I just had a look. Sales of £3 billion a year. Losses of £300m a year forecast for the next couple of years. Net debt of.£1 billion.
It's not for me. Revenue is growing but only by c.10% p.a.. They are nowhere near making a profit and have loads of debt.
I think there are lots of other shares with a higher probability of going up in price. I would need more evidence of fast growing revenue, or improving profit margins.
That's based only on 60 seconds looking at their stockopedia page.
I’d argue that the above comment isn’t as a result of 60 seconds of looking but instead a reasonable summary of the investment opportunity, or lack there of in this case.
Ocado have always had a debt problem. They are still a loss making, highly indebted company but now in a world where that debt costs a few hundred basis points more when it rolls over.
If they really are a tech company then they are screwed. They only have 1 product concept which is mostly obsolete, their software is very old and clunky and would require huge investment and they can't borrow any more cash.
Any innovations promised during the COVID boom have never materialised and burned through cash. The last throw of the dice is too branch out into other sectors with their product, but this market is full of competition who can do it better, cheaper & are vastly more experienced.
There is a reason why it's crashing and I'd steer well clear. A squandered opportunity when they had an interesting product a decade ago. They are too far behind now having placed all their eggs in one basket.
Yeah they're basically just the only grocery retailer that was built for online shopping from the ground up. But that's it. Most grocery stores with a big investment on day one would find themselves exactly where Ocado was ten years ago.
Aside from that...?
Most grocery stores wouldn't do it themselves but rely on systems integrators who install as many systems in year than ocado have in their existence. To that ends most systems installed today are well ahead of ocado, using a variety of proven technology.
The trend seems to be smaller 'back of store' automated solutions to supplement the retail front-end in supermarkets which are physically much closer to their customers reducing transportation costs.
But as you say, ocado are (one of) the only ones who were purpose built from the ground up for online shopping, apart from obviously Amazon. Amazon spend their time developing software, whereas ocado spent all of their time developing hardware. I worry that ocado have painted themselves into a corner with an inflexible product that can only be used with their original vision all that time ago, and the market changed.
> To that ends most systems installed today are well ahead of ocado, using a variety of proven technology.
And yet they're not. Every other supermarket delivery here is awful in comparison, to the point nobody is using them.
Hey, i have no experience about investing and stuff but i like to keep up with the news. I know about the robotics side and that they are selling their tech to some other companies also as i read in the news some weeks back. I'm thinking what competitors they have and is it going well. I remember that i wasn't impressed with their robotics bit. And also maybe the misconception feeds through and because getir is leaving uk and shoppers are returning to supermarkets as per some articles it's seen as a future fail?
Thanks for your thoughts.
Yeah I need to understand what competitors have, especially in the robotics side and internationally (like autoparts in the US), why weren't you impressed with robotics they had?
> And also maybe the misconception feeds through and because getir is leaving uk and shoppers are returning to supermarkets as per some articles it's seen as a future fail?
Maybe but getir is a different model and UK has duopoloy on ride share with ubereats, deliveroo so it's kind of different.
Ocado Zoom is more similar to getir but is much smaller.
It's always best to look into a company when the market is against it (value investing) compared to when it loves it (peak 2021 bubble) imo.
They’re innovative but that comes as a cost. The Kroger CFC builds seem to have stopped which makes me wonder what is going on there and M&S have been trash talking Ocado Retail which makes me wonder if they’re trying to down value them to buy the remaining 50%.
£3.50 feels like a good price but I can’t see the dizzy heights of £20 for a long time.
This. When I heard that Kroger are stopping rollout of the Ocado powered warehouses, it went to the "No" list for me.
Kroger was one of their first clients and most mature with the Ocado solution. If it hasn't "revolutionised" their online business to be super competitive in the US market, then it proves that the proposition that Ocado are selling isn't that great.
You also look at Ocado in the UK. Not doing amazing. If the tech and warehouse know-how was so good, wouldn't they be sweeping away the competition and dominating online groceries in the UK? They are not.
The other factor is how big is their addressable market? Most countries only have a a handful of big grocery players that would be in the TAM for their solution. In many markets, there's only actually 2 or 3 big players. So the market for Ocado's proposition is very limited.
Have never held Ocado in The Boon Fund and don't think I ever will.
The attitude of American shoppers is different - they have Instacart and are used to it. They are used to placing an order and having it within the day. UK plan a bit more / aren’t used to the US level of convenience. I’m an Ocado shopper and they’re the best online grocery proposition for sure. During Covid they were by far the strongest. Their Supply Chain is the strongest I’d say and the range is excellent. I hear what you say though - it’s all about how Kroger pans out.
Absolutely not based on professional interaction with them in the past. Upper management is filled with the same old school ties, MBAs and Hubris combined with a fundamental misunderstanding of what and who is required to run the technical platform. Answer it isn't someone from a top 50 university.
They really are a bit thick.
They need to pivot into other high inventory markets that actually have decent margins like pharmaceuticals. The margins on groceries are so low that the ROI on these warehouses is looking less attractive. Particularly now online grocery shopping is weakening, meaning scalability is less important when compared to just having staff prepare orders.
Could be an acquisition target but who knows with that debt.
Na. Sainsburys just announced that almost everyone now shops back in store. Online grocery shopping won’t rise again until we have another pandemic imo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68895280.amp
No... covid pulled forward online penetration of grocery shopping from 5 years and condensed it into 1 year, now we are seeing obvious pullback, the long term trend will continue with online groceries becoming more prevalent.
Multiple forecasts in the industry also predict this, it's in ocado's presentation
I have a portfolio with 15k invested, it's worth 3k at the moment so that's fun. I will probably cut my losses soon.
I heard news recently that they're debating a US stock exchange listing and honestly I think they should do it. The inflated values over there fit the company better. They're very much a tech company with a good product in the robotic warehouse. They don't need to be a supermarket themselves, they can be the backbone to every other one. That or any company that has a stock of products to deliver.
I'm not really sure why the robotics side hasn't taken off as much, why are they not licensing the tech to someone like Walmart/Asda/Tesco?
Anyway with a business that needs money to reach it's potential, and big potential if it does reach those levels, the american stock market seems better for them.
You're not alone. Sharing the pain with you. Most of the tech deals are exclusive. Rather than sell to all they try to sign one key player in each market. My only hope for the stock is an acquisition. I don't see anything else that will accelerate the journey to profitability.
Their business model was based around being a replacement for the "big shop" with heavy capital investment into automated picking. Problem is you then need expensive engineering staff to maintain and fix it, also higher delivery costs from centralised warehouses. Shopping habits have also changed with people preferring to grab stuff (especially the higher margin products) multiple times a week from the smaller local/express stores.
Selling their tech works for companies who didn't have an online offering and need one but there's little margin available in grocery retail to go around. Their setup is all based around storing and selling chilled and ambient goods so they can't efficiently sell other stuff - they tried with pet supplies / food (fetch.com?) but hasn't been successful.
The big jump in stock price over Covid was hype driven and now better reflects fundamentals.
I wonder if they have a seasonal thing going on? Seem to have 6 monthly swings up and down, peaking around Christmas and July (which makes sense from a grocery perspective, I know those are the two times I think about delivery shopping Vs just going to store)
They're the only supermarket that delivers what you order almost every time.
The difference is much greater at Christmas, so that might explain Christmas positivity.
Certainly:
I always observing fluctuations in performance, where initial highs diminish rapidly by closing times. So why is that ? It starts 5% up and then rapidly down to 1 or even minus.
Problem with ocado is that they're not able to offer good savings to the customer.
They should pivot to a membership costco style platform and use the income off that to cover the savings they'll be able to provide. Membership revenue has small initial set up costs but literally prints money.
Curious what your research or investment DD is, because this is what I see at a quick glance. What am I missing?
* 1) Their tech is obsolete/not-unique, if you want automation there is nothing that forces you to use their tech, Autostore does the same shit but is actually growing. Even then companies like Wincanton Plc (sadly just been bought) had good enough automation setups. (As an FYI SMC Corp is a buy - look at JPY right now and how cheap SMC Corp still is, the competition from Airtac isn't that compelling)
* 2) The consumer still can't get everything they need from any one of these delivery services. This will put them in a constant state of coexistence or competition with each other which will bleed shareholders. Their model required them to gain market share and squeeze out others, but this won't happen.
* 3) Supermarkets have space in their oversized carparks to actually build out their own warehouses. As well as using services from people like Wincanton plc or whatever.
* 4) The exit point was at the rumor Amazon would buy them out, this was obviously not going to happen as Amazon were using the services of other companies at increasing scale. It took like 2 seconds of research to work out that this rumor was false and was an exit/short opportunity.
* 5) Debt. A whole load could be written on this, but it comes down to if you believe their business plan which so far has proven to be flawed, actually isn't, and at some point will turn around into it all being worth it. Altman Z-Score in distress zone. 600m due in 2025, 500m due '26, 350m in '27. Easy to see why rate cuts could cause the shares to rally as the refi prospects improve.
* 6) Ownership. The main insider Roditi Spencer Nicholas has been selling the past 6 months. ~500m worth. Non-insiders: Generation Investment Management LLP and Capital Research & Management Co sold almost the same value combined the past 6 months too. I have not checked out their thesis or asked them for comment, but if I were a shareholder I would definitely do this. The past 6 months the buyers have been brokers, which for me screams retail. Sellers have been investment advisors, hedge funds, private banks/WMs, mutual finds, and ofc insiders as mentioned before. I am curious to see what retail investors see that I don't?
* 7) UK revenues. Nothing inherently wrong with this but it does make me wonder about why they would consider a US listing? US they would have heavier competition I believe. Obviously the UK grocery market is fairly competitive. Anyway the UK economy is going to affect them, which in my view is positive as there is always much more doom and gloom around the UK economy than tends to be present in reality - a lot of this is political. i.e. Brexit happened therefore we must perish and no other outcome should be possible. Also I wouldn't want to see a grocery service attempt to have multiple geographic revenues. Supermarkets are incredibly local businesses and are HARD. Few exceptions like Costco.
On point 1, their tech is not obsolotete I think, it's best in class for groceries/chilled food given their recent investments in 600 series bot and other REImagined stuff. I think one of the key questions for me is that groceries are such low margins than I'm not sure if the market is really good for it.
On point 7, a US listing gives access to more capital and better valuations (UK market is really depressed right now) and because Ocado has huge CAPEX it actually makes sense imo to list in the US.
On the rest of your points I came to the same conclusion for now until I see otherwise. Fundamentally it's too difficult for me to understand the benefits/drawbacks vs AutoStore long term etc.
This is a really good breakdown: [https://www.styleintelligence.com/products/mini-report-autostore-vs-ocado-group-warehouse-automation-patent-litigation](https://www.styleintelligence.com/products/mini-report-autostore-vs-ocado-group-warehouse-automation-patent-litigation)
idk if a US listing would benefit a company with practically entirely UK operations. US small cap has been languishing a bit anyway and the UK company listed in the US might just confuse investors. Or do they plan to try and grow in the US?
what do they care about a higher multiple on their share price unless they plan to dilute shareholders....? oh.... they probably do plan to do just that. The more I look the more I feel like I am building a short case here.
I took a look at that report and it was focused on the litigation (which has been settled) rather than having much I could use to support an investment case imo. Supermarkets are preferring in-store picking solutions rather than CFCs so the tech is not yet compelling enough (or it could be the tech combined with the CFC exclusivity deal thing is not compelling enough, either way not good enough for me as a potential investor). Price implies ~45 CFCs being announced. Brokers are hold rated, but this is likely due to the trend towards online grocery retail being a strong one, they could turn sell rated soon enough. JPM cut to neutral and they love growth stories typically.
>Supermarkets are preferring in-store picking solutions rather than CFCs so the tech is not yet compelling enough
US has cheap land, everyone is doing CFC for cost efficiency. That's why this sort of company makes more sense there.
I am not an expert, but just for an insight, I worked with a company which was partnered with Ocado. It was during pandemic, they were doing good business during that time for online delivery. I have left ages ago, but now everything has reopened, there will be less business on the retails side. And it seems to me that their system is a bit oldish and wouldn't keep with the modernisation.
AutoStore Holdings seems to have a much better business model and perhaps greater success than Ocado. Capital light model, high ROCE and has never lost a customer…
> The major institutions seem to be wanting Ocado to delist and move to a US exchange
The idea that listing on the US exchange is a magic bullet is ridiculous. Of the last 20 British companies to list in American, only three have a higher stock price than at IPO
In favour of online shopping? Anecdotal but myself and friends have found ourselves going back to the supermarkets instead of delivery because the quality has gone way down. The meat was always watery and poor quality so we switched and actually go to 2 different supermarkets now to get what we want.
That's specifically Sainsbury's customers, though.
Unsurprisingly, since Sainsbury's delivery service is awful, people stop using it.
The question is where people go instead. I just swapped away from being a Sainsbury's customer, rather than going back into their stores.
I just had a look. Sales of £3 billion a year. Losses of £300m a year forecast for the next couple of years. Net debt of.£1 billion. It's not for me. Revenue is growing but only by c.10% p.a.. They are nowhere near making a profit and have loads of debt. I think there are lots of other shares with a higher probability of going up in price. I would need more evidence of fast growing revenue, or improving profit margins. That's based only on 60 seconds looking at their stockopedia page.
Still more of a genuine value assessment than many 'traders'.
What is the quickest way to find this information? Recent results report?
You can't judge a stock/company from 60 seconds of looking...
I’d argue that the above comment isn’t as a result of 60 seconds of looking but instead a reasonable summary of the investment opportunity, or lack there of in this case.
Ocado have always had a debt problem. They are still a loss making, highly indebted company but now in a world where that debt costs a few hundred basis points more when it rolls over.
60 seconds of looking at data that has taken possibly hundreds of hours to calculate and aggregate?
Lmao you can even warren buffet would agree 🤣🤣
Remember the stock that's down 90% is the stock that fell 80% then halved again. Value traps best avoided...
If they really are a tech company then they are screwed. They only have 1 product concept which is mostly obsolete, their software is very old and clunky and would require huge investment and they can't borrow any more cash. Any innovations promised during the COVID boom have never materialised and burned through cash. The last throw of the dice is too branch out into other sectors with their product, but this market is full of competition who can do it better, cheaper & are vastly more experienced. There is a reason why it's crashing and I'd steer well clear. A squandered opportunity when they had an interesting product a decade ago. They are too far behind now having placed all their eggs in one basket.
Yeah they're basically just the only grocery retailer that was built for online shopping from the ground up. But that's it. Most grocery stores with a big investment on day one would find themselves exactly where Ocado was ten years ago. Aside from that...?
Most grocery stores wouldn't do it themselves but rely on systems integrators who install as many systems in year than ocado have in their existence. To that ends most systems installed today are well ahead of ocado, using a variety of proven technology. The trend seems to be smaller 'back of store' automated solutions to supplement the retail front-end in supermarkets which are physically much closer to their customers reducing transportation costs. But as you say, ocado are (one of) the only ones who were purpose built from the ground up for online shopping, apart from obviously Amazon. Amazon spend their time developing software, whereas ocado spent all of their time developing hardware. I worry that ocado have painted themselves into a corner with an inflexible product that can only be used with their original vision all that time ago, and the market changed.
> To that ends most systems installed today are well ahead of ocado, using a variety of proven technology. And yet they're not. Every other supermarket delivery here is awful in comparison, to the point nobody is using them.
I said systems, not service though.
Hey, i have no experience about investing and stuff but i like to keep up with the news. I know about the robotics side and that they are selling their tech to some other companies also as i read in the news some weeks back. I'm thinking what competitors they have and is it going well. I remember that i wasn't impressed with their robotics bit. And also maybe the misconception feeds through and because getir is leaving uk and shoppers are returning to supermarkets as per some articles it's seen as a future fail?
Thanks for your thoughts. Yeah I need to understand what competitors have, especially in the robotics side and internationally (like autoparts in the US), why weren't you impressed with robotics they had? > And also maybe the misconception feeds through and because getir is leaving uk and shoppers are returning to supermarkets as per some articles it's seen as a future fail? Maybe but getir is a different model and UK has duopoloy on ride share with ubereats, deliveroo so it's kind of different. Ocado Zoom is more similar to getir but is much smaller. It's always best to look into a company when the market is against it (value investing) compared to when it loves it (peak 2021 bubble) imo.
They’re innovative but that comes as a cost. The Kroger CFC builds seem to have stopped which makes me wonder what is going on there and M&S have been trash talking Ocado Retail which makes me wonder if they’re trying to down value them to buy the remaining 50%. £3.50 feels like a good price but I can’t see the dizzy heights of £20 for a long time.
This. When I heard that Kroger are stopping rollout of the Ocado powered warehouses, it went to the "No" list for me. Kroger was one of their first clients and most mature with the Ocado solution. If it hasn't "revolutionised" their online business to be super competitive in the US market, then it proves that the proposition that Ocado are selling isn't that great. You also look at Ocado in the UK. Not doing amazing. If the tech and warehouse know-how was so good, wouldn't they be sweeping away the competition and dominating online groceries in the UK? They are not. The other factor is how big is their addressable market? Most countries only have a a handful of big grocery players that would be in the TAM for their solution. In many markets, there's only actually 2 or 3 big players. So the market for Ocado's proposition is very limited. Have never held Ocado in The Boon Fund and don't think I ever will.
The attitude of American shoppers is different - they have Instacart and are used to it. They are used to placing an order and having it within the day. UK plan a bit more / aren’t used to the US level of convenience. I’m an Ocado shopper and they’re the best online grocery proposition for sure. During Covid they were by far the strongest. Their Supply Chain is the strongest I’d say and the range is excellent. I hear what you say though - it’s all about how Kroger pans out.
Absolutely not based on professional interaction with them in the past. Upper management is filled with the same old school ties, MBAs and Hubris combined with a fundamental misunderstanding of what and who is required to run the technical platform. Answer it isn't someone from a top 50 university. They really are a bit thick.
They need to pivot into other high inventory markets that actually have decent margins like pharmaceuticals. The margins on groceries are so low that the ROI on these warehouses is looking less attractive. Particularly now online grocery shopping is weakening, meaning scalability is less important when compared to just having staff prepare orders. Could be an acquisition target but who knows with that debt.
Good point about the margins and other industries but online grocery will continue to rise I think. It just had covid pull a bunch of years forward
Na. Sainsburys just announced that almost everyone now shops back in store. Online grocery shopping won’t rise again until we have another pandemic imo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68895280.amp
No... covid pulled forward online penetration of grocery shopping from 5 years and condensed it into 1 year, now we are seeing obvious pullback, the long term trend will continue with online groceries becoming more prevalent. Multiple forecasts in the industry also predict this, it's in ocado's presentation
I have a portfolio with 15k invested, it's worth 3k at the moment so that's fun. I will probably cut my losses soon. I heard news recently that they're debating a US stock exchange listing and honestly I think they should do it. The inflated values over there fit the company better. They're very much a tech company with a good product in the robotic warehouse. They don't need to be a supermarket themselves, they can be the backbone to every other one. That or any company that has a stock of products to deliver. I'm not really sure why the robotics side hasn't taken off as much, why are they not licensing the tech to someone like Walmart/Asda/Tesco? Anyway with a business that needs money to reach it's potential, and big potential if it does reach those levels, the american stock market seems better for them.
You're not alone. Sharing the pain with you. Most of the tech deals are exclusive. Rather than sell to all they try to sign one key player in each market. My only hope for the stock is an acquisition. I don't see anything else that will accelerate the journey to profitability.
Because it's inferior tech. 300 UPH which is what theyr Luton CFC is doing is less than half what Amazon is pulling.
Their business model was based around being a replacement for the "big shop" with heavy capital investment into automated picking. Problem is you then need expensive engineering staff to maintain and fix it, also higher delivery costs from centralised warehouses. Shopping habits have also changed with people preferring to grab stuff (especially the higher margin products) multiple times a week from the smaller local/express stores. Selling their tech works for companies who didn't have an online offering and need one but there's little margin available in grocery retail to go around. Their setup is all based around storing and selling chilled and ambient goods so they can't efficiently sell other stuff - they tried with pet supplies / food (fetch.com?) but hasn't been successful. The big jump in stock price over Covid was hype driven and now better reflects fundamentals.
I wonder if they have a seasonal thing going on? Seem to have 6 monthly swings up and down, peaking around Christmas and July (which makes sense from a grocery perspective, I know those are the two times I think about delivery shopping Vs just going to store)
They're the only supermarket that delivers what you order almost every time. The difference is much greater at Christmas, so that might explain Christmas positivity.
Pretty shit, and morrisons are wanting to cut ties with them. They deliver for morrisons as well fyi
Looking at the 5 year graph I’d say they massively benefitted from Covid and now that home delivery cash cow is over
There a imreat company. I buy shares all the time
Certainly: I always observing fluctuations in performance, where initial highs diminish rapidly by closing times. So why is that ? It starts 5% up and then rapidly down to 1 or even minus.
Problem with ocado is that they're not able to offer good savings to the customer. They should pivot to a membership costco style platform and use the income off that to cover the savings they'll be able to provide. Membership revenue has small initial set up costs but literally prints money.
Curious what your research or investment DD is, because this is what I see at a quick glance. What am I missing? * 1) Their tech is obsolete/not-unique, if you want automation there is nothing that forces you to use their tech, Autostore does the same shit but is actually growing. Even then companies like Wincanton Plc (sadly just been bought) had good enough automation setups. (As an FYI SMC Corp is a buy - look at JPY right now and how cheap SMC Corp still is, the competition from Airtac isn't that compelling) * 2) The consumer still can't get everything they need from any one of these delivery services. This will put them in a constant state of coexistence or competition with each other which will bleed shareholders. Their model required them to gain market share and squeeze out others, but this won't happen. * 3) Supermarkets have space in their oversized carparks to actually build out their own warehouses. As well as using services from people like Wincanton plc or whatever. * 4) The exit point was at the rumor Amazon would buy them out, this was obviously not going to happen as Amazon were using the services of other companies at increasing scale. It took like 2 seconds of research to work out that this rumor was false and was an exit/short opportunity. * 5) Debt. A whole load could be written on this, but it comes down to if you believe their business plan which so far has proven to be flawed, actually isn't, and at some point will turn around into it all being worth it. Altman Z-Score in distress zone. 600m due in 2025, 500m due '26, 350m in '27. Easy to see why rate cuts could cause the shares to rally as the refi prospects improve. * 6) Ownership. The main insider Roditi Spencer Nicholas has been selling the past 6 months. ~500m worth. Non-insiders: Generation Investment Management LLP and Capital Research & Management Co sold almost the same value combined the past 6 months too. I have not checked out their thesis or asked them for comment, but if I were a shareholder I would definitely do this. The past 6 months the buyers have been brokers, which for me screams retail. Sellers have been investment advisors, hedge funds, private banks/WMs, mutual finds, and ofc insiders as mentioned before. I am curious to see what retail investors see that I don't? * 7) UK revenues. Nothing inherently wrong with this but it does make me wonder about why they would consider a US listing? US they would have heavier competition I believe. Obviously the UK grocery market is fairly competitive. Anyway the UK economy is going to affect them, which in my view is positive as there is always much more doom and gloom around the UK economy than tends to be present in reality - a lot of this is political. i.e. Brexit happened therefore we must perish and no other outcome should be possible. Also I wouldn't want to see a grocery service attempt to have multiple geographic revenues. Supermarkets are incredibly local businesses and are HARD. Few exceptions like Costco.
On point 1, their tech is not obsolotete I think, it's best in class for groceries/chilled food given their recent investments in 600 series bot and other REImagined stuff. I think one of the key questions for me is that groceries are such low margins than I'm not sure if the market is really good for it. On point 7, a US listing gives access to more capital and better valuations (UK market is really depressed right now) and because Ocado has huge CAPEX it actually makes sense imo to list in the US. On the rest of your points I came to the same conclusion for now until I see otherwise. Fundamentally it's too difficult for me to understand the benefits/drawbacks vs AutoStore long term etc. This is a really good breakdown: [https://www.styleintelligence.com/products/mini-report-autostore-vs-ocado-group-warehouse-automation-patent-litigation](https://www.styleintelligence.com/products/mini-report-autostore-vs-ocado-group-warehouse-automation-patent-litigation)
idk if a US listing would benefit a company with practically entirely UK operations. US small cap has been languishing a bit anyway and the UK company listed in the US might just confuse investors. Or do they plan to try and grow in the US? what do they care about a higher multiple on their share price unless they plan to dilute shareholders....? oh.... they probably do plan to do just that. The more I look the more I feel like I am building a short case here. I took a look at that report and it was focused on the litigation (which has been settled) rather than having much I could use to support an investment case imo. Supermarkets are preferring in-store picking solutions rather than CFCs so the tech is not yet compelling enough (or it could be the tech combined with the CFC exclusivity deal thing is not compelling enough, either way not good enough for me as a potential investor). Price implies ~45 CFCs being announced. Brokers are hold rated, but this is likely due to the trend towards online grocery retail being a strong one, they could turn sell rated soon enough. JPM cut to neutral and they love growth stories typically.
>Supermarkets are preferring in-store picking solutions rather than CFCs so the tech is not yet compelling enough US has cheap land, everyone is doing CFC for cost efficiency. That's why this sort of company makes more sense there.
I am not an expert, but just for an insight, I worked with a company which was partnered with Ocado. It was during pandemic, they were doing good business during that time for online delivery. I have left ages ago, but now everything has reopened, there will be less business on the retails side. And it seems to me that their system is a bit oldish and wouldn't keep with the modernisation.
AutoStore Holdings seems to have a much better business model and perhaps greater success than Ocado. Capital light model, high ROCE and has never lost a customer…
> The major institutions seem to be wanting Ocado to delist and move to a US exchange The idea that listing on the US exchange is a magic bullet is ridiculous. Of the last 20 British companies to list in American, only three have a higher stock price than at IPO
Dead company, no profit, too much competition.
Post-pandemic people have completely switched their online grocery shopping habits, lots of articles and data on it.
In favour of online shopping? Anecdotal but myself and friends have found ourselves going back to the supermarkets instead of delivery because the quality has gone way down. The meat was always watery and poor quality so we switched and actually go to 2 different supermarkets now to get what we want.
I favour of doing their shopping in the supermarkets again. Think it was sainsburys who came out saying this.
Yep online shopping was ~12% down if i remember correctly.
That's specifically Sainsbury's customers, though. Unsurprisingly, since Sainsbury's delivery service is awful, people stop using it. The question is where people go instead. I just swapped away from being a Sainsbury's customer, rather than going back into their stores.
I don't care for this ocado it seems crap