Walmart’s Stock Up 6 Pct On Its News Of Walmart+

Stock for retail giant Walmart got a $24 billion boost upon the store’s announcement of a subscription membership service, Walmart+, CNBC reported.

On Tuesday (Sept. 1), Walmart stocks closed 6 percent higher and, earlier in the day, had reached a 52-week high of $418 billion.

The subscription service in question will debut on Sept. 15, costing $98 a year or $12.95 per month. It will offer unlimited home deliveries of things sold in the store, such as groceries, as long as there’s at least $35 spent in the order. There will be discounts of 5 cents a gallon for fuel, and customers will get to use a Scan & Go app to skip the checkout line when inside the store.

It’s yet to be seen, though, how customers will react to the new service in comparison to Amazon Prime, its main rival in the subscription service space. Customers might not pay for both at the same time if their funds are still strapped by the pandemic, CNBC noted. The main difference with Prime is that its yearly subscription service — which costs $12.99 a month or $119 for the year — offers an expansive library of movies and TV streaming for customers.

Walmart+ will be like “apples and watermelons” compared to Prime, according to Moody’s analyst Charlie O’Shea, CNBC reported. He said Prime’s selling point was the extremely quick delivery speed and free shipping, along with the bountiful content library. Walmart+, on the other hand, boasts grocery deliveries fee-free, and it will use the 4,700 physical stores to boost delivery speed to something similar to same-day delivery.

There are still open questions, though, such as whether the service will be available in every service area, including deeper rural pockets where grocery delivery might be more difficult to complete in a speedy fashion.

Walmart’s digital expansion could go in other directions, too, as the company has emerged as another potential hopeful to buy video-sharing app TikTok, amid controversies involving privacy.