It was a glorious Thursday for Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) as the company announced the acquisition of PillPack, which gave the e-commerce platform a huge advantage over competitors in the pharmaceutical industry.
The online retailer’s decision to enter the pharmaceutical sphere had an instant effect on companies in the industry as it caused Rite Aid (NYSE:RAD) shares to fall 11.1%, Walgreens (NASDAQ:WBA) stock to decline about 9.9% by day’s end and CVS Health (NYSE:CVS) fell 6.1%.
The three companies lost an approximate $11 billion in market value on Thursday alone, while Amazon added more than $19.8 billion in market value thanks to the deal. PillPack is an online pharmacy that packages, organized and delivers presorted doses of medications and it’s designed to help patients who take multiple medications.
The team at PillPack puts together your medications into daily packages that are easy to crack open and take all your daily medication at once so you don’t forget it earlier. The company’s website says it is licensed to ship prescriptions in 49 states and its CEO said in November that the company was on track to post more than $100 million in revenue for 2017.
“PillPack is meaningfully improving its customers’ lives, and we want to help them continue making it easy for people to save time, simplify their lives, and feel healthier,” Jeff Wilke, Amazon CEO Worldwide Consumer, said in a statement.
AMZN stock was up about 2.5% by day’s end Thursday following the news of its PillPack acquisition.
