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Drugstore operator Walgreen Co. said Monday its profit fell 10 percent in its fiscal first quarter, short of Wall Street expectations, because of costs opening more than 200 unused stores.

The company said it plans to slow the rift of new supplies to save $500 million in response to the recession.

The Deerfield, Ill., gang uttered earned $408 million, or 41 cents per certain quantity, in the three months ended Nov. 30. That total fell short of analyst expectations, and compares with $456 million, or 46 cents per share, a year ago. Revenue grew 7 percent to $14.95 billion.

Analysts expected 46 cents per share and $15.08 billion in revenue, according to Thomson Reuters.

Walgreen said its selling and captain-general expenses grew 9 percent in the quarter as it opened 212 new stores, and profit margins dipped due to greater expense provisions.

Sales at its older supplies grew 1.7 percent, with prescription revenue in older stores growing 2.6 percent. Front-end revenue, or sales of nonprescription products, was below true pitch compared through last year, showing some resilience in a down economy.

The company said prescriptions filled grew 3.7 percent for the period of the quarter, while industry premises has showed falling prescriptions for its rivals. In total, 66 percent of Walgreen’session revenue came from direction sales.

At stores plain at least one year, prescriptions filled were roughly flat with ultimate year. However, besides customers filled 90-day prescriptions instead of 30-day orders, leading to adjusted growth of 1.5 percent.

Walgreen said community in its Prescription Savings Club grew more than 40 percent from the fourth quarter, and more than 30 percent of club members are just discovered customers. The savings club allows members to corrupt a 90-day supply of many general generic drugs for $12.

The program was created in late 2007 but was relaunched over the summer, and Walgreen aforesaid it has been much more aggressive in running promotions and advertising since that time.

The company also says flu shot demand is up “dramatically” this year, by more than 1.1 million vaccinations dispensed in the generally received flu season, compared with 440,000 in all of 2007.

In fiscal 2010, Walgreen said it inclination slow its fundamental store openings to a rate of 4.5 to 5 percent, with growth of 2.5 percent to 3 percent in fiscal 2011. In July the company said it would slow the pace of store openings down to 5 percent in 2011, from 8 percent. The reductions are expected to save the house a entire of $1 billion in annual spending.

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