The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
Yeah, don't treat Ocado as a pure grocer. It used to be one. But now Ocado's ultimate goal is to be a world-leading online grocery tech provider wither their OSP platform. Same as Google is not just a web search provider. It is also provides one of the best computing clouds (GCP), best nav tool (Maps), one of the best email providers (Gmail), most popular mobile OS (Android) add much, much more. Finally, as we all can see, Ocado is not stopping here. Recent investments in clothing business shows that it has much wider plans.
But the way Tesco handles online selling is completely inefficient. They have struggled for years to make profit from online sales due to manual picking. They offered it only because of PR impact. Not sure about now. Also Tesco quit from some countries like Poland completely being unable to compete with online deliveries from local stores. Ocado is way ahead in know-how about profitable online grocery and their main goal now is selling their platform worldwide. In a few years this 1.8% of UK market will be just a nice addition to main business. Nevertheless, Ocado constantly increase it's market share.
Very slowly, if they are catching up with anything. It rather looks like they say Ocado is overvalued now. Of course they may say that and they may not believe in Ocado success story. They may be wrong as well. :D
Do we really need to call for all those spammers? Sooner or later there will be a day with -50 and you will have board full of worthless ****, don't worry. And all of them will be bragging about their delusional perfect timing in shorts. Then there will be +250 and decent gains in long term which will bring even more haters here who never invested in a proper time.
I know for two reasons:
1) Atostore might want Ocado to stop anything. Without court decision "want" is all they can do. And this is not going to happen soon.
2) I know a lot of IT guys from Ocado Tech and they work as usual.
Gio, it's question whether you trust Ocado who develops it's OSP tech from years or Autostore who has just developed 1-grid bots and suddenly a day later claims that their patents are infringed. For me it looks like a desperate move from a small company that is years behind in business and tech.
Patent wars last for years and do not hope for a quick resolution. Ocado works as usual and plans for Kroger are unchanged. Look at Samsung and Apple. It took years to resolve a silly issue about square smartphones with rounded edges. Neither of them stopped producing those. Ocado is getting bigger and will attract attention of other parties that wish to make others life harder. Ocado did not find Autotore claim justified so it will take a lot of time in courts. While it is definitely a hard period, some OSP deals are already live and they will not stop. Kroger will join next year. Info from IT guy of Ocado tech.
What I think is that investors from other time zones are panicking with a one-day delay. They were sleeping while it started. Offical Ocado response: https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/uk/ocado1/rns/regulatory-story.aspx?cid=371&newsid=1419907. Not much new here apart from announcing investigating whether Autostore infringes Ocado's patents. Typical patent wars. It's completely subjective but I still think that rising this by Autostore just two days after announcing their new system with one-grid bots is not a coincidence. They are years behind and are late to fight for biggest markets as Ocado was first. Looks like a dirty play by someone who has nothing to loose. Ocado has whole legal teams dedicated to IP stuff and I believe they know what they do so I just keep waiting. I would be extremely surprised if autostore wins something here.
I suppose it is easier to win in Norway being a Norwegian company. Won't be that easy in UK and US. They did not even contact Ocado today regarding their claim. Looks like a desperate bluff to make some noise around their new tech. Just think of Apple and Samsung. They sue each other for BS like sweep to unlock or rectangular shape of tablet. Savage wars just to hit your opponent by any means. I really hope this backfires on autostore.
Just found presentation on YT from yesterday where autostore says they have new system with bots that take one grid instead of two. So, basically they developed something that Ocado has from years and clam it's their tech. Pitiful.