstores, and it aims to keep many of them. The split added between 6.5 million and 7 million prescriptions for CVS pharmacies in the quarter. That contributed about 3.5 cents per share to earnings after adding 3 cents in the first quarter.
Walgreen used to fill prescriptions for St. Louis-based Express Scripts, which runs drug plans for employers, insurers and other customers as the nation’s largest pharmacy benefits manager, or PBM. The companies let a contract between them expire at the end of last year, but they said last month they will resume doing business in September.
