Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
For the last 2-3 years grocers have had bumper profits from being able to use general inflation as cover for increasing prices.
So less need to address their operations to reduce costs. But these profits will need to be sustained as inflation comes down so I believe the CFC slowdown is likely to reverse in the next couple of years.
Sometimes circumstances mean a good solution is overlooked for a period of time. It doesn't mean the solution is not good. It could be that all the recent investment bears fruit over the next few years.
You have outlined your position on Kroger. Elements of your thesis have been meant with an antithesis based on research but rather than engage with and counter the points made you prefer to shut down the conversation.
You keep saying Kroger are going to switch to Instacart and away from Ocado without explaining how Instacart are going to manage the large orders.
Instacart's own marketing is full of photos of a delivery driver handing over one bag of shopping as it is only used for small orders picked in store the same day.
It's not true that shorts only close at the end of the day.
Autostore news was released during the day and they were piling out then. There was also a spike of about 10p the very moment Ocado tweeted about opening the Auchan Poland operation, which suggests to me an automated spike on the news that was then overridden by a human as the news was not significant.
So what exactly does your research consist of other than a feeling or belief you have?
All there is to go on is a statement from Kroger saying they were pausing to improve efficiency and a further statement that closing the spokes would have no impact on the rest of the CFC and spoke network.
Would be interested in any thoughts on GROW charts. That regularly seems saws up and down. Can be a traders dream.
Up over 5% today to 250 for no apparent reason. Was at 218 last week again for no apparent reason.
The AGM news will just be outrage at Steiner's bonus package if it gets voted through.
It looks like BlackRock were long here a couple of years back as they were complaining to them about the lack of diversity on the Ocado board.
They may be shorting them for insufficient wokeness
This has been explained to you several times. I have seen from multiple sources from the likes of Britain Ladd to workers at the actual sites getting closed down on Reddit and others.
Kroger thought they could enter sites like Miami where they have no store presence and take market share from the likes of Public without making any attempts to market the service properly.
The Reddit workers from other spokes compared performance at their sites with the others and order volumes were 3-4 times higher.
So most evidence seems to point to Kroger acting on unrealistic beliefs.
It looks like Ocado are actually putting someone in place with Kroger to work at using big data analysis to better retain and acquire customers. As per current Ocado job advert.
Kroger are locked in to Ocado's sticky solution. They can't use the likes of Instacart for much more than a packet of crisps and a bottle of pop.
Omnichannel service involves in store, small order delivery and then weekly shops through Ocado, although Ocado also provide them with in store fulfilment.
A key part of what Ocado are doing with Kroger is using the OSP to optimise delivery routes. As there is a lot more mileage involved due to suburban sprawl.
The CFCs will come. May just have to wait until the Kroger merger which will create an entity on a similar scale to Walmart.
Were the losses high because of capacity issues at Ocado Retail or because they threw further large amounts at R&D investment?
You didn't comment on my post yesterday about Kroger potentially pausing CFCs because of competition concerns about creating a grocery automation powerhouse once combined with Albertsons
Marshall Wace are hoping Mr Marshall can get his hands on the Telegraph.
That whole thing with Farage and Coutts was them using their GB News channel to short NatWest.
As for BlackRock they seemed to be short on Prism particularly before the private equity bid came in for them.
You have to wonder if shorts are sometimes working with buyers. Or it could just be that they are long Autostore and short here?
Well the SP over the last month or so looks like they were given heads up.
The same thing happened to Blue Prism (takeover by private equity).
They started out as a pioneer in robotic process automation and were signing up banks and other large corporates.
But then UK fund managers pressured them to get profitable so they cut back drastically on R&D. Meanwhile, a VC backed Romanian company called UI Path had appeared and they kept investing in their solutions. I was researching Prism before the buyout and every thing I saw was a demonstration of how Path were killing their business by signing up their customers with a vastly superior product.
I saw a chart from Everest yesterday of about 20 companies providing AI led document processing. Prism were literally bottom of the list and Path were top ahead of the likes of Microsoft, Google and IBM.
So a really great demonstration of how the attitude of UK fund managers is destructive of value and unsupportive of UK growth companies.
Prism were unlucky in that they didn't have Baillie Gifford behind them, who understand that it takes time and money to build a strong business with a global reach. Ocado is pretty much the only UK growth company in trusts like Scottish Mortgage or Edinburgh Worldwide.
If it weren't for that kind of support it's very unlikely that the overhaul of Ocado's tech would have happened or the ongoing innovations like available to roll out to new and existing customers.
Pretty sure we wouldn't have Chuck for a start!
They were already up quite a bit this week. Someone knew and was buying them
Monday, no?
Well the Ocado Retail reporting is going to be done through M&S from now on in order to focus on the Solutions revenue.
That's where future growth and profit are expected to come from. Say for example they get another good CFC win, OIA contracts or Kroger kicking on with a few more CFCs.
It's like Ocado's biggest client is likely to get a lot bigger and investors are scared because there is a pause.
Kroger have come this far. They are pretty locked in to the CFC model.
This article from 18 months ago on the Kroger merger with Albertsons suggests one of the regulatory concerns would be merging Kroger's CFCs with Albertsons micro fulfillment model. That it would make their online model increasingly effective so that it would take sales away from stores of competitors.
So it could be that the slowdown in new Kroger CFCs is related to this rather than actual concerns about the partnership.
https://www.grocerydive.com/news/how-automation-impacts-kroger-albertsons-merger/635871/
Incidentally, Kroger have agreed to sell 166 stores to get the FTC to drop their objections to the merger.
Same here. I get that most here are only interested in 5/10% swings. I invested in the only mainstream publicly traded tech company in the UK because I want to go along for the ride.
I was invested in Tesla a few years back when all of the dominant narrative was that they were a garbage company that would never be able to make any profit.
Every day there were negative stories in the press magnifying minor issues. It's quite easy for short sellers to plant stories in the press. As happened with NatWest a few months back.
I don't think Ocado is another Tesla but I do believe there is value here that is not reflected in the SP. Some of this is down to the moribund UK market, which seems to be in it's death throes.
Lack of liquidity is the issue, hence the constant spikes up and down on share trades of £1m or so.
So that's why the Nasdaq move makes sense and the decision to drop reporting of Ocado Retail seems like a step towards simplifying the investment case.
Sales increases at the likes of Kroger and Sobey's are more relevant to the value here than the prospects of Sainsbury's and other UK supermarkets.
Ocado Retail is not the only demonstrator. Both Kroger and Sobey's have recently announced big increases in digital sales, which Ocado stand to get a cut from.
As for Ocado I posted the other day that they are the number 1 brand for customer service across all sectors.
Would be interesting to know what the brand is actually valued at. I saw a suggestion the other day that Revolut brand alone is worth about 3bn dollars. Not suggesting Ocado brand is worth that but it must be worth a few quid.
And there we go again. Assessing the strength of a warehouse automation as a service company by the metric of sales in the grocery sector.
When and if significant profit comes it will be from Ocado Solutions, not UK grocery sales.