As Walmart highlighted tech-based successes over the Black Friday-Cyber Monday post-holiday week shopping deals juggernaut this Tuesday, the company is preparing for a big shift. With this shift, the company is moving further into the tech realm.
In a Nov. 20 press release, Walmart revealed that it would move the listing of its common stock from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to the Nasdaq as of Dec. 9. While the NYSE and the Nasdaq both lead global stock trading, according to Investopedia, the Nasdaq operates electronically rather than on a physical trading floor. It’s also more associated with tech and growth companies, while the NYSE is associated with established firms.
“Moving to Nasdaq aligns with the people-led, tech-powered approach to our long-term strategy,” said John David Rainey, chief financial officer of Walmart, Inc., in a statement about the impending change. “Walmart is setting a new standard for omnichannel retail by integrating automation and AI to build smarter, faster and more connected experiences for customers, while enabling our associates to deliver even greater value at scale.”
Walmart has been on the NYSE for more than 50 years. According to the Motley Fool, its move will make Walmart the largest company public company to ever switch to a different exchange.
“What makes Walmart's announced move to the Nasdaq such a jaw-dropper is its market cap,” said the outlet.
Here’s some perspective: Walmart has a market value of $871 billion, close to five times more than the market cap of the largest-ever listing change in stock market history. That was Linde, which moved to the Nasdaq in November 2023 with a $180 billion market cap.
The Motley Fool also noted that “Walmart has been leaning into AI and automation as ways to reduce expenses, enhance the company’s supply chain efficiency, and accurately forecast consumer demand.” Other outlets have noticed it as well.
In an article published the day after Walmart’s Nasdaq announcement, Morning Brew declared in a headline “Walmart says it’s a tech company now,” and added that it is “acting like a mid-career professional who just aced their Python bootcamp and is jumping ship for a coding job.”
IT Brew also reported that the retail giant was on a “trek to become the retail industry’s tech giant,” and it interviewed experts about the shift to a more tech-focused strategy.
Walmart “I think, would like to signal that traders, investors should be looking at Walmart more closely as Amazon direct competitor rather than all-time discount retailer,” Tomas Jandik, a corporate finance professor at the University of Arkansas, told NPR. He was of course referring to the online retail behemoth Amazon, which also has a large cloud business.
In its moves further into the world of tech, Walmart partnered with privately held OpenAI to allow users to complete purchases from Walmart directly from its large language model chatbot, ChatGPT. Although the Motely Fool acknowledged that artificial intelligence has been a major buzzword for stock traders and investors, it also pointed out that retail is still expected to grow at a faster pace than the futuristic technology. Retail is expected to grow from roughly $27.3 trillion this year to $36.9 trillion by the turn of the decade, while analysts at PwC believes AI-related tech will add $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030.
“Among pure-play retailers, none has done a better job of rising to the top quite like Walmart, which is generating more revenue from retail sales than any other public company,” and it’s on its way to becoming Wall Street’s next trillion-dollar stock, the Motley Fool said. Walmart’s size and competitive pricing keep it stable during times like right now, when consumers are concerned about the economy and their finances.