Rite Aid Keeps Up Growth

CAMP HILL, PA-Rite Aid management is still staying with its expansion plans of adding 800 to 1,000 new stores over the next five years, despite its pending $1.45-billion acquisition of just over 1,800 units from the Jean Coutu Group. For this fiscal year management has its sights on 125 and relocated units.

Overall, Rite Aid plans to relocate about 400 of its existing 3,300 stores. “We will be reviewing all of this in light of the new store base and geography as we move forward,” said Mary Sammons, Rite Aid’s president and chief executive officer, during the company’s second-quarter conference call.

Earlier this month Rite Aid officials made a federal filing under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act for review of the Jean Coutu transaction, which they expect to close some time in the fourth quarter. The deal will give 1,521 Eckerd stores and 337 Brooks units in the Northeast and Mid Atlantic, all of which will be converted in Rite Aids.