Rite Aid looking to buy assets of 12 closing grocery stores

East Pennsboro Township-based Rite Aid Corp., through some of its subsidiaries, has submitted an $8 million bid to buy the customers and assets of 12 soon-to-be-closed pharmacies of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. grocery chain.

Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., which operates grocery chains A&P, Super Fresh and Pathmark, among others, filed for bankruptcy protection in July. Rite Aid was one of 16 companies Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. reached out to for the sale of 22 of its pharmacies.

Rite Aid’s bid of $8.03 million to buy the customers and assets of the 12 of the stores was accepted, according to a Friday filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York. The filing requests an expedited hearing on the approval of Rite Aid’s purchase.

Details on the sale of the other 10 pharmacies are not included in Friday’s filing. According to the purchase agreement contained in the filing, Rite Aid will pay about $5.7 million for the “prescription files in the sellers possession” and about $2.3 million for the inventory at the stores.

Four of the stores Rite Aid is angling for are in Pennsylvania, all in the Philadelphia area. Another is in Delaware, and the other seven are in New Jersey.

Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. is asking for the expedited hearing because four of the pharmacies in Rite Aid's purchase agreement are closing Sept. 4, and if customers take their prescriptions to a new location before the deal can be complete, Rite Aid’s purchase price could be lower.

According to Friday’s filing, if the six-week average prescription volume at any of the stores has dropped by more than 10 percent two days before closing, the purchase price drops by that percentage.

“The debtors must consummate the sale as soon as possible to provide a seamless transition for their customers after the pharmacies close,” according to the filing. “To the extent the sale is delayed, the customers may transfer their prescriptions to another location and current volume will decrease, thus negatively impacting the purchase price.”

Rite Aid made the bid through subsidiaries Eckerd Corp., Rite Aid of New Jersey Inc., Thrift Drug Inc. and Rite of Pennsylvania Inc.

Rite Aid trades its stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol RAD.

Source: Central Penn Business Journal