Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no idea who is telling the truth, but wouldn't it be fair to say that people working for the city do have more of a motivation to spin this than Walgreens? If Walgreens is doing what the city claims, then Walgreens doesn't need to blame the city. They might anyway, but there's no big incentive. If they have a lot of stores that aren't closing, wouldn't it even be potentially harming their business for no reaso…
I also am not strongly on one side there, but I can think of a few incentives for Walgreens to not say admit that certain stores are being closed due to lack of profits (indicating perhaps to investors that they've overbought in many areas and that their overall revenue will be going down, and hence their stock prices and the C-suite's bonus). However I also agree that there's not enough info here to be definitively…
I guess management might be playing to the few people that bet the farm on Walgreens, but I can't imagine what they are like or what the execs think they want.
You suggest that management doesn't want to admit they're closing stores for other reasons, but they do admit they're closing some stores for other reasons, right? That was cited in the article, which linked to an SEC filing saying they're spending over $2 billion to close stores.
Is it plausible individual investors and/or bonus agreements are critically affected by the reasoning provided for a handful of store closings out of hundreds?
Is it plausible even someone who invested every dollar they own in Walgreens cares about SF specifically, when they have 10,000 locations?
I don't think there's a way to recover a self-consistent narrative from the article.
Of course, that in no way proves that corporate mouthpieces are truthful or that they're not up to something.