"Sound and fury, signifying nothing."
That quote from Shakespeare's Macbeth (or was it a David Bowie song?) also happens to be an apt description of the past year or so for Rite Aid's (NYSE:RAD) stock. You can argue that the company has continued to make some progress, but investors have batted the shares up and down, leaving it basically where it was a year ago.
For Rite Aid's fourth quarter, revenue was up nearly 10%, though that was helped by an extra week in this quarter. On a same-store basis, sales were up 2.5%, with both the pharmacy and front-end segments posting identical results. That's decent progress for a company that had pretty dicey results in 2005, but it's not all great news. Adjusted EBITDA was flat when excluding the extra week, and net income (net of a tax benefit and accrual reversal) was down from last year.
Elsewhere, you see more of a mix of good and bad news. On the "good" front, we have the announcement that the U.S. Attorney's office has closed its investigation of the company with no recommendation for punishment. We also have pretty good initial prescription sales related to Medicare Part D -- presumably meaning that partnerships with the likes of UnitedHealth (NYSE:UNH), Humana (NYSE:HUM), and Aetna (NYSE:AET) are paying off.
Less encouragingly, a milder cold/flu season hurt sales. Additionally, management's guidance for next year's financial results isn't exactly what I'd call robust. I'm not saying that management should juice expectations beyond their realistic projections, but I still wasn't too impressed with the growth discussed.
That's the bottom line here for me. Turnarounds can pay off, but I still don't think Rite Aid is a great candidate. It's in a fiercely competitive business (hello, Walgreen (NYSE:WAG), CVS (NYSE:CVS), and Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT)!), and there have been so many dilutive financing events that I'm no longer sure common equity shareholders will gain enough bang to compensate for the risk.
For more pharmacy Foolishness:
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Fool contributor Stephen Simpson has no financial interest in any stocks mentioned (that means he's neither long nor short the shares).
