AMZN vs WMT Weekly: Top 2 Retailers Making More of Partnerships

There’s something truly remarkable about how a 25% decline in a stock can change investor perspective.

But there’s also something equally telling on the corporate side of things, when a company’s outside investment success carries the day — such as Amazon’s stake in electric vehicle maker Rivian — and triggers a cloning of sorts.

In the former, investors who had been savaging the stock for more than two months, suddenly cheered 9% Q4 revenue growth at Amazon — the slowest in 20 years — and took the company’s projections for even slower growth in stride.

On the latter, Rivian’s red-hot November initial public offering (IPO) earned its passive partner a cool $12 billion last quarter, accounting for over 80% of Amazon’s $14.3 billion net income tally.

With outcomes like that, it is no wonder that Amazon is looking to put some eggs in new baskets, so to speak, and try to incubate them.

Same for Walmart, whose shares have showed an iron-clad toughness this year while its digitally dominant rival — and the broader markets — has been unraveling before its eyes.

With Amazon laying out its holiday quarter results for all the world to see, and Walmart on tap to do the same Feb. 17, both companies used the week to roll out out fresh ways of making more money — or spending less — via a raft of partnership announcements and operational adjustments.

Say Hello to My Little Friend

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all investments worked out even half as well as Rivian did for Amazon? The eCommerce giant’s relatively modest $1.3 billion investment (that’s less than 0.1% of the firm’s market value) has delivered exponential short-term gains.

If only there was a way to replicate that formula, and help incubate “the next Rivian.”

That’s the thinking behind Amazon’s partnership announced this week with the European Institute of Innovation and Technology’s  Knowledge and Innovation Community, or “EIT Climate-KIC” for short.

According to the company’s U.K. blog, with the help of the “Launchpad Sustainability Accelerator,” qualified businesses and early-stage startups with the right DNA will enter a three-month crash course on how to make products even more sustainable while also helping them grow and scale more quickly.

“The Accelerator arrives with customers increasingly interested in shopping more sustainably,” the unsigned blog stated, noting that Amazon’s U.K. and European online stores had seen customer purchases of “Climate Pledge Friendly” products more than double in January 2022 versus a year ago.

The Sustainability Accelerator follows in the wake of a separate spend management partnership Amazon announced the week before with Compleat Software, known as Punch-In.

“The Amazon Business Punch-In application lets buyers on Amazon’s B2B marketplace submit their online purchases to their company’s e-procurement system for spend management purposes,” the joint statement said, in order to simplify the buying experience.

3 Deals for Walmart

While Amazon was basking in the success of old investments and introducing the world to potentially new ones, Walmart was also busy this week unveiling a trio of its own partnerships in the hot healthcare and home nesting categories.

In separate announcements, the world’s largest chain of retail stores said it was teaming up with Quest Diagnostics to enable consumers direct online access to  purchase “more than 50 different tests, including general health, digestive health, allergy, heart health, women’s health, and infectious disease.”

Also on the health front, the Arkansas-based retailer revealed plans to bring Health at Scale’s personalized provider matching benefits to employees enrolled in its health plans to improve health outcomes and convenience.

“This technology will be incorporated into Walmart’s health plan administrator’s search engine and virtual care referrals for associates in select geographies, making it easier for plan participants to find providers that match to their unique health needs and care history,” the announcement read.

And finally, Walmart also announced that it was tying up with home improvement platform Angi to enable customers to book and pay for installation services at the time of sale, both online and in over 4,000 stores.

“I think, more and more, customers want more than just the box, they want more than the product and they want the product integrated into their lives,” Angi CEO Oisin Hanrahan said in an interview with PYMNTS. “I think that’s why you’re seeing more and more retailers lean into partnerships to deliver a more complete solution to the homeowner,” he added.