Walmart Agrees to Pay $3.3 Billion for Jet.com
by August 15, 2016 12:00 am 125 views
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to buy New Jersey-based online retailer Jet.com for more than $3 billion cash and $300 million in stock shares, according to an announcement made by the company on Aug. 8.
If it survives regulatory approval, the deal will represent the largest sum ever paid for an online company, according to The New York Times.
Through the acquisition, the Bentonville-based retailer is looking to bolster its e-commerce business and attract more millennial shoppers, according to a Walmart press release.
Jet is one of the most innovative and fastest-growing online retailers in the U.S. The site adds about 400,000 shoppers each month and has an average of 25,000 processed orders each day, according to the release.
Founded in 2014, Jet now offers 12 million products.
“We’re looking for ways to lower prices, broaden our assortment and offer the simplest, easiest shopping experience because that’s what our customers want,” Walmart president and CEO Doug McMillon said in the release. “We believe the acquisition of Jet accelerates our progress across these priorities. Walmart.com will grow faster, the seamless shopping experience we’re pursuing will happen quicker, and we’ll enable the Jet brand to be even more successful in a shorter period of time.”
Walmart and Jet will retain their individual brands.
“We started Jet with the vision of creating a new shopping experience,” Jet CEO Marc Lore said in the release. “Today, I couldn’t be more excited that we will be joining with Walmart to help fuel the realization of that vision. The combination of Walmart’s retail expertise, purchasing scale, sourcing capabilities, distribution footprint, and digital assets — together with the team, technology and business we have built here at Jet — will allow us to deliver more value to customers.”
The deal is expected to close sometime this year.