The owner of Boots is conducting a store portfolio review in the UK that may result in closures, after issuing a profit warning.
UK like-for-like sales were down 2.3% during Walgreens Boots Alliance’s second fiscal quarter of the year, in what it called its “most difficult quarter” since the group formed.
Boots has 2,485 stores in the UK, with 56,000 staff.
Walgreen has said it is taking “decisive steps” to improve its performance in the UK.
On top of a store review, it is also planning to reduce its headcount at its Nottingham headquarters by 20% as well as revamp its beauty offering.
Stefano Pessina, executive vice-chairman and chief executive, said: “During the quarter, we saw significant reimbursement pressure, compounded by lower generic deflation, as well as continued consumer market challenges in the US and the UK.
“While we had begun initiatives to address these trends, our response was not rapid enough given market conditions, resulting in a disappointing quarter that did not meet our expectations.
“We are going to be more aggressive in our response to these rapidly shifting trends.
“This will include expediting the execution of our partnership initiatives, fully developing our in-store neighbourhood health destinations, re-imagining our front-end retail offering, optimising our store footprint and increasing the annual savings goal of our transformational cost management programme from in excess of $1bn to more than $1.5bn.”
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