Whatever this South Park “pharma” joke is…it’s def hilarious (Source: Giphy)
Have you ever thought to yourself, “Huh, there’s a CVS on every block”?
That intuition is actually not too far off. With ~10k stores across America, CVS has a store within 5 miles of 71% of the US population (220m+ people).
As pharma increasingly moves online — from D2C brands like Ro and Hims to a sleepy startup called Amazon — CVS has bet its future on brick ‘n’ mortar.
But with the vaccine rollout promising millions of people in foot traffic, CVS (along with Walgreens and Rite Aid) are pursuing strategies to woo customers, per CNBC:
CVS and Walgreens are both transitioning to new CEOs.
Meanwhile, Rite Aid is the minnow of the group (it has ~2.5k stores and is valued at $1B vs. $100B for CVS, $41B for Walgreens) and has had a number of acquisitions from larger suitors — including Walgreens — fall through.
… these pharma chains have to contend with big-box stores like Target and Walmart encroaching on their turf.
Further, the vaccine rollout process itself (only in the first of 3 phases) has been bumpy, according to the Wall Street Journal:
We don’t know if these pharma chains can capitalize from the vaccine rollout, but — at the very least — we know where to find them.