Walmart Q2/Shopify

I don’t post much and mainly like to study from the pros on here but I was very interested in one criteria from Walmart’s Q2 earnings this morning, the e-commerce sales. I do not hold a position in WMT but I am long SHOP. Since SHOP was able to gain Walmart as a big customer to help with their e-commerce site to begin the process of pulling market share from Amazon, I wanted to see how it has played out so far. Well, Walmart just blew out the quarter and most importantly their e-commerce sales were up 97%. I know this is a lot due to Covid but I also believe SHOP is playing a large role in this. I really believe that if SHOP can catapult these numbers for the biggest retail chain in the US then other large companies will start flocking to SHOP. I know we focus on continued hyper growth stocks but I believe numbers from companies SHOP has as customers like Walmart will provide more tailwinds and continue the hyper growth they have been showing.

https://www.thestreet.com/investing/walmart-blasts-q2-earnin…

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Hi MemTiger65,

Walmart is “integrating” with Shopify. They’re not a customer of Shopify.

Meaning, Walmart is going to make it easier for businesses that use Shopify to sell in their marketplace.

They’re trying to add sellers to add products to better compete with Amazon.

Also, since this partnership was announced June 15th and Walmarts quarter ended July 31st there’d probably be little impact this quarter.

Chris

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Thank you for correcting me! After i posted I realized i had flubbed this up. I wish I could have edited it. I do however have to disagree somewhat on the impact for this quarter. I believe the addition of the sellers, even if just for a little over a month, onto their site could have had an impact on Q2 and will going forward. Not to mention Amazon sellers will jump ship if Walmart can provide better deals and prove the sales through e-commerce is growing.

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I think you are making a big jump in assumptions. Walmart is not a customer of Shopify nor does Shopify play a role in driving business to Walmart. The sales channel integration just allows Shopify’s customers (store owners) to extend their business on to the Walmart platform so their stuff shows up there and sales go through the Shopify backend. Basically the business is run on Shopify’s platform and an optional channel can be added to use Walmart’s platform. The same can be done for Facebook Stores, Instagram Shoppable Posts and Pinterest.

Walmart benefits by having more products (and services?) to offer online. I’m not sure if they get a cut of sales or other incentives. Shopify benefits anytime their store owners benefit since all aspects of the owners business are handled by Shopify; from inventory management to payment and payout processing to analytics and integration with accounting and reporting workflows.

It would be cool to hear how many Shopify stores are using this new channel and how much it contributes to their revenue. I’m also curious about how store branding benefits, or is hurt, from showing up on Walmart.com. The social media channels are all about extending the brand and growing the core business awareness while reducing friction to impulse buying. Walmart has a brand all on its own and selling there associates your brand with theirs. That may mean only a subset of Shopify stores will participate. It may also depend on the design of the Walmart store front. If it is like Amazon then there is almost no control over the display of the brand.

My point is we don’t really know how this dynamic will create revenue for Shopify beyond being a simple value-add for their platform. I am willing to bet that is their main goal through. They alluded to this in their presentation. Shopify’s mission is to grow because their customers grow and the more this happens the more they can leverage their platform to add more value to it. Size gives them power to add value which wins more customers which feeds back in to this cycle (they literally have an image in the presentation of this cycle). So, while this is unlikely to significantly impact Shopify’s revenue growth, it all adds up and fuels the long term growth as a whole.

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“ Not to mention Amazon sellers will jump ship if Walmart can provide better deals and prove the sales through e-commerce is growing. ”

I’m nearly 100% certain this dynamic doesn’t exist…

  1. There is no exclusivity agreement so it only benefits people to show up on as many platforms as possible. One of the powers of Shopify is that it aggregates some of this for store owners.

  2. The other major reason is that selling on Amazon is playing a whole different e-commerce game. This game is all about trying to get your stuff to appear at the top of searches in Amazons walled garden (it takes a whole different strategy than the one you would use out in the wider world). That takes an incredible amount of effort and if you’ve achieved that you’re not likely to give it up quickly. At the same time Amazon is all powerful if your entire business depends on them and they’ve been known to cut sellers off without explanation. While this certainly wouldn’t cause a business to abandon being an Amazon seller, it would certainly drive them to diversify on to other platforms. This is where I think Shopify is the big winner.

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If we really want to get a clear-eyed assessment from the POV of an online merchant (who is already in Amazon’s ecosystem), then we should talk to swapusa. Mehran does some excellent commentary on being an Amazon 3rd party merchant. I see him most often on the Amazon premium board.

-Another Rob

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