(Updates with Rite Aid data, share price)

 
   DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Walgreen Co. (WAG) said Thursday its June same-store sales rose 3.4% on a calendar shift that gave June one more weekday compared with the same month a year earlier, while rival drugstore chain Rite Aid Corp. (RAD) saw a surprise 0.6% drop.

The news helped sent Rite Aid shares down 2.6% premarket to $1.50. Walgreen dipped 4 cents to $29.30.

Walgreen said pharmacy patients fill more prescriptions during the week than on weekends, so the extra weekday helped boost results by 1.5 percentage points. Same-store pharmacy sales rose 5.8%, hurt by 4.4 points because of generic-drug introductions. Same-store prescriptions filled increased 7.5%, and pharmacy sales made up two-thirds of total sales for the month.

However, same-store front-end sales fell 0.9% from a year earlier, hurt by softer sales of seasonal items.

Walgreen is struggling to bounce back from a recent trend of retail weakness for the nation's No. 2 drugstore chain by store count after CVS Caremark Corp. (CVS).

Total sales for June rose 9% to $5.24 billion.

At Rite Aid, the No. 3 drugstore chain behind CVS and Walgreen, its same-store sales drop was led by a 4.5% slump at the front end. Pharmacy same-store sales increased 1.4%; its results were hurt by 4.8 percentage points by generic introductions.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters projected a 1.4% overall increase for Rite Aid, with the front end down 1.3% and the pharmacy up 1.9%.

Rite Aid said that same-store sales excluding Brooks and Eckerd stores were flat. At those locations, they saw a 1.8% drop. Rite Aid bet heavily that the acquisition of Brooks and Eckerd would help it better compete with its much-larger rivals, but the deal left it saddled with debt not long before the recession began. Even after remodeling and updating with new computer systems, sales at those stores have continued to lag other Rite Aid stores.

Total sales fell 2.5% to $1.97 billion. Prescription revenue accounted for 68% of total sales.

-By Kerry Grace Benn, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2353; kerry.benn@dowjones.com