Rite Aid filed for bankruptcy protection Monday for the second time, less than a year after the embattled drugstore chain emerged from Chapter 11 as a private company.
Rite Aid said in a news release that it’s looking for a buyer and is in “active discussions” with multiple prospects. The Chapter 11 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey gives Rite Aid access to $1.94 billion in new financing to fund the sale process, during which it plans to keep stores open.
The company did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment.
Rite Aid first filed for bankruptcy in October 2023 and received $3.45 billion in new financing to support its reorganization. The company emerged from Chapter 11 in September after slashing almost $2 billion in debt and closing hundreds of stores.
Despite this downsizing, Rite Aid has “continued to face financial challenges” that have intensified as the retail and health-care sectors evolve, chief executive Matt Schroeder said in a statement, adding that the retailer will focus on keeping pharmacy service uninterrupted.
Rite Aid’s October 2023 bankruptcy filing also allowed the company to resolve hundreds of lawsuits alleging that it unlawfully filled opioid prescriptions, a practice that fueled the nation’s opioid crisis, according to allegations by several cities, counties and states.
The flood of litigation, which also targeted CVS and Walgreens, has resulted in more than $50 billion in settlements with state and local governments — upending the country’s three major pharmacy retailers.
Those settlements come as traditional pharmacy companies also face rising competition from e-commerce giants such as Walmart and Amazon, which offer same-day prescription delivery. Walgreens announced last year that it would close a “significant portion” of its almost 9,000 U.S. locations and agreed last March to take itself private as part of an acquisition by private-equity firm Sycamore Partners.
Meanwhile, CVS, the country’s largest national chain, announced in 2021 that it would shutter 900 stores over three years and outlined plans last October to lay off almost 3,000 employees to cut costs.
Rite Aid, the third-largest national stand-alone pharmacy chain, has about 1,200 stores, according to its website. The Philadelphia-based retailer has closed more than 1,000 stores since its 2023 bankruptcy filing. Most recently, it said it would shutter all of its stores in Michigan and all but four stores in Ohio by the end of September.
Rite Aid is the latest in a string of retail bankruptcies in the past year, with Forever 21, Joann, Party City and Big Lots all recently filing for Chapter 11 protection. Coresight Research in December projected that more than 7,300 store locations would shutter by the end of 2024, compared with about 5,500 in 2023. Bankruptcies in the sector this past year almost doubled.
