The competition between Walmart and Amazon appears to be heating up. Walmart beat revenue expectations, but fell short of estimates for profit in the holiday quarter and reported a slowdown in online sales. Greg Alvo, CEO of OrderGroove and Chris Versace, Chief Investment Officer at Tematica Research join The Long and The Short to discuss the future of America's largest retailer.
Alvo reminds us that Walmart is growing its omnichannel approach. Just because e-commerce sales slowed down doesn't mean its overall business is slowing down. Versace says online demand exceeded expectations this year and Walmart is trying to navigate this new trend. He also says the pullback in e-commerce investments could be a long-term play for Walmart as it fights to compete with Amazon.
Plus, how will Walmart expand its offerings to be equal to Amazon? Versace says continuing to focus on selling fresh foods and finding partners that will continue to help expand products on Jet.com are key. He also suggests that Walmart thinks about expanding its private label brands and bumping up quality to compete with Amazon.
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
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