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.
President Donald Trump said he has decided to lower his combined tariff rates on imports of Chinese goods to 47% after talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on curbing fentanyl trafficking.
Universal Music Group and AI platform Udio have settled a copyright lawsuit and will collaborate on a new music creation and streaming platform. The companies announced on Wednesday that they reached a compensatory legal settlement and new licensing agreements. These agreements aim to provide more revenue opportunities for Universal's artists and songwriters. The rise of AI song generation tools like Udio has disrupted the music streaming industry, leading to accusations from record labels. This deal marks the first since Universal and others sued Udio and Suno last year. Financial terms of the settlement weren't disclosed.
