Business

Walmart is raising its minimum wage to $14 an hour for store employees.
Starting in early March, the retailer’s U.S. average wage is expected to be more than $17.50.
The company, which is the nation’s largest private employer, is also sweetening its college tuition program and creating more high-paid roles at its auto centers.

An employee arranges beauty product gift boxes displayed for sale at a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. location in Los Angeles, California.
Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Walmart said Tuesday it is raising its minimum wage for store employees to $14 an hour, representing a roughly 17% jump for the workers who stock shelves and cater to customers.
Starting in early March, store employees will make between $14 and $19 an hour. They currently earn between $12 and $18 an hour, according to Walmart spokeswoman Anne Hatfield.

With the move, the retailer’s U.S. average hourly wage is expected to be more than $17.50, Walmart U.S. CEO John Furner said in an employeewide memo Tuesday. That’s an increase from an average of $17 an hour.
About 340,000 store employees will get a raise because of the move, Hatfield said. That amounts to a pay increase for roughly 21% of Walmart’s 1.6 million employees.
The retail giant, which is the country’s largest private employer, is hiking pay at an interesting moment. Weaker retail sales trends have prompted companies, including Macy’s and Lululemon, to recently warn investors about a tougher year ahead. Some economists are calling for a recession amid persistent inflation and shifting consumer habits.
Prominent tech companies, media organizations and banks, including Google, Amazon and Goldman Sachs, have laid off thousands of employees and set off alarm bells. Still, the jobs market has remained strong. Nonfarm payroll growth slowed slightly in December, but was better than expected. And the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week.
So far, retailers have largely avoided job cuts. Instead, they continue to grapple with a tight labor market. And they have a workforce that, like other Americans, is feeling the pinch from pricier food, electricity and more.

Retail, compared with other industries, tends to have higher churn than other industries — which allows employers to manage their head count by slowing the backfilling of jobs, said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY Parthenon, the global strategy consulting arm of Ernst & Young.
Yet he said retailers may also be planning cautiously. For the past 18 months, they have had to work harder to recruit and retain workers. If they lose too many employees, he said, hiring and training new employees can be costly.
“Any retailer is going to have to think carefully and think twice about laying off a good share of their workforce,” he said.
In Walmart’s employee memo, Furner said the wage hike will be part of many employees’ annual increases. Some of those pay increases will also go toward store employees who work in parts of the country where the labor market is more competitive, the company said.
Walmart is sweetening other perks to attract and retain employees, too. Furner said the company is adding more college degrees and certificates to its Live Better U program, which covers tuition and fees for part- and full-time workers. It is also creating more high-paid roles at its auto care centers and recruiting employees to become truck drivers, a job that can pay up to $110,000 in the first year. 
The wage hike lifts Walmart’s average pay to around the industry average, but it remains below several other major retailers, according to Just Capital, which partners with CNBC on an annual ranking of America’s largest publicly traded companies on issues that reflect priorities of the American public.
Target, Amazon and Best Buy have all raised their minimum wages to $15 an hour. Amazon and Target, however, were behind Walmart in rolling out their own debt-free college degree programs in 2021.

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The FDA proposed new lead limits in baby food.
Lead exposure can impair brain development and the nervous system, resulting in learning disabilities, lower IQ and behavioral difficulties.
The FDA’s proposed lead limits are not legally binding on the industry.
But the FDA said it would use them as a factor in deciding whether to take enforcement action against a company for selling contaminated food.

Jgi/jamie Grill | Tetra Images | Getty Images

The Food and Drug Administration proposed new limits Tuesday on lead in baby food, in an effort to reduce exposure to a toxin that can impair childhood development.
The lead limits apply to processed food consumed by children younger than two years old. In a statement, FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said the limits would reduce lead exposure from these foods by as much as 27%.

The proposed lead limits are not legally binding on the industry, but the FDA said it would use them as a factor in deciding whether to take enforcement action against a company for selling contaminated food.
The agency proposed the following lead concentration limits for baby food:

10 parts per billion for fruits, vegetables, yoghurts, custards and puddings, mixtures, and single ingredient meats. This would reduce exposure by 26%.
20 parts per billion for root vegetables. This would reduce exposure by 27%.
20 parts per billion for dry cereals. This would reduce exposure by 24%.

Lead is toxic and particularly dangerous for young children. It can impair brain development and the nervous system, resulting in learning disabilities and behavioral difficulties.
Lead exposure through food among children ages 1 to 3 has declined 97% since the 1980s, according to the FDA. Though progress has been made over the years, the agency launched an effort in 2021 to reduce the levels of lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury in children’s food to the greatest extent possible.
Food consumed by children can contain lead due to contaminated water or soil, industrial activity and old lead-containing equipment used to make food, according to the FDA. The agency said it’s not possible to completely remove lead from the food supply, but the limits should push industry to take measures to reduce its presence as much as possible.

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The Senate Judiciary Committee slammed concert giant Live Nation in a hearing on Tuesday.
Industry witnesses described a monopoly-like control over venues, artists and consumers.
Criticism of Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, intensified after a botched sale of tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.

Amy Edwards demonstrates against the live entertainment ticket industry outside the U.S. Capitol January 24, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Drew Angerer | Getty Images

The Senate Judiciary Committee slammed concert giant Live Nation on Tuesday, calling on activists and artists to speak to competition in the ticketing industry following a botched sale of Taylor Swift tickets in November.
Led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who helms antitrust investigations for the committee, senators grilled Live Nation’s chief financial officer, Joe Berchtold, about the company’s dominance in the ticketing business. Industry witnesses described a monopoly-like control over venues, artists and consumers.

“Ticketmaster should look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m the problem, it’s me,'” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said, playing off Swift song lyrics.
Blumenthal said Republicans and Democrats alike agreed that something needed to be done. But they appeared to diverge on a path forward, with several Democrats seemingly open to establishing new legislation to help address the issues, while antitrust subcommittee ranking member Mike Lee, R-Utah, blamed what he deemed lax enforcement of existing laws.
Live Nation owns Ticketmaster, the world’s largest ticket seller representing around 70% of all sold tickets in the U.S. It also owns concert venues and promotes tours, leading many opponents to call its business a monopoly in the industry.
Live Nation, which merged with Ticketmaster in 2010, has faced longstanding criticism about its size and power in the entertainment industry. Opponents intensified their complaints in November when presale tickets for Swift’s Eras Tour were plagued by disruptions and slow queues.
Live Nation was supposed to open up sales for 1.5 million verified fans ahead of general public ticket sales. However, more than 14 million users flocked to the presale site, including bots, spurring massive delays and site lockouts. Ultimately, 2 million tickets were sold during the presale and the general public sale was canceled, company representatives said.

“For the leading ticket company not to be able to handle bots is, for me, an unbelievable statement,” said Jerry Mickelson, the chief executive of Jam Productions, during Tuesday’s hearing. “You can’t blame bots for what happened to Taylor Swift. There’s more to that story that you’re not hearing.”
Swift, who has worked to bring all marketing in house, publicly slammed the company at the time for mishandling the sales process, albeit without mentioning it by name.
The Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into Live Nation’s practices, however, that probe predates the Swift ticket sale fiasco.

Live Nation Entertainment President and Chief Financial Officer Joe Berchtold and SeatGeek Chief Executive Officer Jack Groetzinger listen as Jam Productions Chief Executive Officer and President Jerry Mickelson speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled “That’s the Ticket: Promoting Competition and Protecting Consumers in Live Entertainment” on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 24, 2023. 
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

Berchtold testified Tuesday that the company owns around 5% of U.S. venues and said Ticketmaster has lost, not gained, market share since its merger with Live Nation.
Clyde Lawrence, a singer and songwriter for the band Lawrence, called out Live Nation’s control over different aspects of the business, saying that at the end of the day the company is “negotiating to pay itself.”
Lawrence told lawmakers that if his band plays a Live Nation venue, they are required to use the company as the promoter and must sell tickets through Ticketmaster. That often comes at a higher upfront cost and lower back-end splits than with a third-party promoter, he said.
Lawrence also spoke to a lack of transparency in added ticket fees that he said, on average, range between 40% and 50% of the base ticket price. Berchtold on Tuesday said venues set the fee percentage, but agreed his company could be more forthcoming about that information.
Berchtold also highlighted what he said is the growing problem of ticket scalping.
Tuesday’s hearing extends a bipartisan focus on antitrust action by senators in recent years.
At the end of last year, lawmakers managed to pass a bill that would raise merger-filing fees on large transactions, boosting funds for federal enforcers who review those deals. Klobuchar, who sponsored the bill, referenced that legislation in her remarks Tuesday as a way to help those agencies challenge potentially anticompetitive deals.
Still, Congress has failed so far to pass some of the more ambitious pieces of legislation that would create new guardrails on competitive practices, specifically in the tech space. Despite bipartisan support, the impasse shows how difficult it can be update or add to existing antitrust laws, which many lawmakers feel are not sufficiently enforced by the courts as currently written.
The Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger was approved by the Department of Justice under the Obama administration, with certain stipulations that the newly merged company agreed to uphold, under what’s known as a consent decree. It required Live Nation to comply with certain requirements, like not retaliating against concert venues that used a different ticketing company, for a set period of time.
In 2020, Live Nation and the DOJ agreed to update the consent decree and extend it to 2025, because the DOJ said the company took actions that it viewed as violating its earlier agreement.
The current antitrust enforcement regime under the Biden administration has made clear it much prefers structural remedies, or breakups, to behavioral ones like consent decrees.

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Life sciences and medical diagnostics company Danaher (DHR) reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue for the fourth quarter. We view the dip in the stock as unjustified and an opportunity. Revenue increased nearly 10% on a core basis to $8.37 billion, well above estimates of $7.9 billion, according to Refinitiv. Adjusted profit increased 6.7% to $2.87 per share, exceeding the consensus estimate of $2.54 per share. When excluding the impact of declining Covid testing sales — but keeping in revenue from products that support vaccines and therapeutics — Danaher’s base business saw core growth of 7.5%. That shows the company isn’t overly reliant on the bump in pandemic sales. Bottom line This was a solid quarter from one of the best-run companies in the world. With very little to nitpick, we attribute Tuesday’s 3% stock decline to a combination of management already preannouncing the results and shares making a large move into the print. Also to blame: first-quarter guidance may be a tad light versus expectations. Given in-line to better-than-expected quarterly results pretty much across the board along with operating margin expansion and strong cash flow generation, we’re inclined to view Tuesday’s selloff as a buying opportunity as noted by our 1 rating — especially considering that the full-year guide is also in-line to better-than-expected. DHR 1Y mountain Danaher (DHR) 1-year performance Management said on the post-earnings call that the first quarter is expected to be the low point for their bioprocessing non-Covid core growth as customers work to repurpose existing inventories. In other words, that bioprocessing inventory glut that’s pressured the life sciences industry in recent months appears to be coming to an end, at which point growth stands to reaccelerate. Guidance Management expects overall core revenue growth to be down mid-single-digits on a percentage for the first quarter. After adjusting for an expected “high-single to low-double-digit” impact related to Covid testing, vaccine, and therapeutics sales, the team is forecasting base business core revenue growth to be in the mid-single-digit percent range. The operating profit margin is expected to be roughly 30% — ahead of the 27.7% expected. For the full year 2023, management expects overall core revenue growth to be down mid-single-digits. After adjusting for an expected “low-double-digit” impact related to Covid testing, vaccine, and therapeutics sales, the team is forecasting base business core revenue growth to be in the high-single-digit range. The operating profit margin is expected to be roughly 31% — ahead of the 27.3% expected. Though we don’t have an exact comparison because of the change in how management is calculating growth going forward (more details on that below), the first quarter guide appears to be a bit light of what some analysts were modeling and likely the cause of at least some of Tuesday’s selling pressure. The full-year guidance, however, appears to be in-line to slightly better than analysts were expecting. On the call, management said they now anticipate Covid-related vaccine and therapeutic revenue will be “approximately $150 million for the full year of 2023, down from approximately $810 million in 2022 and lower than our previous expectation of $500 million.” The reasons: lower vaccination and booster rates along with the availability of alternative therapeutics (other than monoclonal antibody-based treatments). Reporting Structure Before digging into the results, we want to highlight that management has slightly modified Danaher’s reporting structure. As a result of significant growth in Life Sciences in recent years, the team has opted to separate out a portion of the original segment into a new segment called Biotechnology. In order to provide an apples-to-apples comparison to Wall Street estimates, we combined the sales and operating income of the new Biotechnology and Life Sciences segments in the table below in the Product Segments section. Additionally, starting with the first quarter 2023 results, management is updating its base business core revenue growth definition to exclude the impact of Covid-related testing and the impact of Covid vaccine and therapeutic revenue streams. This is reflected in the guidance section provided above. Previously, only revenues related to Covid testing were excluded. On the call, management pointed to roughly 10% core revenue growth in both North America and Europe. In China, a surge of infections as the Chinese government did away with its zero Covid policy hampered performance in the company’s clinical diagnostics business there as patient and testing volumes declined. This dynamic is expected to last through the first quarter before “gradually recovering through the balance of the year.” Additionally, the team attributed Danaher’s profit margin expansion to “disciplined cost management, productivity measures and price actions implemented to help offset the impact of inflationary pressures across [the] business.” Management also noted that while supply chain issues remain, they are seeing “modest improvement in component availability.” It’s also worth noting that Environmental & Applied Solutions (EAS) revenue was up 5.5% on a core basis driven by high-single-digit growth in Water Quality related sales. (These figures are not in the table.) The EAS division is expected to become a separate company later this year. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long DHR. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.

In this photo illustration, Danaher Corporation logo seen displayed on a smartphone with the stock market information of Danaher Corporation in the background.
Igor Golovniov | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Life sciences and medical diagnostics company Danaher (DHR) reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue for the fourth quarter. We view the dip in the stock as unjustified and an opportunity. More

Large business centers including New York City and the states of California and Washington have introduced salary transparency measures in recent years.
Experts believe these laws will address pay equity issues.
The rise of pay transparency laws could shrink net wage growth over time as an unintended consequence, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research report.

The rise of pay transparency laws in the United States could change how the nation’s workers negotiate their annual salaries in today’s fast-changing labor market.As layoffs mount in the face of recession fears, the increased number of job seekers will be seeing more positions in states that mandate pay ranges be publicly listed.Colorado became the first state to require public disclosures of salary ranges in 2021. Now jurisdictions including Washington state, California, and New York City have taken up similar mandatory public disclosure laws. These measures typically affect businesses with at least a small number of employees.Experts believe the arrival of these laws could mark a tipping point in the long-running fight for wage equity.”When Colorado required that, in the immediate aftermath, there were some companies that tried to get a little cute and in their postings said, you can do this anywhere in the country except Colorado,” said Emily Martin, vice president of Education & Workplace Justice at the National Women’s Law Center. “You can’t really do that when you have industry leaders like New York and California requiring this.”
The rise of these pay transparency laws could boost wages for minorities and women, who may be paid less than their peers. The pay gaps derive from many factors including job preferences and inexplicable discrepancies.But a growing body of research also says that the movement could dampen wage growth over time. “What we found is that people get smaller raises,” said Bobak Pakzad-Hurson, an assistant professor of economics and entrepreneurship at Brown University.Nuances of rising pay transparency were highlighted in a report Pakzad-Hurson co-authored in the National Bureau of Economic Research. “Is the juice worth the squeeze? In some sense, I think we have to weigh these trade-offs,” he said in an interview with CNBC.Watch the video above to learn more about the rise and potential implications of pay transparency.

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Every weekday the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer holds a “Morning Meeting” livestream at 10:20 a.m. ET. Here’s a recap of Tuesday’s key moments. Buy JNJ while it’s down Look to buy Danaher Wait to buy AMD 1. Buy JNJ while it’s down Shares of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) slipped more than 1% Tuesday after the drug maker delivered a beat on fourth-quarter profit but missed on revenue estimates. The stock doesn’t deserve to go down, especially considering that the company’s 2023 earnings outlook came in higher than expected . J & J’s only real weakness for the quarter came in its medical technology segment, which was held back by Covid-19 lockdowns in China. The declines are indicative of a broader trend of investors moving out of health-care names this year, in a reversal from 2022. That’s a shift we don’t support. Instead, we urge investors to buy shares of this high-quality company while it’s out of favor. 2. Look to buy Danaher Danaher (DHR) on Tuesday reported strong fourth-quarter earnings but forecasted a lighter-than-expected guidance, sending the stock down nearly 3% in midmorning trading. The company had preannounced the quarter, so the earnings beat was already baked into the stock. Danaher, whose operations include life sciences, diagnostics and environmental solutions, continues to expect its core revenue to grow by a high-single-digit percentage point this year. We remain bullish on the stock. Investors should buy shares of Danaher if the stock falls further today, by at least 5%. 3. Wait to buy AMD Bernstein on Tuesday downgraded Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to market perform, or neutral, from outperform, citing concerns over a deteriorating PC market. That comes a day after Barclays upgraded the semiconductor maker to overweight, or buy, from equal weight. Amid the competing calls, we advise investors to wait on buying AMD, as the stock will likely be battered further in the coming months. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long AMD, JNJ, DHR. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED. More

Chewy’s Connect With a Vet allows customers to virtually talk with licensed veterinarians and technicians, but regulations prevent them from diagnosing conditions or prescribing medications.
There’s a growing movement to change those regulations, spearheaded by a noncharitable nonprofit that was co-founded by a lobbyist and is funded in part by Chewy.
Several longtime veterinarians expressed their skepticism about Connect With a Vet, saying it could potentially be harmful to pets.

The Chewy.com application is displayed in the on an Apple iPhone.
Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Chewy, the e-commerce pet-goods giant best known for its convenient auto-ship services and generous return policies, wants to grow its veterinary telehealth service as part of an overall push into health care. 
While the telehealth service is a small part of the company’s rapidly expanding health offerings, it is important to its strategy. Yet it also faces regulatory obstacles and skepticism from the veterinary community. Longtime veterinarians told CNBC the service can have some benefit for minor situations, or for people who don’t have easy access to vet care. But it could create problems for pets, too, they said.

Chewy’s service, called Connect With a Vet, has experienced significant growth, but it’s been limited by a specific kind of regulation known as the veterinary client patient relationship, or VCPR, according to Chewy CEO Sumit Singh. 
“If you look at our Connect With a Vet, it’s the singular most scaled telehealth platform in the market today, only after two years, and yet, it doesn’t form a meaningful portion of our business. Why? Because when you research pet health, you’ll find that there’s a specific term called VCPR,” Singh said.
He also noted that barrier is “breaking down” in the wake of the Covid pandemic and multiple states “are already doing away with VCPR.”

Arrows pointing outwards

Chewy Connect with a Vet service.

Most states forbid veterinarians from performing their primary duties – diagnosing conditions and prescribing medication – until they establish a VCPR by seeing an animal in-person and performing a physical exam. 
“Trying to make an assessment over video without any prior relationship at all, that’s the part that kind of concerns me,” said Brett Levitzke, the chief medical officer and founder of Veterinary Emergency and Referral Group, an emergency animal hospital in New York City. “There is no substitute for a physical exam. Period.” 

Nonetheless, there is a growing movement to change VCPR regulations. The leader behind that push, the Veterinary Virtual Care Association, or VVCA, is an advocacy group co-founded by longtime lobbyist and political strategist Mark Cushing. It’s funded by Chewy and several other pet businesses expanding into vet telehealth. 
When asked about the company’s position on VCPR, Chewy said it doesn’t take a stance on the issue and declined to say whether its veterinarians would diagnose and prescribe medication if the laws are changed. Currently, Chewy’s veterinarians do not diagnose conditions or prescribe medications.
The company suggested CNBC speak with Cushing, whom the company described as an industry expert on the matter, to learn more about VCPR. Cushing said he does not represent Chewy “in the telemedicine space,” but the company is a primary sponsor of the VVCA. 
It is not clear how much money Chewy has donated to the VVCA because, as a noncharitable nonprofit, it’s not required to disclose donor information to the public. Cushing is also the CEO of the Animal Policy Group, a lobbying organization, which has advocated on behalf of Banfield Pet Hospital, a network of clinics that offer in-clinic services and veterinary telehealth, according to lobbying reports filed with the U.S. Senate. Banfield Pet Hospital is owned by Mars Veterinary Health, a subsidiary of pet food and candy conglomerate Mars. 
The goal of the VVCA is to make veterinary telemedicine legal across the country so vets can diagnose conditions and prescribe medications virtually at their own discretion – even if they’ve never laid hands on the animal. 
“The hardest thing, though, the most expensive thing in telemedicine in the veterinary space, by far, is customer acquisition,” said Cushing.
Prescribing medication and diagnosing conditions without ever performing a physical exam on an animal poses “massive risks” that could ultimately be harmful, or even fatal in some rare instances, Dr. Linda Isaacson, who has been a veterinarian since 2003 and runs three clinics in Brooklyn, told CNBC.
Sometimes, for instance, a pet owner may say their animal is constipated, but a physical exam will reveal a urinary blockage, Isaacson said.
“A urinary blockage is life threatening, you know, if they don’t urinate, they’ll die and you wouldn’t be able to tell that from telemedicine,” she said. “So, if you’re going on telemedicine and they’re just prescribing, you know, a laxative, that’s not going to help that pet, right? They’ll be dead.”

Chewy pushes into health

Chewy was co-founded in 2011 by Ryan Cohen, an activist investor and the current chairman of GameStop. He left the company in 2018 and the following year, Chewy went public at a valuation of $8.8 billion. Chewy’s market value currently sits around $18.5 billion.
Under Singh’s leadership as CEO, Chewy’s annual revenue soared from $3.53 billion in fiscal 2018 to $8.9 billion in fiscal 2021, but the company has been stymied by repeated annual net losses and slim margins. 
During a sitdown interview with CNBC earlier this month, the former Amazon executive said expanding pet health and wellness, which are higher-margin categories than pet food, will be essential to getting the company on a path to profitability. 

Chewy CEO Sumit Singh is interviewed on CNBC during the Chewy IPO at the New York Stock Exchange, June 14, 2019.
Andrew Kelly | Reuters

It’s a strategy that Chewy’s main competitor outside of big-box retailers, Petco, has undertaken as well. It rebranded as a health and wellness company in 2020. Petco has veterinarians on its payroll working inside of full service hospitals and clinics built inside stores. When asked, Petco said telehealth isn’t off the table, but for now, its focus is “hands on pets,” which is what they say pet parents want.
Chewy’s expansion into health – including insurance, prescription food and medication – came as the pandemic-fueled pet boom saw 23 million American households welcome a new animal into their homes, turning the overall pet industry into a $123.6 billion market in 2021, according to data from the ASPCA and the American Pet Products Association.
Chewy aims to make health care about 30% of its overall business in the coming years, according to Singh. The company wouldn’t say how much pet health care accounts for in its current revenue stream, but less than 5% of Chewy’s customer base buys their health products from the company.
“If you notice, there has been little to no innovation in pet health over the last decade, and yet in the last three years, there’s been more innovation in pet health than in the last decade or 20 years,” Singh said.

The tricky nature of pet telehealth

The sudden surge of new animal owners during the pandemic made it difficult to book vet appointments, and it put a strain on an already understaffed and burnt out veterinary community. The rules around establishing a VCPR virtually without a physical exam were relaxed in some states out of emergency need.
Outside of an emergency like a global pandemic, the American Veterinary Medical Association, the nation’s leading advocacy group for veterinarians, maintains that a VCPR can only be established after an in-person exam. The group’s ethical standards allow vets to diagnose, prescribe medication or treat animals virtually – but only after a VCPR has been established in-person. 
“Without a VCPR, any advice provided through electronic means should be general and not specific to a patient, diagnosis or treatment,” the AVMA advises in its guidelines on telemedicine.
Despite the AMVA’s stance, at least five states – Michigan, Oklahoma, Indiana, Virginia and New Jersey – have made the lighter rules permanent, according to the VVCA.
Chewy said it considers Connect With a Vet a tele-triage platform, not a replacement for in-clinic care, where customers can be connected with a licensed doctor or technician and ask them about their pet’s health concerns, diet, behavior and products that can increase “lifelong wellbeing.” 

A dog hi-fives it’s owner in front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) during Chewy Inc.’s initial public offering (IPO) in New York, U.S., on Friday, June 14, 2019.
Michael Nagle | Getty Images

Chewy said the program was created to make vet care more affordable and accessible to everyone. The service is designed to help clients access some form of care when they can’t book an immediate appointment, can’t afford one or don’t live close to an in-person clinic, the company said.
Connect With a Vet is also intended to help pet parents figure out if an issue their pet is having is an emergency that requires immediate care or something they could handle down the line during an in-person veterinarian appointment. The company warns customers to go to the closest veterinary clinic if their animals are experiencing a life-threatening situation. Other companies offer similar services.
Chewy has also started a B2B offering called Practice Hub, which creates a marketplace for veterinary clinics to sell their products to clients within Chewy.com. The service is currently free for veterinarians, and they get a portion of the revenue when their clients place orders on Chewy for products offered by the clinic. In return, Chewy gets access to their clients. This month, the platform will have 1,500 clinics, Chewy said.

Veterinarians weigh in

Isaacson, the Brooklyn vet, used telehealth during the height of the pandemic. She said about 50% of clients needed to bring their pet to the clinic after virtual sessions. 
“It’s very hard to hold the pet still. I can’t really even see anything usually over the video. I think it works better for human medicine, but for animals, you know, it wasn’t ideal,” Isaacson said. “It’s not like a person that can tell you how they’re feeling or sit still or show you something.”
Isaacson no longer offers the virtual service. And she is concerned new pet parents might consider Chewy’s service and others like it a replacement for traditional, industry standard veterinary care.
“You think if it’s allowed, then it’s safe, right?” said Isaacson. “It’s not, it’s substandard care.”
On the web page for Chewy’s Connect With a Vet service, the company advertises a sample conversation between a Chewy doctor and a client whose animal had started limping. It’s a condition that could be serious and can only be managed after a physical exam if there’s no prior relationship with the pet, according to Levitzke, of Veterinary Emergency and Referral Group. 
“Are they limping because they have an overall sense of weakness? Are they limping because their knee hurts? Are they limping because they can’t feel their leg at all? Those are all three drastically different scenarios that are all possible,” said Levitzke. 
Chewy offered to make one of the veterinarians using its Practice Hub service available to CNBC for an interview. The company suggested Audrey Wystrach, who is the co-CEO of Petfolk and a co-founder of the VVCA, the nonprofit Chewy funds.
Wystrach has been a veterinarian for 28 years and practices telehealth. She also practices full-on telemedicine, where she can prescribe and diagnose virtually, but only with clients she has an existing relationship with.
She believes veterinarians should have more discretion to practice the medicine they’re licensed for and should be able to establish a VCPR virtually, if they determine it’s safe.
“You know, it is not a good idea to work on a pet that can’t breathe in a virtual space, that’s a pretty big no brainer,” said Wystrach. “But is it okay for me to, you know, be able to look at a pet’s mouth and see if they have a fractured tooth or talk to somebody about behavior or nutrition? Or even skin?”
She said the demand for veterinarians outpaces the supply, and veterinary telehealth and medicine is crucial to ensure pet parents can get access to care.
“I’ve always had the mantra that says, virtual care is better than no care,” she said. “I think we got to get to where we’ve got a realistic outlook on how we’re going to manage the sheer volume of pets that are under the care of people in today’s day and age.”
Clarification: This story was updated to clarify the functions of Chewy’s Practice Hub.

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Smart Tax Planning

If you’re expecting a refund this season, you may avoid processing delays by filing a complete and accurate return, according to the IRS.
Before filing, it’s critical to get organized with your tax forms to report activity such as income, deductions and credits.
As a starting point, experts suggest reviewing last year’s tax return “page-by-page” to make a checklist of the forms you’ll need.

If you’re expecting a refund this season, it’s critical to file a complete and accurate tax return to avoid “extensive processing” and delays, according to the IRS.   
One of the keys to error-free filing is including all your required tax forms, known as information returns, which employers and financial institutions send yearly, with copies going to the IRS and taxpayer.

If you skip tax forms received by the agency, the IRS systems may flag your return and mail you a notice, explained Sheneya Wilson, a certified public accountant and founder of Fola Financial in New York.
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“Missing tax documents are definitely going to cause a refund delay,” Wilson said. 
Whether you’re working with a tax professional or filing on your own, here’s what to know about your tax forms — and when to expect them.

When to expect your tax forms

While most tax forms have a Jan. 31 deadline, others aren’t due until mid-February or beyond, said certified financial planner John Loyd, owner at The Wealth Planner in Fort Worth, Texas. 

For example, the deadline for 1099-B for capital gains and losses and 1099-DIV for dividends and distributions is Feb. 15. But some investment firms get an extension from the IRS for more time to validate forms and avoid corrections, meaning you may not receive these forms until March, Loyd said. 

If you do need a corrected form, it can slow down your filing process because it takes time for the investment firm to update and reissue your documents, he said.
Regardless of your situation, it’s important to have all the necessary forms handy before filing your return, Loyd said. “It’s 1,000 times better” to file correctly the first time, he added, noting that IRS notices may take months to resolve.

Review last year’s return ‘page-by-page’

If you’re not sure which tax forms to expect, experts say last year’s tax return is a great starting point.
“I go page-by-page with the prior year and current year’s [returns],” said Marianela Collado, a CFP and CEO of Tobias Financial Advisors in Plantation, Florida. She is also a CPA. “That’s always a good check,” she said.
For earnings, some of the common forms include a W-2 for wages, 1099-NEC for contract or gig economy work, 1099-G for unemployment income and 1099-R for retirement plan distributions. 
For 2022, you probably won’t receive a 1099-K for payment apps such as Vemno or PayPal unless there were more than 200 payments worth an aggregate above $20,000. If you receive this form by mistake, the IRS said, it is working on guidance.

Of course, it’s also important to make sure the numbers on your tax return match those on your 1099s because “that’s something that could trigger a delay,” Collado said.   
As for tax breaks, you may need forms 1098 for mortgage interest, 5498 for individual retirement account deposits, 5498-SA for health savings account contributions, 1098-T for tuition, 1098-E for student loan interest and more. More