Amazon will overtake Walmart as the largest US retailer in 2022

Amazon (Amazon shares - ticker AMZN) is about to overtake Walmart as the largest US retailer in 2022, according to recently published research from JPMorgan. Analysts at the company said Amazon's retail business in the US is the "fastest growing large-scale". Between 2014 and 2020, Amazon's US merchandise volume grew “much faster” than US adjusted retail sales and US e-commerce.

"Based on current estimates, we believe Amazon could overtake Walmart to become the largest US retailer in 2022," wrote analysts Christopher Horvers and Doug Anmuth.

Amazon's GMV (GMV is a metric used to determine the total value of goods sold over a certain duration) in 2020 increased 41% year-on-year (year-over-year) to $ 316 billion, while the GMV is estimated to Walmart grew 10% year-on-year to $ 439 billion last year, US media reported.

Deliveries on the rise for the Bezos company

Horvers and Anmuth highlighted a number of factors they believe are driving Amazon's growth, including expansion into "large and infrequent categories" such as groceries and apparel, strong growth in third-party vendor sales, and the "prime driver ".

Amazon now has more than 200 million Prime subscribers, up from 150 million in early 2020, CEO Jeff Bezos said in April.

The increase in sales fueled by the Amazon pandemic has helped grow its share of the e-commerce market. JPMorgan estimates that Amazon expanded its share of the US e-commerce market to 39% in 2020, up from 24% in 2014.

The accelerated adoption of e-commerce has also provided a boost to other areas of Amazon's business.

Amazon is on track to "become one of the largest delivery companies" in the United States, Bank of America analysts wrote in a recently published research. Amazon is estimated to deliver 7 billion packages in 2021, surpassing the roughly 6 billion packages UPS is expected to deliver in the US this year, analysts wrote, citing data from MWPVL International, a supply chain consultancy. and logistics.

The estimates leave little doubt

MWPVL estimates that Amazon handled about 5 billion of the 7,35 billion packages shipped in 2020. UPS and the US Postal Service handled the other 1,25 billion and 1,1 billion respectively, according to analysts from Bank of America.

A report released in April of this year by Edge by Ascential's market research arm, Retail Insight, said Amazon is set to overtake Walmart as the largest retailer in the United States within the next four years. Amazon's GMV sales will reach $ 631,6 billion by 2025, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14% between 2020 and 2025, he said. Walmart's total sales will grow 3,9% CAGR, reaching $ 523,3 billion by 2025.