Walgreens Boots Alliance to replace General Electric on Dow Jones index next week

The S&P Dow Jones Indices has announced Walgreens Boots Alliance, an American pharmaceutical chain company as a replacement for US industrial giant General Electric (GE), come Tuesday, June 26.

The prestigious Dow Jones stock index, GE was booted out for the pharmaceutical holding company which S&P Dow Jones said will contribute “more meaningfully” to the index.

Since the founding of the index, “the US economy has changed: consumer, finance, healthcare and technology companies are more prominent today and the relative importance of industrial companies is less,” said David Blitzer, managing director and chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones.

“Walgreens is a national retail drugstore chain offering prescription and non-prescription drugs, related health services and general goods,” he added.

“Today’s change to the DJIA will make the index a better measure of the economy and the stock market.”

Following the announcement, shares of GE fell 1.9 percent in after-hours trading to $12.71, while Walgreens Boots jumped 2.6 percent to US$66.30.

Although GE was an original member of the Dow in 1896 and has been in the index continuously since 1907, the move comes on the heels of a bruising two-year slump for the iconic US company, which has seen shares tumble nearly 60 percent over the last two years amid downturns in its power generation and oil services businesses.

S&P Dow Jones noted that the Dow index is weighted by stock price, which means that GE accounts for less than one per cent of the overall benchmark.

Walgreens Boots has a higher stock price and will have more influence on the index, which has 30 members.

GE started in the 19th century by Thomas Edison and has over time been an intermittent presence in a sprawling array of industries, including entertainment and finance.

The company has pared back some of these businesses in recent years, selling NBC Universal to Comcast and divesting most of its finance business.

GE’s best performing units of late have been health care and aviation.

The Dow’s membership has evolved over time to add more technology companies, such as Apple and Intel and cutting many former giants such as Alcoa and International Paper.