Office Depot has rejected Staple's $2.1B takeover deal. However, the company said it is open to selling its retail and e-commerce operations to Staples, or a joint-venture rather than a full-blown takeover.

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• Last week, Staples offered to buy Office Depot for $2.1B in cash. The proposal came five years after the FTC blocked Staples and Office Depot's merger, citing that eliminating competition would lead to higher prices for consumers. The merger of the two companies was also blocked earlier, in 1997. 
• Office Depot's parent company ODP also owns IT services business CompuCom and OfficeMax chain. In 2019, ODP's B2B operations contributed to 50% of its $10.6B revenue, compared to 40% by retail operations and 9% by CompuCom.
• Office Depot noted that combining its retail operations with Staples' would be less likely to face regulatory scrutiny and could lead to cost savings. The company added that it is already in the process of selling CompuCom.
• As investors expect some sort of deal to go through, ODP's shares are up 26% since Staples announced its initial bid. 

Indian e-commerce platform JioMart plans to integrate itself into WhatsApp in the next six months. The integration would enable WhatsApp users to purchase products directly from the app. 

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• The Indian e-commerce market will be worth $1.3T by 2025. JioMart launched last May and operates in 200 cities and towns across the nation.
• The integration will help JioMart compete against Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart — the two dominant market players.
• JioMart is a subsidiary of the Indian conglomerate Reliance. Last year WhatsApp's parent company Facebook invested $5.7B in JioMart for a 9.99% stake.
• WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in India, with more at least 400 million active users.

Procter & Gamble (P&G) reported $19.75B revenue, up 8% YoY, and $3.85B profit for its recent quarter. The company’s e-commerce sales increased by more than 50% over the last two quarters.

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• Sales from the company’s home-care unit rose by 30%, the grooming unit rose by 5%, and healthcare unit increased by 9%. In terms of markets, sales in the U.S. and China grew by 12%.
• The company has increased its previous estimate of 5-8% revenue growth to 8-10% for the current fiscal year. However, it noted that the stimulus plans might lead to more sales, but a return to normalcy could slow growth. 
• The company’s stocks fell by 1% on the news announcement.

Amazon has surpassed 142 million Prime members in the U.S., according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP). In 2020, for the first time, Amazon's percentage of annual memberships increased in the holiday shopping quarter rather than decreased as buyers committed to longer-term memberships. 

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• Since Amazon introduced the month-to-month Prime membership option four years ago, monthly memberships have risen, resulting in a decline in annual memberships.
• In January 2020, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed the company had 150 million global members.
• Amazon's sales have surged during the pandemic as the e-commerce giant earned a record $96.1B in Q3, a 37% YoY. Analysts forecast Amazon earned $10B during its annual Prime Day in October.
• Last week, consumer groups accused Amazon of intentionally making it difficult to cancel Prime subscriptions and asked the FTC to investigate.

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