Connect with us

Published

on

Workers stock shelves at an Amazon Fresh grocery store in Seattle, Washington, US, on Thursday, May 2, 2024. 

David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images

On a humid afternoon in August, a few hundred shoppers lined up outside an Amazon Fresh supermarket in a Philadelphia suburb, eagerly awaiting the store’s grand opening. A person in a banana costume hyped up the crowd, while Amazon staffers handed out free samples of cold brew coffee.

The event was a long time coming. Since 2022, the Fresh store in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, looked ready to open. But month after month, it sat vacant, with Amazon’s familiar smile logo plastered on a sign overlooking an empty parking lot.

“I kept thinking it would open, but it didn’t,” Joe Knowles, Bensalem Township’s council president, told CNBC. “All of a sudden, bang, it was ready to go.”

The Bensalem store is one of a handful of new Fresh locations that Amazon has launched in recent months, the first new store openings since the company halted expansion of the franchise more than a year ago. Since June, Amazon has opened seven other stores in California, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia, with more locations expected this year and into next. The company said it’s also launching five redesigned stores in Illinois and California this week.

It’s the latest development in Amazon’s on-again, off-again effort to become a powerhouse in a market the company has been pursuing for 17 years, culminating with its $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017, the company’s biggest deal ever. Amazon’s scattershot approach has at times been about expanding its “everything store” mission and at others has been focused on making high-end produce more affordable. In some cases, the markets have provided a testing ground for in-store technologies.

Through it all, Amazon in 2023 claimed just 1.4% of the U.S. grocery market, compared compared with Walmart at 23.6% and Kroger’s 10% share, according to Numerator data.

Fresh supermarkets are a piece of the portfolio, which also includes Go convenience stores and same-day delivery for Prime members. The company also launched an unlimited grocery delivery subscription in the U.S. earlier this year. On Tuesday, Amazon introduced a new grocery private label called Amazon Saver, which includes items like pancake syrup, deli meat and canned goods mostly priced under $5.

The Fresh chain made its debut during the early months of the Covid pandemic. Amazon opened the first such store in September 2020, in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, with an eye toward offering cheaper prices than Whole Foods. The company added package drop-off counters, along with cashierless checkout lanes and voice-activated displays, allowing shoppers to ask Alexa for recipe ideas or help finding items. 

Amazon would reach 46 Fresh locations worldwide by early 2022. But the expansion plans ran head first into CEO Andy Jassy’s efforts to rein in costs as rapidly changing macro conditions forced dramatic downsizing. Amazon instituted mass layoffs starting in 2022, and shuttered some of its newer, more unproven bets. 

In February 2023, Jassy announced on a quarterly earnings call that Amazon planned to close some Fresh supermarkets and Go convenience stores. He also hit pause on further growth of its Fresh footprint until the company could identify a store format that resonated with shoppers and “where we like the economics,” Jassy said.

Krispy Kreme donuts

With headcount cuts largely in the rearview mirror, Amazon is back into investing mode and pouring resources into Fresh, opening new stores after refining the experience and testing out a redesigned format late last year in select California and Illinois locations. Jassy and Amazon Fresh leaders have acknowledged that in order to grow its already “very large” grocery business, the company needs a bigger brick-and-mortar footprint.

In 2022, just 11% of sales in the $1.6 trillion U.S. grocery market took place online. That’s far below the level of e-commerce penetration in other categories, such as consumer electronics, where 41% of purchases were made online, according to Jefferies data. Companies “need to have a physical presence to be big in grocery,” analysts from the bank wrote in a note in October.

As part of the Fresh store redesign, Amazon created a more colorful layout and added Krispy Kreme donut and coffee stalls. In April, the company said it would remove the cashierless checkout technology, called Just Walk Out, from its U.S. Fresh stores and Whole Foods markets in favor of computerized Dash Carts, which track and tally up items as customers shop.

Amazon told CNBC it’s seen increased purchasing and higher customer satisfaction scores at the redesigned locations. The company said it expects to selectively open new Fresh locations over time based on feedback from shoppers.

“We like the early results a lot,” Jassy said on the company’s first-quarter earnings call in April, referring to the revamped Fresh stores. “They’re really meaningfully better in almost every dimension. It’s still early, and there’s some things to work through, but we like what we’re seeing there.”

A woman uses a dash cart during her grocery-shopping at a Whole Foods store as Amazon launches smart shopping carts at Whole Foods stores in San Mateo, California, United States on February 25, 2024. The smart shopping cart makes grocery shopping quicker by allowing customers to scan products right into their cart as they shop and then skip the checkout line.

Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu | Getty Images

Still, at least 22 Fresh supermarkets across the country remain vacant or unopened even though construction is complete, according to interviews with city officials and local news reports.

Delayed openings or cancellations have triggered at least five lawsuits. Landlords in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Florida and Washington alleged the company breached its contract by terminating its lease, with some parties seeking tens of millions of dollars worth of damages. Amazon last year reached a settlement with property owners in Florida and Washington, according to court documents. Attorneys representing the property owners didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Amazon declined to comment on the status of the Fresh stores that remain unopened.

One store in limbo is in Rancho Mirage, California, a desert town about 30 minutes southeast of Palm Springs. Previously the location of a Stein Mart department store, the market is in a shopping center that also includes a Hobby Lobby, an Italian restaurant and a blood bank. Shoppers in the area can find a Whole Foods, Walmart, Trader Joe’s and Aldi all within a short drive.

Amazon began remodeling the store in 2021 and signage went up the following year. But “opening soon” signs are still plastered on the doors. The company has told Rancho Mirage officials and AlbaneseCormier, the owner of the shopping complex, that it expects the store to open in 2025, said Ted Weill, a city council member.

AlbaneseCormier didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Weill said there aren’t many companies that can afford to just let a building sit idle for years.

“Amazon has so much money that whether they’ve invested $10 million, $20 million, $30 million in the project and decide not to go forward, so be it,” Weill said. “That won’t be the criteria that holds them back from pulling out.”

More than 500 miles north of Rancho Mirage, in the Sacramento suburb of Roseville, Amazon recently opened the doors of a Fresh supermarket. The store was fully constructed by last summer.

Brent Thill, an analyst at Jefferies, took the two-hour drive to Roseville from the Bay Area with his 16-year-old son a week after the Fresh store opened last month. Thill said the supermarket had an “amazing” selection, though he described the overall vibe as “sterile.”

“You walk into the Amazon Fresh store in Roseville and it feels like you’re in a stainless steel wine cellar,” Thill said. “And the store doesn’t have any decorations, it’s just a giant building.”

Thill has a buy rating on Amazon stock, but he says in grocery the company is spending a lot of money to compete in “one of the lowest-margin businesses on the planet.” But he called it “one of the highest budget items in the pocketbook,” which is where it clearly fits into Amazon’s broader retail strategy.

“And if there’s synergies around Amazon returns, if they can make it more unique, then who knows which way it goes,” Thill said.

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO

How Amazon became 2023's top apparel and footwear seller

Continue Reading

Technology

Nvidia deepens India footprint with $2 billion deep tech alliance to mentor AI startups

Published

on

By

Nvidia deepens India footprint with  billion deep tech alliance to mentor AI startups

Co-founder and CEO of Nvidia Jensen Huang spoke to journalists during a trip to Beijing in July.

Picture Alliance | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

Nvidia will help train and mentor emerging deep tech startups in India as a founding member of a $2 billion investment alliance, deepening its presence in the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem.

The U.S. chipmaker has joined the India Deep Tech Alliance (IDTA) — a group of private equity and venture capital investors pledging $2 billion for deep tech investments — as a founding member. Deep tech startups are an umbrella term for emerging companies in semiconductors, space, AI, biotech, robotics, and energy.

The world’s most valuable company will offer technical talks and training through its Nvidia Deep Learning Institute to emerging startups in India.

Nvidia wants to “provide guidance on AI systems, developer enablement, and responsible deployment, and to collaborate with policymakers, investors, and entrepreneurs,” Vishal Dhupar, Nvidia’s managing director of South Asia, said.

Nvidia did not disclose any financial investment, timeline, or training targets, and did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.

“Nvidia’s depth of expertise in AI systems, software, and ecosystem-building will benefit our network of investors and entrepreneurs,” said Sriram Viswanathan, founding executive council member of the IDTA.

He told CNBC that the pace of innovation is accelerating in India and there could be a “significant number of Indian deep tech companies of global repute” in the next five years.

The Indian government is also actively encouraging research and innovation in the deep tech space through major initiatives, including over 100 billion rupees ($1.1 billion USD) under its AI Mission and a separate 1 trillion rupees ($11.2 billion) Research, Development and Innovation Scheme Fund targeting deep tech companies.

On Monday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the country will host the AI Impact Summit in February next year.

The event is likely to see the participation of heads of state and top policymakers, along with business leaders such as Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of NVIDIA, and Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind.

Nvidia’s commitment in India coincides with rising global interest in India’s AI market, where OpenAI counts the country as its second-largest user base. U.S. rivals are also deepening ties: Google recently pledged $15 billion to build an AI hub in the southern city of Visakhapatnam.

Continue Reading

Technology

Wall Street is too fixated on the high valuations of tech and speculative stocks, Cramer says

Published

on

By

Wall Street is too fixated on the high valuations of tech and speculative stocks, Cramer says

Some stocks deserve a higher premium, says Jim Cramer

CNBC’s Jim Cramer suggested Wall Street is too fixated the on large valuations of certain tech and speculative stocks, chalking up Tuesday’s market-wide decline in part to Palantir‘s nearly 8% loss despite strong earnings results.

“The larger issue is that we’re at the moment where money managers, when asked if the market’s too expensive, immediately think of the high-flying speculative stocks or those in the high-growth artificial intelligence column, and so they warn you away from the entire asset class,” he said. “These guys don’t think of the other 334 stocks in the S&P 500 that sell for less than 23 times earnings — those aren’t outrageous.”

Declines in Palantir and other artificial intelligence companies helped bring stocks down on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 losing 1.17%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shedding 0.53% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite sinking 2.04%. Palantir managed to beat the estimates and offer solid guidance, citing growth in the artificial intelligence business. But investors worried broadly about the huge valuations of tech giants that have been leading the market to new heights.

Investors who saw Palantir as their “north star” were alarmed by its big pullback after a great quarter, according to Cramer. The fears triggered “a raft of selling” as these investors questioned the market as a whole, he continued.

Palantir can be a tough stock to classify, Cramer suggested, saying it straddles two different market segments — one centered around tech and artificial intelligence, and another focused on speculative stocks. He noted that the data-driven software company is very lucrative and fast growing, and it “defies easy description.” He listed off a number of its business arms — including its work as a defense contractor and as a consultant for companies looking to modernize and improve profitability.

To Cramer, it’s reasonable to consider that there’s nothing wrong with Palantir, and it just needs “to cool off in order to grow into its market capitalization.”

“Sure, there are indeed some stocks that are visibly overvalued, and when you pull them apart, many of these valuations can be justified, some can’t,” he said. “I think the Magnificent Seven can be justified on the pace of the growth that’s ahead of them. Same, ultimately, with Palantir.”

Nearly a million workers are unpaid during shutdown, Wall Street can't ignore it, says Jim Cramer

Jim Cramer’s Guide to Investing

Continue Reading

Technology

Bitcoin retail investor at ‘max desperation,’ says Bitwise CIO, but crypto winter not coming

Published

on

By

Bitcoin retail investor at 'max desperation,' says Bitwise CIO, but crypto winter not coming

'I think crypto market is close to a bottom': Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan

Bitcoin‘s fall below $100,000, its lowest level since June, has sparked fears that the worst is yet to come, another so-called crypto winter (a prolonged bear market in cryptocurrencies) that the market wrestles with every time digital currencies sell off hard in a short period of time.

But Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan says that while the retail investor is in “max desperation” mode, he sees that as a reason to bet that a bottoming in crypto prices may materialize sooner rather than later. With Wall Street institutional investor and financial advisor support for bitcoin, and growth in crypto ETFs, he is even willing to go out on a limb and say that amid the heavy selling a new record high for bitcoin before the end of the year isn’t unreasonable.

“It’s almost a tale of two markets,” he said on CNBC’s “Crypto World” on Tuesday. “Crypto retail is in max desperation. We’ve seen leverage blowouts. … the market for sort of crypto native retail is just more depressed than I’ve ever seen it,” he said.

But Hougan believes more crypto trading will continue to shift into an institutionally driven market, “and interestingly, that market is still bullish,” he said.

“When I go out and speak to institutions or financial advisors, they’re still excited to allocate to an asset class that if you pan back and look over the course of a year, is still delivering very strong returns. So my view of the market is we have to get through this retail flush out. We have to hit bottom from a sentiment perspective. I think we’re very close to that,” he added.

Stock Chart IconStock chart icon

hide content

Price of bitcoin and ether over the past year.

The boom in crypto exchange-traded fund launches, including iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) and Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) is changing the investor composition, and while week-to-week flows into these ETFs have slowed since the second quarter of the year, “we continue to see strong inflows into bitcoin,” Hougan said.

He expects more support to materialize for crypto into the end of the year among financial advisors who will look past the current dip and see an “opportunity to show their clients that they understand where this market is going.”

Bitwise’s own Solana staking ETF (BSOL) brought in over $400 million in flows in its first week, he said, though it has sold off sharply in the recent crypto downturn, with a near 20% loss since its Oct. 28 debut.

Stock Chart IconStock chart icon

hide content

This chart is showing BSOL 5 days

Last week, Strategy CEO Michael Saylor told CNBC he thinks bitcoin could reach $150,000 by the end of the year, one among several recent bullish calls on crypto that for now at least look ill-timed. But Hougan said he doesn’t think it’s an outlandish call even as bitcoin hovers near a six-month low.

“I think bitcoin could easily end the year at new all-time highs,” Hougan said. “So that means getting north of about $125,000 up to $130,000. Whether we’ll get all the way to $150,000, we’ll have to see.”

“I do think the sellers are nearing exhaustion and the buyers are still relatively hungry. And when those two things sort of cross paths, again, I think we could end the year close to or at new all-time highs. And if we’re lucky, we’ll get to Saylor’s target as well,” he said.

Institutional investors, whom Hougan described as “more maybe even keeled about what’s going on at a fundamental level in crypto” will start to drive the market forward. “But we do have to finish this washout of retail sentiment … I think we’re closer to the end of that than the beginning, but … there always could be a little bit more downside.”

Continue Reading

Trending