page_title: Rite Aid
section_title: Growth and acquisitions
hierarchical_section_title: Rite Aid / History / Growth and acquisitions
caption_attribution_description: English: Self-made photo of the Rite Aid location in Scott Depot, West Virginia. This image was taken from across WV Rt 34 on June 13, 2006.
context_page_description: Rite Aid Corporation is a drugstore chain in the United States. The company ranked No. 94 in the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. It is headquartered in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg. Rite Aid is the largest drugstore chain on the East Coast and the third largest in the U.S.
  Rite Aid began in 1962, opening its first store in Scranton, Pennsylvania; it was called Thrift D Discount Center. After several years of growth, Rite Aid adopted its current name and debuted as a public company in 1968. As of 2020, Rite Aid is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol RAD.
  Its major competitors are CVS and Walgreens.
  In late 2015, Walgreens announced that it would acquire Rite Aid for $17.2 billion pending approval. However, on June 29, 2017, over fear of antitrust regulations, Walgreens Boots Alliance announced it would buy roughly half of Rite Aid's stores for $5.18 billion.
  On September 19, 2017, the Federal Trade Commission approved a fourth deal agreement to purchase 1,932 stores from Rite Aid for $4.38 billion total.
context_section_description: Ten years after its first store opened, Rite Aid operated 267 locations in 10 states. In 1981, Rite Aid became the third-largest retail drugstore chain in the country. 1983 marked a sales milestone of $1 billion. A 420-store acquisition along the east coast expanded Rite Aid's holdings beyond 2,000 locations, as did the acquisition of Gray Drug in 1987. Among the companies acquired was Baltimore, Maryland's Read's Drug Store. On April 10, 1989, Peoples Drug's 114 unit Lane Drug of Ohio was purchased by Rite Aid.
  Rite Aid acquired twenty-four Hook's Drug stores from Revco in 1994, selling nine of those stores to Perry Drug Stores, a Michigan-based pharmacy chain. One year later, in turn, the 224-store Perry chain was acquired by Rite Aid. The 1,000-store West Coast chain Thrifty PayLess was later acquired in 1996. The acquisition of Thrifty PayLess included the Northwest-based Bi-Mart membership discount stores, which was sold off in 1998. Acquisitions of Harco, Inc. and K&B, Inc. brought Rite Aid into the Gulf Coast area.
  In the 1990s, Rite Aid partnered with Carl Paladino's Ellicott Development Co. to expand the company's presence in upstate New York.
  On August 23, 2006, the Wall Street Journal announced that Rite Aid would acquire 1,858 Eckerd Pharmacy and Brooks Pharmacy stores from Jean Coutu for US$3.4 billion. The deal closed on June 4, 2007. Rite Aid announced that the two chains would be converted to the Rite Aid name, retiring the 109-year-old Eckerd banner. The merger was signed and completed as of June 4, 2007, with all remaining Eckerd stores converted to Rite Aid by the end of September 2007.
  In 2015, Rite Aid purchased EnvisionRx, a pharmacy benefit manager, which owns subsidiary PBMs MedTrak, Connect Health Solutions, and Smith Premier Services.
caption: Rite Aid store in Hurricane, West Virginia in June 2006. This location is now a Walgreens.
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