A 10-Year-Old Acquisition Is Finally Paying off Big for Walmart. Should Amazon Investors Be Worried?

In August 2016, Walmart (NASDAQ: WMT) paid $3.3 cardinal for Jet.com, the largest e-commerce acquisition ever astatine the time. Wall Street was skeptical. Jet was hardly a twelvemonth old, hemorrhaging currency monthly, and had ne'er turned a profit.

Walmart's ain e-commerce income had grown conscionable 0.4% the anterior quarter, portion Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) was posting $21 cardinal successful quarterly e-commerce revenue. The spread felt insurmountable.

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Walmart unopen down the Jet.com marque successful 2020. Most radical filed that arsenic a $3.3 cardinal write-off. They were wrong.​

What Jet really delivered was Marc Lore, a laminitis who had antecedently sold Diapers.com to Amazon, spent 2 years wrong Amazon learning its full e-commerce machine, and past near to physique a nonstop competitor. It bought the 1 idiosyncratic successful the satellite who knew Amazon's playbook from the wrong and was motivated to bushed it.

Under Lore, Walmart's e-commerce part expanded its online assortment from astir 8 cardinal items to implicit 35 cardinal successful nether a year. U.S. e-commerce grew 29% successful 2017, past 63% successful the archetypal 4th of 2018. By the clip the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Walmart had the infrastructure to sorb a 74% surge successful e-commerce successful a azygous quarter.

But the Jet acquisition was lone the archetypal move. In 2018, Walmart made its largest acquisition ever: a 77% involvement successful Flipkart, India's biggest e-commerce platform, for $16 billion. The marketplace hated it initially; the banal dropped 4% connected announcement day, and analysts flagged a $0.60 earnings-per-share resistance successful fiscal 2020. India's e-commerce market, past generating $7.5 cardinal successful GMV, was a speculative stake connected a decennary of growth.

That decennary is now. Walmart's Q3 FY26 property merchandise noted that its planetary e-commerce conception gross roseate 27% for the seventh consecutive 4th of 20%-plus growth, with planetary e-commerce -- led by Flipkart -- increasing implicit 20%.

In the afloat fiscal twelvemonth 2026, Walmart's online income exceeded $150 cardinal for the archetypal time. The advertizing concern -- itself a downstream merchandise of the e-commerce flywheel -- deed $6.4 cardinal globally successful 2025, increasing 46% twelvemonth implicit year.

Walmart Connect successful the U.S. grew 41% successful Q4 alone. For context, Amazon's advertisement concern generated $68.6 cardinal successful 2025, increasing 22%. Walmart's advertisement maturation complaint is much than treble Amazon's. That meant that a 3rd of Walmart's operating nett successful Q4 came from advertizing and rank income. Five years ago, that condemnation would person sounded absurd for a institution built connected low-margin groceries and $5 t-shirts.