CVS Health is reporting surprisingly strong profit and revenue numbers for the fourth quarter, as a rise in prescriptions helped counter hits from the on-going COVID-19 pandemic.
The nearly year-long pandemic has kept customers away from the drugstore chain’s stores and hurt sales of its cough and cold treatments, which normally grow during the winter.
But a bigger part of its business, the number of prescriptions filled, continued to climb for the drugstore chain and pharmacy benefit manager even though the flu season has been mild and fewer people are going to the doctor and getting new prescriptions.
Testing for COVID-19 also helped bump up revenue from the company’s drugstore business more than 6% in the quarter.
Overall, CVS Health said Tuesday that it earned $973 million in the final quarter of 2020, with results adjusted for one-time gains and costs totaling $1.30 per share.
That’s six cents better per-share than Wall Street had expected, according to a survey by Zacks Investment Research.
Revenue grew 4% to $69.55 billion, also beating analyst projections handily.
CVS Health operates one of the nation’s largest drugstore chains with nearly 10,000 retail locations. It also runs prescription drug plans for big clients like insurers and employers through a large pharmacy benefit management business, and the company sells health insurance through its Aetna arm.
The company’s net income tumbled 44% compared to the final three months of 2019 or the last quarter before the pandemic hit. That was due partly to a loss on the early extinguishment of $674 million in debt.
The Woonsocket, Rhode Island, company also said Tuesday that it expects full-year earnings in the range of $7.39 to $7.55 per share.
That falls mostly below the bar set on Wall Street, where analysts expect, on average, $7.54 per share according to FactSet.
Shares of CVS Health Corp. are up less than 2% before the opening bell.
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A portion of this story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on CVS at https://www.zacks.com/ap/CVS