Walgreens Sells AmerisourceBergen Shares To Elevate $694 Million To Pay Down Debt

Walgreens Boots Alliance has bought shares of AmerisourceBergen for proceeds of $694 million, which will probably be used “primarily for debt paydown and common company functions.”

Walgreens Thursday night said its inventory possession stake in AmerisourceBergen, a big drug distributor, has “decreased on account of the concurrent share repurchase by AmerisourceBergen however stays at roughly 17%.”

Walgreens has been spending billions of {dollars} to broaden its major care enterprise and has used a mixture of fairness and debt to take action. Most notably, Walgreens has invested in VillageMD, which final 12 months announced plans to buy Summit Health for $8.9 billion to broaden doctor-staffed clinics throughout the nation. The transaction contains investments from Walgreens, which already owns greater than 60% of VillageMD, and Cigna’s well being companies enterprise Evernorth.

The mix comes as Walgreens and rivals CVS Well being, Walmart and Amazon push deeper into offering medical care in drugstores and different retail settings.

Amazon earlier this 12 months closed on its $3.9 billion acquisition of One Medical, which operates greater than 220 major care places of work in more than 28 U.S. markets.

In the meantime, CVS Well being, which owns the well being insurer Aetna, has been doing a little wheeling and dealing of its personal. CVS purchased the house care firm Signify Well being for $8 billion and final week accomplished its acquistion of Oak Road Well being for $10.6 billion in money, including a big community of doctor-staffed clinics primarily utilized by seniors.

Different well being insurers, like UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest medical insurance firm, have lengthy been gobbling up physician practices and different major care operations together with pressing care and surgical procedure facilities by way of its Optum well being companies enterprise. And Walmart has opened a number of new doctor-staffed “Walmart Well being” facilities in a number of states and is doubling the variety of such services by the tip of subsequent 12 months to round 80.

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