The news: Walmart is adding pharmacy home delivery for specialty drugs that need to be refrigerated, such as GLP-1s, insulin, and liquid antibiotic amoxicillin.
Why it matters: Walmart is expanding its prescription drug offerings to better compete with CVS, Walgreens, and Amazon.
- CVS is the largest US pharmacy with $171.6 billion in sales and a 25.1% market share, per a Drug Channel Institute report in June.
- Walgreens is second with $99.5 billion and a 14.6% market share.
- Walmart is the fifth largest with sales of $32.7 billion and a 4.8% market share, per the report.
- Amazon doesn’t break out its online pharmacy sales, but was expected to reach $2 billion in 2024, per Evercore cited by Business Insider.
Zooming out: Walmart’s addition of specialty drugs is the newest expansion of its pharmacy delivery service, launched eight months ago.
- Refrigerated and reconstituted drugs account for 30% of its current in-store pharmacy sales, per Walmart. It’s likely looking to capture some of those sales for its new delivery service.
- Walmart can now deliver 90% of US prescribed medications in 49 states.
- More than half (55%) of Walmart customers said they wanted groceries delivered along with their prescriptions, per an internal survey last October when it launched Rx delivery.