Express rocks earnings report, Walmart expands JD.com partnership, Amazon hires ESPN exec

Here’s a look at some of the companies the Yahoo Finance team will be watching for you today.

Express clothing brand just posted a big beat on quarterly earnings. It was driven in part thanks to a 37% surge in e-commerce sales. The CEO calls the results another step forward in its attempt to reach sustainable and profitable long-term growth.

Walmart is reaching further into China. It’s increasing its partnership with Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com. Walmart will provide logistics support as JD looks to grow and take on Amazon. Founder Richard Liu said the goal is to quote, “expand our supply chain ability to the whole world.”

Amazon is bringing in a big name, to help with its push into sports. It just hired Marie Donoghue as VP of sports video. She worked at ESPN for 17 years and was a driving force behind the network’s 30 for 30 series. Amazon is actively pushing into live sports and will stream Premier League soccer starting next year.

JPMorgan Chase is poaching a top Google executive to help with artificial intelligence. It’s just hired Google’s head of cloud-based AI. This is the second big AI hire for JPMorgan in recent months. They also brought on the former head of machine-learning from Carnegie Mellon University.

Apple’s CEO has cashed in on his huge stock option. Tim Cook received 560K shares of the company last week to mark his 7th anniversary at the helm. He cashed them out to the tune of $120M. Earlier this month, Apple became the first company to reach the 1 trillion dollar valuation mark.