WOONSOCKET – CVS Caremark Corp. (NYSE: CVS) today posted a record first-quarter profit of $736.5 million, an increase of 83.8 percent from a year ago, on revenue that rose 61.7 percent to a record $21.33 billion. Earnings per fully diluted share rose 17.4 percent to 51 cents from the year-ago 43 cents.

Results for the year-ago period included about $215.3 million in severance, stock-option and other expenses associated with the CVS Corp.-Caremark Rx Inc. merger that closed March 24, 2007.

“I’m very pleased with our results for the quarter,” said Thomas M. Ryan, CVS Caremark’s chairman, president and CEO. “We delivered strong revenue and margin growth across our businesses that led to earnings at the high end of our expectations.

“I’m most excited about the substantial progress we have made on our new integrated PBM-retail model, which is resonating strongly in the marketplace.”

The company’s pharmacy services segment posted an operating profit of $530 million, or nearly five times the year-ago period’s $110.6 million, on revenue that more than quintupled to $10.76 billion.

The retail segment posted an operating profit of $840.1 million, a 34.2-percent increase from the year-ago $635.9 million, on revenue that rose 5.4 percent to $11.85 billion as same-store sales “benefited from an earlier Easter – March 23rd this year, versus April 8th last year – which shifted more holiday sales into March,” the company said.

Sales at CVS/pharmacy stores open at least one year rose 3.9 percent compared with the 2007 first quarter. Pharmacy same-store sales rose 3.7 percent year-over-year, despite recent generic drug introductions that pared results by about 450 basis points, CVS said, while front-end same-store sales rose 4.3 percent, gaining about 115 basis points from the early holiday.

During the 13 weeks ended March 29, CVS Caremark opened 41 new retail pharmacies; relocated 53 regular and one specialty pharmacy store; and closed 19 retail pharmacies, two mail-order pharmacies and one specialty mail-order pharmacy. That left the company with 6,267 regular pharmacies, 56 specialty pharmacy stores,19 specialty mail-order pharmacies and seven regular mail-order pharmacies, in 44 states and the District of Columbia, at the quarter’s end.

On March 5, CVS Caremark announced that a regular quarterly dividend of 6 cents per common share, compared with the year-ago period’s 4.875 cents per share, had been declared by the company’s board of directors. The dividend is payable tomorrow, May 2, to shareholders of record on April 21.

The quarter also included two major multi-state settlements: In February, a $38.5 million agreement concluding a consumer protection probe of two legacy pharmacy benefits management businesses, the company’s Caremark LLC and former AdvancePCS (now CaremarkPCS LLC) subsidiaries (READ MORE); and in March, a $37.8 million agreement ending a Medicaid drug-switching investigation of CVS Caremark’s handling of prescriptions for ranitidine, the generic form of the heartburn medicine Zantac (READ MORE).

CVS Caremark Corp. (NYSE: CVS) operates the CVS/pharmacy stores; the CVS.com online pharmacy; Caremark Pharmacy Services; and the MinuteClinic retail-based health care subsidiary. Additional information is available at investor.cvs.com.