Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash

Re:Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash by sbierwagen on Monday August 08, 2016 @12:10PM (#12248849)

  A public company like Walmart, there's some people doing 
  some math here.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/yahoo-reports-another-big-loss-...

  Yahoo also reported that it's writing down $482 million 
  in charges related to the declining value of Tumblr, 
  the social-blogging service that Yahoo acquired for 
  $1.1 billion in 2013.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/8/8910999/microsoft-job-cuts-...

  and the company is writing off $7.6 billion related to 
  its acquisition of the Nokia phone business. That's more 
  than the $7.2 billion Microsoft paid for Nokia's phone 
  business last year.

Public companies "do some math", but that doesn't mean their math is always right. Acquisitions are bets, and bets don't always pay off.

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Re:Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash by coryfklein on Monday August 08, 2016 @06:39PM (#12251310)

It seems you're pointing out the obvious: that no investment 100% guarantees any sort of return. Surely "the math" discussed internally at Walmart includes both:

1) A calculation of risk/reward on this investment

2) Determining whether result of 1 appropriately reflects Walmart's risk profile.

Given that Walmart decided to acquire, it is safe to assume this investment's risk of loss falls within Walmart's investment profile.

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Re:Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash by mark-r on Monday August 08, 2016 @06:53PM (#12251360)

My own observation is that the bets hardly ever pay off. Microsoft/Nokia is a great example but there are plenty of others. Maybe it's just confirmation bias, but I have trouble thinking of one counter example.

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Re:Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash by rogerdpack on Monday August 08, 2016 @10:04PM (#12252100)

Adobe did buy AEM "when i was little" (you know, for like 20M or something I have no idea) and it has grown to 10x as much. However that is purchasing a smaller company...kind of like venture capital investment I guess. there seem to be plenty of examples where buying companies hasn't worked out (yahoo+tumblr comes to mind, and that's only recent news).

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Re:Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash by mark-r on Monday August 08, 2016 @11:23PM (#12252392)

Sorry, not familiar with the acronym AEM. But you do give me an opportunity to modify my statement - it seems that the larger and more strategic the acquisition seems, the more likely it is to fail. And even when it doesn't fail, the synergies never seem to gel - what news of Zappos lately?

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Re:Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash by matt4077 on Monday August 08, 2016 @10:01PM (#12252088)

NeXt. Paypal. iTunes. Maybe Skype

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Re:Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash by erichocean on Tuesday August 09, 2016 @05:57PM (#12258004)

NeXT? Are you kidding? Apple has done nothing but _loathe_ buying NeXT and their mercurial CEO. Huge waste of money. /s

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Re:Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash by hayksaakian on Monday August 08, 2016 @07:51PM (#12251613)

adsense

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