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The Forward Partners got their Molten shares available to trade so may be selling?

The Sky article suggests that of the £130m the founders are sharing £70m, angel investors £30m leaving potentially another £30m for Molten.

Tech Crunch article on the 2019 funding round only mentions angel investors and Draper (Molten).

Think they had a Barclays loan to pay off but could be a tidy sum.

From Molten's annual report in 2021 they had invested £14m with no further funding rounds.

To be clear the value of £18-20m was what Molten valued their holding at- not the actual whole company valuation

Well spotted. Up until 2021 Perkbox was one of the core portfolio companies with a value of £18-20m and Draper Esprit (Molten) led the last round in 2019.

Companies house has shown them breaking even on revenue of about £30m the last couple of years

Sounds like margins are tight in the industry so 4x revenue valuation not bad.

Nice one to exit as they have been invested there for about 10 years.

Then you need to pitch to Royal Mail, which is a completely different company to the Post Office, which offers over the counter services to pensioners etc

You want Ocado to provide basic banking and payment services and sell stamps?

Not sure if the robotic arm is capable of that!

The arm is in use at Luton and can pick 50 items in 5 minutes and they travel at 4 m/s

UK companies are getting bought out left, right and centre at the moment.

Wincanton, DS Smith, Currys, Spirent, Virgin Money just in the last few weeks.

It's going to happen sooner or later.

I didn't realise that the Times actually named Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan as working on an Amazon bid back in June.

Likely derailed by competition authority and maybe the Kroger relationship.

I think most potential customers wouldn't order unless they could physically see it in operation at a site.

Which is now possible at Luton.

As for the likes of Instacart, Ocado are also providing micro fulfillment services for Kroger.

https://www.grocerydive.com/news/pardon-the-disruption-kroger-is-showcasing-its-range-with-ocado/608166/

Reimagined only became commercially available at the end of last year. Ocado themselves have only recently started using it at Luton.

So now they have a demonstrator open for site visits.

Ocado said new orders from the end of last year would come with the new features and existing sites can be retrofitted.

The UBS comments were from last year. But still Fudspreading given how common delays can be with construction projects

A couple of things bugging me about analysts.

The other day I came across news report mentioning how UBS suggested the delay at Coles could be a sign of them getting cold feet.

Which was utter BS given the delay was down to problems with quality control of the grid construction.

Coles are already advertising jobs for the Victoria site. So looks like they will be open later this year.

The other thing is the way company calls with analysts here are done in secret so info that could be considered interesting if not market sensitive is disclosed to them whereas in the US any investors can listen in on the calls.

Not sure why they would directly reference it. They confirmed capex for 2024 of 3.5bn. None of the analysts asked any questions about CFCs.

Given that they spoke of the positive impact of the CFCs for margin that makes it more likely than not that further sites will open in future. As I said yesterday they still see themselves as very early on in their digital strategy and elsewhere suggested digital could eventually match store sales.

One thing that came to mind late last night was the CEO using the word Reimagined.

Now he could have picked it up from Amazon who have used it or maybe he came across the word elsewhere...

If they do show interest in setting up smaller sites with Reimagined those can be set up in a matter of weeks rather than months.

They also have a large pharmacy business, which could be another reason for them to show interest in Ocado Intelligent Automation.

No specific mention of Ocado although they were very happy with the performance of the "sheds" and how delivery efficiency has significantly improved their Net Promoter Score.

They said they are going to continue investing in all areas including digital. When asked by analyst whether they could expect major profits from digital CEO emphasised how they are very early on in the game and they have a long way to go to scale up.

All sounded very bullish but no mention of whether new "sheds" imminent or not.

In discussing the opportunities from the proposed merger they point to the 14bn online sales of Albert sons.

Other things like share buybacks are paused pending the merger so the CFC slowdown is not really surprising

One of their highlights is lower cost to pick a digital order through automation, process improvement and better data for forecasting, which is part of the OSP

Their conference call is at 3pm so might be additional comments

Kroger increased delivery sales by 24% led by Kroger Boost and Customer Fulfilment Centers

Increased digitally engaged households by 18% and 12bn dollars in revenue