CVS Health CDR (NEO:CVS)
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CVS Caremark Corp.'s (CVS) chief financial officer, David Rickard, said he believes the economy may be on its way to an eventual, albeit slow, recovery.

"The positives at this point in time outweigh the negatives," Rickard said in interview with Dow Jones Newswires. "It seems that we have a reasonably good chance of being on an improvement track here."

Separately, he wouldn't comment specifically on whether CVS would be interested in Aetna Inc.'s (AET) pharmacy-benefit business, which is reportedly being shopped. Some in the industry say CVS could be one potential suitor.

"I can't speak to an individual target or company that might be for sale," Rickard said. "But we are a very large company, we do our homework. You can imagine that anything related to our business that's for sale, if we have the opportunity, we're going to take a look at."

His comments come after the hybrid pharmacy-benefit manager and drugstore retailer reported solid second-quarter earnings Tuesday, up 15%, as it also boosted its 2009 outlook.

In terms of the economy's impact on CVS's business, Rickard said the picture was mixed. On one hand, consumers are still price-sensitive, snapping up branded products on sale. However, Rickard also noted that there's been a noticeable pickup in CVS's pharmacy business. Tuesday, CVS reported its pharmacy same-store sales grew 7.5%, the best showing in two years, Rickard said.

About a quarter of that 7.5% boost came from CVS's Maintenance Choice program, which allows consumers to pick up 90-day prescriptions at retail for the same price as they would pay through the mail, Rickard said.

CVS continues to see more uptake of the program, which now has 270 employer clients, up from 200 in the first quarter.

"It's becoming a more meaningful factor in our business," Rickard said in the interview.

CVS's upbeat second-quarter results provided more evidence that the drugstore chain's $27 billion purchase of pharmacy-benefits manager Caremark in 2007 may be starting to pay off, which was until recently a major investor concern.

The company raised its 2009 outlook to $2.59 to $2.64 a share. In May, an uptick in its PBM business prompted CVS to raise its target slightly to $2.55 to $2.63.

Earlier this year, CVS renegotiated some pharmacy contracts at lower price rates and bid aggressively to keep others, which at the time reignited investors' concerns about the underperforming Caremark business.

While CVS has seen a better performance by its pharmacy-benefits business since then, and Chairman and Chief Executive Tom Ryan said in the company's earnings call he expects additional contract wins this season, he cautioned that "the remaining opportunities are probably not sizable enough to offset the losses, since the term contracts I reviewed totalled about $2 billion."

CVS said its second-quarter profit rose to $886.5 million, or 60 cents a share, from $774.8 million, or 53 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding acquisition-related costs, mostly related to amortization of the CVS Caremark merger, earnings rose to 65 cents a share from 60 cents.

Revenue rose 18% to $24.9 billion.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting earnings, excluding items, of 64 cents a share on revenue of $24.41 billion.

CVS shares closed little changed Tuesday, down 2 cents at $33.98.

-By Kelly Nolan, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2167; kelly.nolan@dowjones.com