As you might imagine, the company tried to put a positive spin on the news. “Due to [the] continued strength of the Walmart.com brand, the company will discontinue Jet.com,” Walmart said in a statement to TechCrunch. “The acquisition of Jet.com nearly four years ago was critical to accelerating our omni strategy.”

Nonetheless, the timing of Walmart’s decision may seem unintuitive. As part of its Q1 earnings, Walmart said online sales increased by 74 percent year-over-year, thanks in part to a surge of people shopping online due to the coronavirus pandemic. But Walmart was likely looking at the bigger picture. According to a 2019 Wall Street Journal report, the company’s online division lost approximately $2 billion in one fiscal year. With just how much uncertainty the coronavirus pandemic has created in the economy, it’s hard to tell whether people will have the money to shop online as much as they’ve done in recent weeks.