Shares of drugstore giant Walgreen Co. (NYSE: WAG) have been soaring today after topping analyst estimates for its fiscal fourth quarter.

Going into today's earnings report, analysts had been expecting the company to show earnings of 39 cents per share, but the company surprised to the upside by showing earnings for the quarter of 44 cents per share. In reaction to the better than expected earnings, shares of Walgreen have traded up 9% this morning to $37.28, up $3.09.

Do hang onto to those CVS Caremark Corporation (NYSE: CVS) shares, to say the least: I'm Reiterating my Buy rating for the company, first recommended on February 16, 2009 at a price of $27.30.

CVS, a classic defensive, is performing well, despite choppy macroeconomic conditions. Nothing has occurred within the last half-year to suggest that CVS will not be able to successfully incorporate recent acquisitions, and increase sales in key, new growth markets in the U.S.

Rite-Aid Corporation (NYSE: RAD) is the drugstore you should avoid. You can consider CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS). You can take a look at Walgreen Company (NYSE: WAG). Rite-Aid? It's definitely not the cure for an ailing portfolio.

The troubled pharmacy chain is no stranger to losses and its public stock sits well below a buck a share. The third quarter numbers don't look too appealing. On an adjusted basis, Rite-Aid lost $0.15 per share. That may have been better than what analysts were calling for, namely a loss of $0.17 per share, but you have to look at the overall picture. Rite-Aid is closing stores, and that will hamper sales going forward (not to mention its brand equity, as well). Some will argue that it's all part of the turnaround. Sure, turnarounds can be ugly and painful, granted, but that doesn't mean you have to participate, hoping for the best. Why hop on this low-priced equity when integration of the Brooks Eckerd assets doesn't seem to be going very well?

According to the press release, there are a few positive statistics. Management says that overall same-store sales were up 1.4%, EBITDA increased over 8%, and operational cash flow was positive over the last three quarters (by comparison, cash was used for operations in the year-ago similar period). But the guidance isn't good, and I have no confidence in this management team to improve its GAAP performance. The company has to juice its sales, but with competition from stronger foes like CVS Caremark and Walgreen, I just don't see any silver lining to the Rite-Aid story. Turnaround specialists can make whatever argument they want. As for me, I'm going to make like the galaxy in Star Wars and stay far, far away from Rite-Aid's stock...

Disclosure: I don't own any company mentioned; positions can change at any time.

Walgreen (NYSE: WAG), a drugstore chain which competes with CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS) and Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD), dropped the ball in the fourth quarter, at least as far as analyst estimates are concerned. On a GAAP basis, Walgreen increased its earnings per share by a nickel, coming in at 45 cents.

That would be pretty cool if there were no adjustments to be made. Unfortunately, there is one. It relates to an adjustment for vacation-time accrual, which added almost $80 million to the bottom line. Take that away, and you get no earnings growth, as earnings per share would have been 40 cents, meaning non-GAAP number missed expectations by 5 cents.

I think Walgreen is a strong brand in its space. However, with the economic meltdown continuing its dire course, I would imagine that the chain is going to become affected by it, strong brand or not. Drug prescriptions certainly might be considered a defensive element in such an environment, but keep in mind that Walgreen doesn't just make its money on prescription sales. It sells a whole host of items in every location. And I'd have to imagine that the consumer is going to be scaling back. Yep, get ready for the good ole negative wealth effect.

Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD), a drugstore brand that competes with Walgreen (NYSE: WAG) and CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS), reported results for the second quarter on Thursday. Unfortunately, they did not meet the expectations of analysts. Revenues were basically flat at $6.5 billion. The net loss more than doubled to $0.27 per diluted share, compared to $0.10 per diluted share one year ago. According to this item, Wall Street was hoping that Rite Aid might be able to deliver a loss of $0.15 per diluted share. Furthermore, that news source states that guidance for the fiscal year is worse than the consensus. The consensus believed that Rite Aid might bleed about $0.51 per share in red ink. The loss will at least be $0.56 per share, according to management. It might even go as high as $0.67.

So, I just gave out all the nasty stuff. Is there anything encouraging from the release? Let me put on my look-on-the-bright-side glasses. Net cash from operations was positive during the quarter. Over $96 million was generated. Last year, operations required almost $140 million. I dig cash, no doubt about it. But I really love free cash flow. If you add back sale-leaseback transactions, there was some free cash, but I can't say it changes my general stance on Rite Aid. I mean, overall same-store sales are weak, and the stock is currently priced at less than a buck. It's done horribly year-to-date according to the AOL Finance snapshot taken at the time of this writing. Down 67%. Not encouraging.

Rite Aid's shares aren't so much stock certificates as they are lottery tickets. Do you like playing the lottery? If so, go buy one of those scratch-off deals. You might have better luck with them than you would with Rite Aid.

Disclosure: I don't own any company mentioned; positions can change at any time.

Rite-Aid (NYSE: RAD), a competitor of CVS (NYSE: CVS) and Walgreen (NYSE: WAG), tanked Thursday. By the end of the trading session, the pharmacy's stock declined almost 23% on heavy volume. Yes, it was a horrible day in the market overall, but don't blame the market at large. Rite-Aid is simply a company to avoid, and its latest earnings data show why.

According to the AP, Rite-Aid booked a loss of $0.20 per share for its fiscal first quarter versus a profit of $0.04 per share in the year-ago period. There are some growing pains going on here, since Rite-Aid is attempting to integrate its purchase of Brooks Eckerd. That acquisition propelled the company to top-line revenue growth of 48%. Unfortunately, analysts were looking for the company to lose only $0.09 per share. The significant differential made investors feel justified in punishing the stock. Heck, I'll bless the sell-off myself.

It'll be a long time before Rite-Aid finally turns its ship around. The next fiscal year will bring more losses, and with strong competition out there from CVS and Walgreen, the road ahead for management won't be for the faint of heart. This is truly a speculator's stock. I took a look at a post I wrote on Rite-Aid back near the beginning of April. At that time, the stock was priced at about $2.89 per share. As of Thursday's close, the shares were trading for $1.35. The Rite-Aid story belongs in the horror genre, and its stock is best left to those professionals who don't mind losing money. Individual investors? This company isn't for you, in my opinion.

Disclosure: I don't own any company mentioned; positions can change at any time.

Walgreen (NYSE: WAG) reported sluggish Q3 numbers last week. Net sales increased a little under 10% to $15 billion. Net income increased a whopping two pennies to 58 cents per diluted share (the term "whopping" is used here sarcastically). According to this article, Walgreen met top-line expectations but missed the bottom-line call by a penny.

Gross margin remained relatively stable, but the net margin dropped to 3.8% in the quarter compared to 4.1% in the previous year's similar period. But same-store sales increased 3.4%, which is a decent number. Also, operational cash flow jumped over 19% to $2.5 billion. That's excellent; it's always good to see cash coming in. It helps mitigate the tepid earnings expansion. Walgreen did well with its cash-flow statement last time around as well. Walgreen management cited the economy as a factor in its earnings stats and highlighted the fact that it cut back on expenses, including advertising. Making sure costs don't get out of hand is important, but I'd be careful about eliminating too much of the advertising budget. Competing with CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS), Rite-Aid (NYSE: RAD), and the pharmacy at Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) obligates brand-building and differentiation.

Walgreen's Q3 wasn't beyond awesome, but it was solid enough. The stock is only down slightly as I write this. As a long-term play on the need for drugstores, it's not a bad way to go.

Disclosure: I don't own any company mentioned; positions can change at any time.

Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD), I should disclose, is one of my least favorite companies and stocks. Nevertheless, I don't mind checking in on it from time to time when there is news about it. Yesterday, the pharmacy released sales data for the month of March (the data excludes the Brooks Eckerd acquisition). Did they change my outlook on Rite Aid at all?

No, although I should say that this wouldn't be necessarily expected; a month of same-store sales data isn't the killer app of an overall investment thesis for a retail idea. Still, shareholders follow comps religiously, and I have to say that Rite Aid's number was nothing to write home about. A 2.6% gain in sales at stores open more than a year is weak. Walgreen (NYSE: WAG) said earlier in the week that its comparable-store revenues grew by a much better 4.4%. Walgreen was able to take advantage of the Easter shopping excitement in a much better fashion than Rite Aid. It all comes down to brand and execution; Walgreen, as well as CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS), are more valuable in terms of both those attributes.

I may not have been bowled over by Walgreen's recent earnings release, but I can tell you that Rite Aid's share price is downright frightening and telling -- it's telling people to stay away, or at least understand that it may be essentially like buying a lottery ticket (it closed at $2.89 yesterday). Rite Aid's same-store sales were weak, and so is its investment potential.

Disclosure: I don't own shares in any of the companies mentioned here; positions can change at any time.

Walgreen Company (NYSE: WAG) reported earnings for the second quarter on Monday. Net sales grew by a very decent 10%. Diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.69 versus $0.65 in the year-ago period; this represents a bottom-line gain of 6%.

Considering some of the other action on Wall Street on Monday -- the increased offer for Bear Stearns, the approval of the Sirius/XM merger -- Walgreen's earnings report was simply an okay event, even though the stock closed up around 5% on the news. Same-store sales may have increased 4.7%, but the retailer sold a lot of items with lower margins this time around, thus reducing its gross-margin metric by 14 basis points (the release did cite a big shift to pharmacy sales in the quarter as having negatively impacted margins). So Walgreen needs to work on its non-pharmacy revenues. One cool thing from the report is the jump in net cash from operations -- that number increased by 10%.

Walgreen, which competes with CVS Caremark Corporation (NYSE: CVS) and Rite Aid Corporation (NYSE: RAD), isn't a bad way to play the long-term drug-retailing business. To be sure, baby boomers -- as well as everyone else -- will always need to visit drugstores on a go-forward basis. It's the company that can capture a significant amount of non-pharmacy sales that will prosper the most. Walgreen and CVS are excellent brand names in this sector -- I'm not so keen on Rite Aid, though (take a look at the stock price and see if you think the company might be cheap-for-a-reason, as they say).

Disclosure: I don't own any shares in any of the companies mentioned here; positions can change at any time.

Continuing with our defensive stock series, with the markets in a choppy/consolidation mode (or perhaps worse), the drug store chain sector has appeal as a defensive strategy. Typically, Walgreen (NYSE: WAG) would fit the bill, but recent results have generated caution signals, and a Don't Buy, pending additional performance statistics.

On Oct. 1, Walgreen reported Q4 EPS of 40 cents, down from 41 cents Q4 a year ago, and 7 cents below the consensus estimate. Wall Street did not respond favorably, taking shares down more than 16% to about $40 from $48 that day. The shares have since deteriorated further, and closed around $38.25 Tuesday.

Prior to this quarter, Walgreen had recorded double-digit earnings growth in six of the last seven quarters, and many analysts had seen F2008 revenue advancing about 10%, including a 5% front store revenue gain. Nevertheless, those projections could not prevent the stock from incurring a large hit -- a sell-off symptomatic of today's market. Miss an EPS consensus estimate in a normal market, and the stock drops 5%. Miss an EPS consensus estimate in the current skittish market, and the Street takes your stock down 10%, or more. Did Wall Street's response constitute an overreaction? Probably.

That last point was reinforced on Monday when Morgan Stanley analyst Mark Wiltamuth raised his rating on the drug store chain to "Overweight," or "Buy," from "Equal-Weight," with a $45 target, arguing the notion that generics will cut deeply into 6,000-store WAG's margins has been overplayed.

[Note: Technical analysis agnostics stop reading here; all others continue.]

Still, technically Walgreen's stock is struggling with near three-year support levels around $38. If WAG fails to hold that support, a drop to the next major support level, $30, is possible. Further, the stock is now substantially below both the 50-day and the 200-day moving averages -- two indicators of stock strength/weakness.

Stock Analysis: Walgreen is a moderate-risk stock not suitable for low-risk investors. Further, the prudent strategy with WAG is Don't Buy, and wait to see if the stock can both hold the $38 support level, and close back above $43 in the quarter ahead. We'll re-evaluate WAG at that time.

Pharmaceutical retailer CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS) said before the open that its second-quarter profit spiked to $720.1 million, or 47 cents per share, more than doubling from last year's profit of $334.4 million, or 40 cents per share. The latest figures edged out analysts' per-share estimates of 46 cents. This report marked the first time that Caremark's results were included for a full three-month reporting period - CVS acquired the pharmacy benefits concern in March.

Revenue surged 95% to $20.7 billion, just above Wall Street's consensus target of $20.6 billion. Same-store sales jumped 5.7%, with pharmacy same-store sales rising 5.7% while sales of "general" items, including candy and cosmetics, were up 5.9%.

Looking ahead, CVS expects the merger to add between eight and 10 cents to full-year 2008 earnings per share, and contribute 14-18 cents in 2009. For the current year, CVS officials project retail pharmacy sales to rise 12%-15%, with full-year earnings per share falling in a range between $1.86 and $1.91.

During the latest reporting period, CVS Caremark opened 37 new stores, closed 15 existing locations, and relocated 30 stores. At the close of the quarter on June 30, there were 6,177 retail pharmacy stores under the CVS umbrella, located in 44 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Beth Gaston Moon is an analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.