Stock market today: S&P 500 hits fresh record with Fed decision, Big Tech earnings bonanza on deck

Amazon (AMZN) stock moved higher after the company announced plans to close its Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go stores to focus on delivery services and Whole Foods, which Amazon acquired in 2017.

“While we’ve seen encouraging signals in our Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, we haven’t yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion,” the company said in the release.

According to sources close to the matter, Amazon plans to evaluate each location to see which locations can be converted into Whole Foods stores. Amazon said it plans to open more than 100 new Whole Foods locations over the next few years, including the expansion of its smaller footprint option, called Whole Foods Market Daily Shop. There are currently more than 550 Whole Foods stores in total.

“We have a very large grocery business,” CEO Andy Jassy told investors in the company’s earnings call in October. “If you look at our entire grocery business, if I don’t even count Whole Foods Market and Fresh, in the last 12 months [it grew] to over $100 billion of gross merchandising sales, which would make us a top 3 grocery in the US.”

Same-day delivery is also a top priority. Last year, the e-commerce giant expanded its same-day delivery service for perishable goods to over 5,000 US cities, with plans to expand in 2026.

“They are doubling down on something, on a trend … that’s saying that grocery buying is moving more online,” Hitha Herzog, H Squared Research chief research officer, told Yahoo Finance over the phone.

She added, “The more the consumer can get things in a rapid way — and that could be logistically fulfilled, not only from a convenience standpoint but [also] having that same quality control applied to what they were ordering — that’s what equates to consumer retention.”

Amazon is set to report earnings after market close on Feb. 5.