Walmart in talks to buy TV maker Vizio: WSJ

Shares Vizio (VZIO) surged late on Tuesday after the Wall Street Journal reported retail giant Walmart (WMT) is in talks to buy the television maker for about $2 billion. The acquisition would give Walmart more opportunity to advertise products to customers and would help counter some of Amazon's (AMZN) recent forays in to the ad space.

Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton discuss the report in the video above.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Stephanie Mikulich

Video Transcript

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JULIE HYMAN: Let's check in on a few trending tickers. And we begin with Walmart and Vizio after the "Wall Street Journal" reported that Walmart is discussing a deal to purchase the TV maker Vizio for more than $2 billion. The journal is saying the deal might not end up getting done here, but it's a way potentially for Walmart to lean into consumer data, to its ad business as well, which it's been growing. But an interesting and maybe surprising headline.

JOSH LIPTON: Yeah, I think it's interesting. It's about one, yes, growing that ad business. You know, Walmart did about $3 billion in ad revenue for the previous 12 months. But to your point, Julie, I think you're right.

It's also just about data about shoppers, right? I mean Walmart obviously competes with Amazon, which has a ton of data about its customers, what they like, what they don't, when they buy it, when they don't. Incredibly useful and Walmart would certainly like the same.

JULIE HYMAN: And I didn't realize this that data on TV ad sales is owned by whoever operates the TV operating system, which I-- or whoever owns it, so that's why it would be valuable. Just one quick thing here, Vizio down quite sharply from its IPO, which it had in 2021. It was at $21 a share. Opened that day at $1,750 and now it's trading-- well, it's rising today, but it was trading around $8 a share before these headlines broke. So Walmart, you could argue, would be getting it at a lot less--

JOSH LIPTON: Yeah.

JULIE HYMAN: --than it would have.

JOSH LIPTON: And Walmart, by the way, reports next week. Maybe we get some more color commentary about this.

JULIE HYMAN: Maybe we do. Vizio on February 27.

JOSH LIPTON: There you go.