WMTAMZNSaul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
Amazon is on track to overtake Walmart as the largest U.S. retailer in 2022, according to JPMorgan research released Friday.
Amazon’s U.S. retail business is the “fastest growing at scale,” according to the company’s analysts. Between 2014 and 2020, Amazon’s U.S. gross merchandise volume, or GMV — a closely watched industry metric used to measure the total value of goods sold over a certain time period — has grown “significantly faster” than both U.S. adjusted retail sales and U.S. e-commerce, the analysts said.
Neither Amazon nor Walmart break out GMV in their quarterly earnings results, but JPMorgan estimates Amazon’s GMV is growing faster than its largest retail competitor. JPMorgan analysts said Amazon’s GMV in 2020 climbed 41% year over year to $316 billion, while Walmart’s GMV is estimated to have grown 10% year over year to $439 billion in 2020.
“Based on current estimates, we believe Amazon could surpass Walmart to become the largest U.S. retailer in 2022,” J.P. Morgan analysts Christopher Horvers and Doug Anmuth wrote Friday.
Horvers and Anmuth highlighted a few factors they believe are driving Amazon’s top-line growth, including an expansion into “large and under-penetrated categories” such as grocery and apparel, strong