The story of William Wang, a Taiwanese immigrant who survived a horrific 2000 plane crash and built a billion-dollar business selling televisions, began a new chapter last week.
Walmart Inc., the world’s largest retailer, on Dec. 3 completed its $2.3 billion acquisition of Wang’s Vizio, an Irvine-based maker of smart TVs. While Vizio is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bentonville, Arkansas giant, the two companies will continue to operate separately for the foreseeable future.
“I am planning to stay on as CEO of Vizio, and I am excited about the opportunity to take Vizio to the next level,” Wang told the Business Journal last week after the announcement.
Wang’s Vizio, which reported $1.7 billion in 2023 sales, is joining a company that generated $648 billion in fiscal 2024. Why Walmart, already a giant in television sales, decided it needed Vizio is a testament to Wang’s business acumen.
“Vizio offers great products at great prices that customers love,” Seth Dallaire, executive vice president and chief growth officer, Walmart U.S., said in a statement. “They’ve always put customers at the center of their business – and that’s core to Walmart’s values and the omnichannel experiences we’re excited to roll out.”
Wang has surrounded himself with talent. Vizio in 2021 won a couple of prominent Business Journal awards for Chief Financial Officer Adam Townsend and its In-House Legal Team.
This year, it even picked up a Technology & Engineering Emmy award from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for its “pioneering work in utilizing data to power better viewing experiences for consumers and advancing the broader television marketplace.”
Wang this year also won a Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award.
Wang is a regular on the Business Journal’s annual list of wealthiest local residents with an estimated fortune of $1.5 billion.
He’s also the second OC entrepreneur to complete a billion-dollar sale in the past month. On Nov. 15, Axonics Founder and Chief Executive Raymond Cohen closed its $3.7 billion sale to Boston Scientific Corp.
Vizio to Amplify Walmart’s Advertising
Walmart will boost its advertising, entertainment and business strategy with the acquisition of Vizio.
The purchase of Vizio and its Platform+ system “will alter the streaming advertising landscape,” according to entertainment industry website Deadline.
“The deal allows Walmart to collect Vizio’s automatic content recognition data to bolster advertising and positions,” allowing the retail giant to be a bigger force in the connected TV world, according to Deadline.
Walmart Connect, the retailer’s closed loop, omnichannel retail media business in the U.S., grew 26% in the third quarter of this year; a dollar figure wasn’t provided. By contrast, Vizio said sales at its Platform+ system jumped 26% to $197 million.
With Vizio, Walmart said the acquisition will “accelerate growth at Walmart Connect,” which offers its suppliers and sellers opportunities to reach their desired customers no matter where, how and when they shop.
Wang’s Focus on Consumer Experience
Wang’s story is the stuff of OC legends.
Prior to Vizio, Wang, who holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, was the founder and CEO of PGS OEM Inc., a distributor of computer monitors.
In the late 1990s, he invested roughly $20 million into a smart TV—a 36-inch, glass tube, low-resolution TV. He installed electronics and software into a TV so people could browse the web. Without a brand, followers, distribution team or fast internet connectivity, the idea didn’t take.
“I was way ahead of the time. I lost a lot of money and I failed,” he told the Business Journal in an earlier article.
PGS OEM began winding down its operations in 1998 and liquidated in Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2005.
His life took a dramatic turn in 2000 when he survived a horrific crash of a Singapore Airlines in Taipei that killed 83 of the 179 people onboard.
He co-founded Vizio in 2002 with a handful of employees and the funds from a second mortgage on his home.
“In our early years, we cultivated supplier and retail partner relationships to create an efficient business model that would allow us to deliver exceptional value to American consumers,” he wrote in a 2022 letter to shareholders.
Groundbreaking Costco Deal
Fast forward a few years and everything changed for Vizio when Wang and team launched the first high-definition television for $1,999 at Costco, undercutting competing brands priced at around $10,000.
By 2015, sales had boomed to $3.5 billion. China-based electronics and software conglomerate LeEco offered to buy Vizio for $2 billion, a deal that eventually fell apart due to what the company called “regulatory headwinds.”
Wang knew something was amiss as the offering price was only about half of sales. He decided that hardware wasn’t enough, and he had to build a software platform for his televisions.
The result became known as Vizio’s Platform+, which consists of its SmartCast operating system that allows for streaming of services such as Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+, and Inscape, which helps advertisers with targeted advertising.
In essence, the platform allows advertisers to tailor their ads to viewers, similar to how Facebook or Hulu gather information from their users such as interests—information that aids in serving more relevant advertisements.
“The TV industry has not been focused on this connection,” Wang wrote in 2021. “We want Vizio to be that connection, to be the portal connecting the home to the outside world. We envision the Vizio Smart TV as the center of the connected home—where families all play games together, where friends watch movies together, where work and learning happen and where all things in between take place.”
For example, Wang noted a show like 60 Minutes might feature the same ad on arthritis medication to all its viewers.
“I’m not a target. I have no arthritis. However, because they think people watching ‘60 Minutes’ are a little bit older, therefore, they’re going to show their ad to you,” he said.
By contrast, Vizio’s system shows ads tailored to the interests of viewers.
The success of Wang’s pivot has become evident in recent years. When the company went public in 2021, its market cap approached $4 billion, or twice the 2015 offer.
Last year, sales at Vizio’s TV division fell 22% to $1.08 billion while revenue at its Platform+ unit jumped 25% to $598 million.
Furthermore, the company is retaining customers. Vizio reported it has 19.1 million SmartCast Active Accounts, which streamed 5.8 billion hours during the three-month period ended September. Its system now provides 270 built-in apps per television.
Walmart, which paid about 1.4 times sales, cited the software as a key reason for the acquisition.
“Vizio has also expertly changed their business over time, like building and quickly scaling a profitable advertising business,” Walmart’s Dallaire said.
He added that the acquisition will “bring to market new and differentiated ways for advertisers to meaningfully connect with customers at scale and boost product discovery, helping brands achieve greater impact from their advertising investments with Walmart Connect – the company’s retail media business in the U.S.”
Largest TV Maker, Revenue Slid
Walmart (NYSE: WMT) agreed in February to acquire Vizio for all cash. Wang, who was 60 at the latest proxy in April, owns shares worth close to $850 million.
The deal was held up for several months by regulators who scrutinized it for possible anti-trust violations.
Wang retaining the top spot at Vizio comes as no surprise. Vizio told the SEC in February that “our growth will, to a large extent, depend on the attention of Mr. Wang to our daily affairs.”
Today, Vizio is the largest U.S.-based flat-panel TV maker and trails only Samsung Electronics among sales in the country.
Growth speaks “to the progress we have made increasing awareness of Vizio as a skilled destination for advertisers to reach viewers,” Wang said previously. “By our measure, we’ll continue to gain share within connected TV, one of the fastest-growing areas of advertising marketplace.”
While he will stay on as CEO of the unit, Wang is no longer on the company board, which has been pared down to one person, Walmart Executive Dallaire.
“Today, with the tremendous number of resources from Walmart, we will continue to further accelerate that mission around the best home entertainment experience,” Wang said.
