Update | CVS stock plunges as Ryan reveals losses (12:45 p.m.)

WOONSOCKET – CVS Caremark Corp. on Thursday said its third-quarter earnings topped $1 billion, setting a new record for the company, as pharmacy sales continued to grow.

CVS posted a profit of $1.02 billion, or 71 cents a share, in the three months ended Sept. 30, up from a profit of $736 million, or 51 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue rose 18 percent to $24.64 billion.

Excluding a tax gain, CVS earned 65 cents a share, a penny more than the 64-cent average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg News.

“I’m very pleased with our performance,” Thomas Ryan, CVS’ chairman, president and CEO, said in a statement.

Revenue from pharmacy-benefit services jumped 23.4 percent in the quarter. Sales at CVS/pharmacy stores rose 17.9 percent, while same-store sales increased 5.7 percent, rising 8 percent in the pharmacy and 0.8 percent in general merchandise. The company said it processed 146.5 million pharmacy claims during the quarter, up 9 percent from a year earlier.

“They were very solid results, but not blow-out results,” Scott Mushkin, an analyst at Jefferies who has a “buy” rating on the stock, told Dow Jones Newswires. “If there was one disappointment, it was the front-end sales in the retail pharmacy business.”

As of Sept. 30, CVS said it had 7,008 retail pharmacy stores, 49 specialty pharmacy stores, 20 specialty mail-order pharmacies and 6 mail-order pharmacies in 43 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

The company also narrowed its full-year profit forecast to between $2.61 and $2.64 a share, compared with its earlier estimate of $2.59 to $2.64 a share.

CVS shares closed at $36.15 on Wednesday in trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock has gained 26 percent this year through Wednesday.

Additional information is available at cvscaremark.com.