The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
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.
The decisions were taken by the board of Ocado Retail which is split 50/50 between the 2 companies.
It is a joint decision making process
And the overcapacity came about because of the reaction to the COVID situation.
After a dip online share of grocery has started trending up again. As an idea of how high it could go it's at over 25% in South Korea.
The question is can OIA sell the OSP to US clients outside grocery without affecting the Kroger arrangement?
Maybe they can as the stipulation could relate solely to other grocery companies.
No one is trying to push any issues under the carpet.
Does your endless stream of negativity provide a balanced picture?
Only a fool values a company by the SP alone. If that were the case we could all pack up and go home.
Solutions revenue increased 44% last year. News can come out of nowhere with Ocado. Only time will tell if they succeed in their endeavours.
Incidentally, if there is serious talk of shifting to Nasdaq, then surely shorts would have to reduce risk.
Not sure what happens with borrowed shares if they are going to be exchanged for US issues. Even if the borrower can continue the contract and pay back with US stock there is then additional currency risk
This is what they are offering to e-commerce retailers like Amazon
https://ocadointelligentautomation.com/industries/consumer-packaged-goods
A guy from Amazon involved in warehouse automation liked an Ocado Intelligent Automation post on Automated Storage and Retrieval on LinkedIn.
Got me thinking how well suited the Ocado system would be for Amazon. I have watched videos of the use of robots in Amazon warehouses and they basically just move units stacked with products around for manual picking.
Maybe Amazon were interested in a bid for Ocado based on wanting to buy the tech rather than the business itself.
Either the offer was inadequate or existing contracts with partners meant that you had to buy the business not just the tech.
So maybe Amazon actually need to contract the tech to try out either as a pilot or at a particular site.
Would make sense given the growing tensions with them and their workforce. Increased efforts at organising labour in unions at their sites.
Wonder where a contract for OIA with any of Amazon, Shopify, Shein or Temu would take the SP?
I would like to know more about the marketing efforts of OIA and the strategy they are using to get contracts. Hopefully they are targeting big logos and not messing about with little fish.
You are complaining because one part of Ocado Group is not earning revenue from another part of Ocado group?
It would be so amazing if Ocado could sell more to themselves rather than to other international customers.
Is Ocado really a customer of themselves?
Apart from Kroger who else has paused commissioning new CFCs?
It's time to stop relating Ocado to any other retail players like Sainsbury's.
It's competitors are the likes of Autostore as per this quote from the City AM article.
"The news comes as shareholders have criticised some investors for not fully recognising Ocado as a technology firm, rather than principally an online grocer."
https://www.cityam.com/ocado-faces-investor-calls-to-abandon-london-listing-for-new-york/
It doesn't say that though does it because the article was written by an AI bot and is worthless.
The article that mentions the CFRA research was written by an AI bot.
It contains the following quote
"Ocado's key partner, Kroger (NYSE:KR), has also shifted its strategy, moving away from the initial goal of a home delivery service."
Someone had better tell Kroger this as they don't seem to be aware. They were cheering online sales growth of 12% recently. On their investor call they said they are effectively in the 1st innings of a World Series in terms of where they want to go with growing sales online. They believe that in future they may get a lot closer to in store revenue.
One of the Miami warehouse employees on Reddit said they are going to open a new warehouse in Cocoa Beach and there are job adverts posted for that in the last few days.
Apparently order volumes were higher there