Member Info for Sangijuelas1

One of the most interesting things for me about Ocado is the support they must have had from investors to keep investing in new technology like the Re-imagined rollout and buying other robotics companies.

Typically in the UK a tech company will be expected to turn profitable as soon as possible by cutting R&D.

Take Blue Prism, which was a pioneer in robot process automation. As soon as they had some success investors pressured them to cut R&D massively to be profitable.

They then had their lunch eaten by the likes of UI Path and started losing their customers to Path's well funded superior proposition.

They were eventually sold for peanuts to private equity and are still lagging the business automation leaders badly.

Without continued investment would we have Ocado Intelligent Automation, which is addressing a TAM of billions.

https://ocadointelligentautomation.com/

What "added, quicker more efficient service" did you have in mind?

Well you had Paul Marshall with a massive short open on NatWest using his GB News channel to denounce them for "debanking" Farage from Courts.

Now Marshall is going to take over the Telegraph.

Nothing to see here

I wasn't referencing their solvency.

Just unlikely they are in a position to IPO with revenue of £2m

If they can't even get a funding round away hard to see how they can list on a public market.

Wait until Paul Marshall of Marshall Wace takes control of the Telegraph.

Then their entire business news can be targeted at negative news about the companies they are short selling.

Solutions growth of 44% in 2023 makes it harder to get a similar figure in 2024 because of the law of larger numbers.

Also noticed that one of the weaknesses Ocado have is likely to be addressed.

Improved efficiency means they expect to start offering same day delivery

Some of the scepticism around the Ocado model in the industry is due to the adoption of in store picking and the operation of dark stores.

Certainly with the in store picking I don't think scale up to meet online growth is viable in the long run.

Issues with staff availability and cost (the high rate of sickness in the UK workforce and a future demographic decline in school leavers) the look and feel of fellow shoppers being supermarket staff or deliveroo staff with potential for in store conflicts over space or produce.

I mean if more Tesco shoppers switch to online resulting in more in store picking is that not likely to crowd out actual shoppers. Also there is a different mindset involved in an experienced staff member picking at maximum speed and a shopper wandering around browsing.

I think in store picking is a messy short term solution hence my preference for the more elegant Ocado model.

Sorry that was posted in error

The cases of Wincanton are Currys recently have shown how price discovery on the FTSE is broken.

The former has received 2 buyout bids that have doubled it's price from what it was trading at. Currys has also had a bid at a substantially higher price than what it was trading at.

So we can carry on marking to market or maybe be a bit more open minded about the value here.

A positive indicator this week was that Stripe updated it's value from 50bn to 65bn dollars. Still well down on it's 95bn high but something that can be read across to Revolut where we probably don't need to be cutting it's value in half.

I had a dream last night about the Isar Aerospace rocket taking off.

The cases of Wincanton are Currys recently have shown how price discovery on the FTSE is broken.

The former has received 2 buyout bids that have doubled it's price from what it was trading at. Currys has also had a bid at a substantially higher price than what it was trading at.

So we can carry on marking to market or maybe be a bit more open minded about the value here.

A positive indicator this week was that Stripe updated it's value from 50bn to 65bn dollars. Still well down on it's 95bn high but something that can be read across to Revolut where we probably don't need to be cutting it's value in half.

I had a dream last night about the Isar Aerospace rocket taking off.

Https://twitter.com/MoltenVentures/status/1759920909194785081

Yeah it's getting ridiculous now. Comparable small cap US tech stocks like Confluent, UI Path and the likes of Workday have also surged recently.

The moribund UK market is keeping this pinned down.

One of the former core companies Lyst I expected to go under but they seem to be doing better reporting £50m revenue for 2023.

Not a game changer but signs of solidity within the portfolio.

And I think core companies Iceye, Aiven, Coachhub, Thought Machine are close to breaking out.

Iceye are doing promo vids for selling multiple satellites for government contracts and they are about £10m a pop. On top of their most recent £100m revenue. And they are still not officially a unicorn.

There also must be some quality in the Forward portfolio. One of theirs, Robin AI raised last month with Temasek leading. I suppose Molten had to sit it out and got diluted but still a positive sign.

You could have the most valuable IP in the world but if you have no funds to exploit it....

Steph I have said this before.

Graphcore say they need 1bn to keep going until 2027 as that is when they hope to generate significant revenue.

Molten are unlikely to commit more as to play it would mean stumping up a lot of cash.

So if a raise at that scale took place it would wipe out Molten's position through massive dilution.

That is why Sequoia wrote it down to zero on their books.

Yep and he's off on a tour to promote it.

Nigel Toon gave up a while back and has spent the last 18 months writing a book, which he wouldn't have had time to do if he was busy running a successful business.

Steph, please Graphcore is dead. If it has no money their tech will be bought from the administrators.

The article has been generated by AI and offers no reference whatsoever for the claim that Graphcore is in a position to compete with Nvidia.

There are other companies in the portfolio that have much better prospects.

I also have a much better feeling about Coachhub. Their strategy was to go for big logo wins and it seems to be paying off with recent client wins like Amazon, Booking.com, easyJet, Virgin Atlantic, Cemex and Schneider Electric.