The company has 6 months to get the shares up above $1.00 or it goes to the junk category and off the big board.  Drug stores are feeling the pinch of the economic slow down, depending on where the stood financially before hand, has an effect on where they are today.  imageGranted Rite Aid had some huge acquisitions as well, and the combining of the entire retail chain, not to mention the behind the scenes data expenses are big.   I am sure just like every other retailer too they will be using some business intelligence analysis to find weak areas and perhaps stores that may not carry the profitability of some of the other locations, the trend of the times it seems 

The struggling drugstore chain’s shares have been in the doldrums for a while: They ended 2007 at $2.79 a share, and they’ve suffered with the rest of the market lately, trading around $0.75 earlier today.

Now, as the company explained this morning, the average closing price of its common stock has fallen below $1 a share over 30 consecutive trading days. That breaks an NYSE rule related to minimum share prices. So Rite Aid has six months to get its price consistently at $1 or more, or else be taken off the Big Board.

The company also carries a lot of debt, stemming from its nearly $4 billion acquisition last year of the Brooks and Eckerd drugstore chains. But at least it completed a refinancing of about $700 million of debt in July, before the credit markets seized up, and it has no significant debt maturing until 2013.

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/10/17/rite-aid-faces-delisting/

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