Member Info for tars

113.14 for me please Monsieur Roofer

At last positive news after the last few months of Ocado clients closing or cancelling CFCs. Which other supermarkets are now going to follow Asda's decision. Imagine the impact if Tesco followed suit.

The share chart for this session is currently going exponential.

123.14 for me please Monsieur Roofer

Ocado Retail delivers modest operating profit for the year

Ocado Retail combines M&S Food with Ocado Group’s automated fulfilment to offer

differentiated online choice, service and customer experience. The M&S objective is for it to be a sustainable self-funded business, enabled by improved commercial performance. Results for the current period relate to the 51-weeks ended 29 March 2026 and reflect revenue of £3.2bn and an adjusted operating profit of £15.2m. The joint venture was accounted for via the equity method in the prior period. M&S products drove sales on Ocado.com and were up 17.7% to more than £1bn during the year. Combined with increased customer fulfilment centre (CFC)efficiency this resulted in an improved performance.

Sales for the 52-weeks increased 15.0%, driven by 12.0% growth in average orders per week. This was driven by more effective customer acquisition and retention, and increased frequency of shop. Average selling price increased by 2.2% as the business remained focused on value for customers, inflating behind the market.

123.14 for me please Monsieur Roofer

131.14 for me please Monsieur Roofer

123.14 for me please Monsieur Roofer

123.14 for me please Monsieur Roofer

Waccybaccy

It's not about CFCs, Ocado technology has moved on, it's more about SBA.

Ocado Store Based Automation (SBA) is a compact, in-store, or adjacent micro-fulfillment solution designed to automate grocery picking within physical stores. It enables retailers to process online orders, such as curbside pickup or quick deliveries, using robotic technology, filling the gap between large, centralized customer fulfillment centers (CFCs) and manual store picking.

123.14 for me please Monsieur Roofer

123.14 for me please Monsieur Roofer

123.14 for me please Monsieur Roofer

When a Hedge Fund reduces its short position by a significant amount as in the case of Wellington by north of 2 million shares, the question is how ?

Three obvious candidates to consider are:

Candidate 1: A major shareholder offloaded a portion of their holding. So far there is no indication that this is the case.

Candidate 2: Hedge funds shorting Ocado who fall below the 0.5% threshold for reporting shorts, increased their short positions. In other words a large proportion of the shares Wellington acquired came courtesy of other Hedge Funds increasing their short positions. For example:

Some known short positions (below 0.5% threshold for reporting)

Gladstone 0.47% as of 13th January 2026

Premier Miton Group 0.45%as of 7th January 2026

Parvus Asset Management 0.46% as of 10th November 2025

Eminence Capital 0.46% as of 22nd September 2025

AQR Capital Management 0.49% as of 31st July 2025

Systematica 0.48% as of 21st May 2025

Candidate 3: Wellington borrowed 0.26% of the Ocado share capital and sold it into the market where it was purchased by a long term holder such as Apple III, Greendale, etc. Now if we assume no long term holder has reduced their positions, then for Wellington to buy more than 2 million shares they were either buying shares from other Hedge Funds who were increasing their short position (but still under 0.5% threshold) as discussed in candidate 2 or buying from the pool of shares owned by the General Public which is approximately 4% and therefore would now be an even smaller pool of available shares. If this is the case then it will make it even harder moving forward for shorters to close their positions. In other words, if other Hedge Funds followed this scenario the pool of shares owned by the General Public would dry up and the remaining shorters would be left stranded without a clean way out.

113.14 for m please Monsieur Roofer

113.14 for me please Monsieur Roofer

Jordi

The Apple III Trust is an investment vehicle associated with Swedish businessman and Ocado Group non-executive director, Jörn Rausing. The trust is used by Rausing to purchase shares in companies, most notably the British online grocer and technology provider Ocado Group PLC.

113.14 for me please Monsieur Roofer

Fact 1

Ocado currently has 831,224,155 shares in issue

Fact 2

Reported short positions: 7.02% which equates to 58.35 million shares

Fact 3

Short positions (below 0.5% threshold for reporting)

Gladstone 0.47% as of 13th January 2026

Premier Miton Group 0.45%as of 7th January 2026

Parvus Asset Management 0.46% as of 10th November 2025

Eminence Capital 0.46% as of 22nd September 2025

AQR Capital Management 0.49% as of 31st July 2025

Systematica 0.48% as of 21st May 2025

These positions sum to 2.81% which equates to 23.36 million shares.

Assumption

It is not known whether short positions in Fact 3 have now closed. However, the assumption is they have not closed and furthermore there are other unreported short positions of approximately 1% which equates to 8.3 million shares.

Therefore working assumption is that there are 90 million shares that need to be bought back by those Hedge Funds shorting Ocado, which equates to 10.83% of total shares in issue.

Fact 4

The top 25 shareholders in Ocado own 94.76% of the company. These shareholders include Baillie Gifford, London & Amsterdam Trading , Lingotto, Greenvale, Vanguard, USB, Kroger, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, Ocado Employment Benefit Trust, and Tim Steiner.

Fact 5

General Public owns approximately 4% of Ocado (of which I own 0.46%)

Assumption

Major shareholders unwilling to sell shares at such a low price

Conclusion

Hedge Funds shorting Ocado are in an uncomfortable place and facing major risks such as:

• Ocado signing new contacts for their Store-based Automation solution - a robotic fulfilment technology designed to be installed inside or attached to existing retail stores.

• new institution taking major stake

• bid for Ocado or takeover rumours

• Ocado achieves its aim to turn free cash flow (FCF) positive in the second half of 2026

113.14 for me please Monsieur Roofer

Nate_D

Thanks for the link. Upbeat view of Ocado's technology.