💥Prescription-Grade Problems? Part II.💥
Updates: Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. ($WBA), Intrum AB, H-Food Holdings LLC + initiation on a new name.
⚡️Housekeeping Note⚡️
Some of you have been with us for so long that you may remember our original infrastructure: (i) a website on Squarespace (petition11.com) and (ii) our newsletters shipped via Mailchimp.*
In February ‘18, we made the leap over to Substack — a then-unknown upstart with, at the time, only a literal handful of publishers, none of which covered anything legal or finance-related. That’s right. PETITION was, if we recall correctly, the original finance/legal gangster publication built on Substack. The move allowed us to consolidate everything into one place: from there on out, Substack powered our website (petition.substack.com) and our email distribution. No more Mailchimp and no more (need for) Squarespace.
Except, we never really did anything with that old Squarespace site. It just sat there. Dated. Dormant. Pathetic. Taking up critical digital real estate like a zombie. It was time to take it out to the woodshed.
And so this week we did exactly that. In the process, we also took the petition.substack.com URL out with it. From now on, petition11.com is back (baby).** While most of you read us when we conveniently land in your email inbox, some of you do like to go back and read us online, or delve into the archive (available for paying subscribers only). Going forward, you can find us back at our original (digital) address. Please update your bookmarks (and habits) accordingly.
And, now, on to our a$$-kicking briefing ….
*Our original logo, seen above, was created using Tailor Brands. It cost us like $5 to make and it looks like it. Though, as we look at it now for the first time in literally years, we feel a wee bit nostalgic.
**No more free advertising for Substack by way of native embed in the URL.
💊Update 1: Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. ($WBA)💊
You have to hand it to the folks over at Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. ($WBA). They didn’t waste any time springing a good ol’ fashioned value trap.
You’ll recall that back on January 15, 2025, we initiated coverage on WBA, indicating how absolute sh*te the stock performance has been over the past several years but — ⚡️BUT⚡️ — how the company also showed some resilience by way of a strong Q1’25 earnings report. You can check that out here. Notably, the stock was trading at $12.24/share at the time of that writing — up nicely as moms and pops figured the worst had passed and gosh darnit the thing rocks a 8+% dividend (gulp).
Nevermind that there were some cautionary comments. You know, like this one via sick f*ck CEO Tim Wentworth who apparently asks Santa Claus to give Nana pneumonia:
“Turning now to our third priority, the turnaround of our consumer retail business. This has been made more challenging by the persistent deterioration in consumer discretionary spending. Our consumer remains under pressure from accumulated inflation and higher interest rates, and we are seeing continued value-seeking and channel-shifting behavior. Additionally, the warmer season impacted our first quarter results with reduced respiratory incidences and the associated baskets with those trips, contributing to about half of our retail decline versus last year.”There’s more:
“Third-party data shows flu, cold, and respiratory activity over 40% lower compared to the prior year, which, paired with the warm weather through November, led to a much softer cough, cold, and flu season. This dynamic negatively impacted comparable retail sales by approximately 270 bps in the quarter, including the impact from the attached basket, which was about half of the comp sales decline.”You’re in luck, Tim! It doesn’t matter which coast Americans are currently on — the weather in California and New York alike has been absolutely brutalizing the lungs. There ought to be plenty of respiratory distress for you to satisfy your blood-sucking shareholders in Q2’25, yippee!! That is, of course, if your potential customers can even access the products they need — damn “shrink.” Medicines are currently behind more bars than J6 protestors with a record of assaulting cops: