By Schuckman Realty Inc. | November 9, 2026
On November 4, CVS Health said it will break itself into two public companies. One keeps Aetna, the Caremark pharmacy benefit manager and the care-delivery businesses. The other, to be called CVS Pharmacy, gets the stores. About 9,000 of them. The separation is expected to close in the first half of 2028.
For most people this is a healthcare story. For anyone who owns or leases a shopping center in the New York metro, it is a real estate story. CVS is one of the most common anchor and outparcel tenants on Long Island, in Queens and across Westchester and New Jersey. The credit behind those leases is about to change.
1. What CVS actually announced
CVS Health will become a “healthcare solutions company” holding Aetna, CVS Caremark, CVS Specialty, Oak Street Health and Signify Health. David Joyner stays on as chairman and CEO. The retail side becomes CVS Pharmacy, led by current CVS Health president Prem Shah. It will hold the roughly 9,000 drugstores, the mail pharmacy, MinuteClinic and the Health100 technology business. Nearly 30,000 pharmacists work in that retail unit.
Joyner framed the move as acting “from a position of strength.” The numbers tell a more mixed story. In the third quarter, reported the same week, front-of-store sales were flat at $5.2 billion. CVS had already shut about 1,100 locations over the past several years. Earlier in 2026 the company said it would reverse course and open about 60 new stores this year after four years of shrinking.
2. Why landlords should pay attention
Today a CVS lease is guaranteed, directly or in practice, by a company that also owns a top-three health insurer and the country’s largest PBM. After the split, that lease sits behind a standalone drugstore chain. That is the same structure Walgreens and Rite Aid operated under, and both have been contracting for years. Walgreens announced in 2024 that it would close about 1,200 stores over three years and was taken private by Sycamore Partners in 2025. Rite Aid went through bankruptcy twice.
Analysts have said the same thing out loud. GlobalData’s Neil Saunders wrote that the consumer business “is the weaker part, and it will start life as a stand-alone business on the back foot,” and that CVS “still needs to develop a more compelling retail proposition” beyond prescriptions. Emarketer’s Rajiv Leventhal pointed to Walgreens and Rite Aid as proof of “the difficult economics facing standalone pharmacy chains.”
None of that means CVS stores will close in bulk. It means the new company will be judged, by its own investors, on store-level profit. Underperforming boxes will get a harder look at every option date. Landlords should expect more renewal pushback, more requests for rent relief on weak stores, and more interest in right-sizing 12,000-square-foot boxes down.
3. The New York metro angle
This region is dense with CVS. The chain is a corner anchor on Long Island strips, a ground-floor tenant in Queens and Brooklyn mixed-use buildings, and a drive-thru outparcel across Westchester and northern New Jersey. Those leases carry some of the lowest cap rates in the retail market because of the parent’s credit.
That premium is not going away tomorrow. The separation is more than a year off, and CVS says operations continue without interruption until it closes. But the single-tenant net lease market prices credit years ahead. Pharmacy-anchored centers and standalone CVS buildings that trade in the next 18 months will trade with this question attached. Sellers who can show strong store sales and long remaining term will hold value. Sellers who cannot will see it in the cap rate.
There is a second-order effect for grocery-anchored owners. Pharmacy counters inside supermarkets compete with CVS directly. A CVS that trims its hours or closes a weak store sends scripts to the nearest supermarket pharmacy. For a supermarket-anchored center, a weaker CVS down the street can be a quiet positive.
4. What to do now
Pull every CVS lease in your portfolio and build a one-page summary: remaining term, option dates, rent versus market, and any kick-out or co-tenancy language. Ask the store manager or your leasing team what the store’s prescription count and front-store volume look like. CVS does not publish store-level numbers, but foot-traffic data can fill the gap.
If a renewal or option is coming up in the next 24 months, start the conversation early. A tenant preparing to become a standalone public company will want to clean up its lease book before the split. That can cut both ways. Weak stores get flagged. Strong stores get extended, sometimes on better terms for the landlord than a last-minute negotiation would produce.
And if you are buying, underwrite CVS as a retailer, not as an insurance company. That has always been the right way to do it. The market just stopped letting you forget.
About the author. Kenneth Schuckman is President of Schuckman Realty Inc., a retail-focused commercial real estate brokerage founded in 1978 and based on Long Island. He is Co-Founder and Principal of BTF Capital Fund, a CoStar Power Broker and a member of X-Team Retail Advisors. SRI specializes in supermarket- and pharmacy-anchored shopping centers across the New York metro area. View available properties.
Sources
Retail Dive, “The Weekly Closeout: What’s next for CVS retail,” Nov 6, 2026 — link
Pharmacy Times, “CVS Health to Split Into 2 Public Companies,” Nov 4, 2026 — link
PYMNTS, “CVS Will Split Pharmacy Business Into Separate Company,” Nov 2026 — link
Newsweek, Walgreens store closures and Sycamore acquisition, Aug 4, 2026 — link