Jan 7, 2016 2 min read

DEERFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Walgreens trumped Wall Street’s profit expectation its fiscal first quarter, but the nation’s largest drugstore chain started 2016 cautiously by narrowing its earnings forecast range for the new year.

The Deerfield, Ill., company said Thursday that it had raised by 5 cents per share the bottom end of a forecast it laid out in October. It now expects full-year earnings to range from $4.30 to $4.55 per share.

Analysts expect, on average, earnings of $4.44 per share for fiscal 2016, according to FactSet.

For the quarter that ended Nov. 30, Walgreens earned $1.11 billion, with adjusted results totaling $1.03 per share.

The average estimate of 12 analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 97 cents per share.

The company posted revenue of $29.03 billion in the period, which missed analyst expectations for $29.56 billion.

In October, Walgreens said it will spend $9.41 billion to take over rival drugstore chain Rite Aid in an all-cash deal that could create a drugstore chain with more than 12,700 locations in the United States, far more than the nearest competitor, CVS Health Corp.

The deal is still going through regulatory review, and the companies expect it to close in the second half of this year. Walgreens said Thursday that the deal is progressing as planned.

The Rite Aid deal came less than a year after Walgreens bought European health and beauty retailer Alliance Boots, which runs the largest pharmacy chain in the United Kingdom.

The company’s shares advanced about 12 percent last year before closing 2015 at $85.16. That topped the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, which slipped less than 1 percent not counting dividends.