Trading Statement

RNS Number : 2011U

Ocado Group PLC

19 December 2011

 



19 December 2011

Ocado Group plc

Trading Update

Ocado Group plc (the "Group") is providing the following update on trading in the financial year to 27 November 2011, ahead of announcing the Group's full year results on 31 January 2012.

Gross sales were approximately £643m for the full financial year, 16.7% growth on the prior year (2010: £551.1m). EBITDA¹ for the financial year is expected to be in the range of £27.5m to £28.5m (2010: £22.0m).

In the fourth quarter the Group continued to operate under capacity constraints at the Hatfield Customer Fulfilment Centre ("CFC1"). Progress has been made in reducing these constraints and deliveries reached a new peak of 131,381 orders in the last week of the financial year. Profit margins were impacted by CFC1 production issues and the employment of additional labour at CFC1 to protect customer service levels during work to install further capacity. This increased labour is expected to be phased out as the installation works are completed.

We remain focused on providing a superior service to our customers. For the full financial year, 98.3% of items were delivered exactly as ordered and 92.3% of orders were on-time or early for their one hour delivery slots.

The build for Ocado's second CFC in Warwickshire remains on-time and on-budget. Capital expenditure for the financial year is lower than expected, in the range of £125m to £130m, due to the timing of capital expenditure payments.

Tim Steiner, Chief Executive Officer of Ocado, said:

"We are encouraged by the operational capacity improvements that we have made, but are disappointed that we did not achieve as large or as early an increase as we had originally planned. There is more work to be done and we are focused on delivering capacity and sales growth in the first half of 2012."

Notes

¹ EBITDA is a non-GAAP measure which is earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation, amortisation, impairment and exceptional items.

The previous period comparisons are made with the equivalent 52 week period ending on 28 November 2010.

A copy of this trading update announcement is available on www.ocadogroup.com.

Contacts

·      James Matthews, Head of Investor Relations on 020 7404 5959 today and 01707 228 000

·      Ben Lovett, Senior Communications Manager on 020 7404 5959 today and 01707 227 943

·      Brunswick Group on 020 7404 5959 or [e-mail]

Cautionary statement

Certain statements made in this announcement are forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from any expected future events or results express or implied in these forward-looking statements. Persons receiving this announcement should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Unless otherwise required by applicable law, regulation or accounting standard, Ocado does not undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise. The figures used in this announcement are as yet unaudited.

 

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