Key operational highlights
Strong new customer growth of over 30% year on year, underpinned by an increasing proportion from a broader set of customer demographics
Key metrics supporting our UK retail business have continued to improve against the ongoing structural headwinds of price deflation and cost inflation
Maintained stability in our average basket size by item despite some decline in selling prices driven by greater price competition
Tim Steiner, Chief Executive Officer of Ocado, said:
"The channel shift towards online grocery shopping continued during the period, with the broader grocery market remaining characterised by intense price competition and deflationary pressures.
"Against this backdrop, our relentless focus on customer satisfaction continues to drive customer numbers and like-for-like sales ahead of the online grocery market. The resilience of our business model and increasing operational leverage also mean that we have grown operating profit despite these industry headwinds.
"Our continuous commitment to constant innovation in technology not only allows us to give industry-leading service to our customers at home but to offer our end-to-end platform solution to retailers outside the UK. We are excited by the possibility and reiterate our target of signing a first agreement during 2015."
Key progress against our strategic objectives
Constantly improve the proposition to customers
Continued market leading service levels with on time deliveries maintained at a high level at 95.6% (1H 2014: 95.7%) and order accuracy improved to 99.3% (1H 2014: 99.2%)
Range at Ocado.com significantly broadened to over 45,000 SKUs (1H 2014: 35,000 SKUs)
Over 50% of orders were checked out using a mobile device using our latest apps and browsers and we launched our first Apple Watch app
Won Best Online Supermarket in The Grocer Gold Awards 2015
Strengthen consumer brands
Ocado own-label sales up nearly 25% year on year
New customer acquisitions up over 30% year on year, driving the increase of active customers4, up 18.9% to 471,000 (1H 2014: 396,000)
Average number of items in basket unchanged with average basket value declining to £111.68 (1H 2014: £114.43), impacted by price deflation and downward impact of orders for Fetch and Sizzle
Develop ever more capital and operationally efficient infrastructure solutions
Mature CFC operational productivity of 153 UPH (1H 2014: 142 UPH), with Dordon CFC reaching over 170 UPH by end of period
Delivery efficiency of 162 DPV broadly in line with last year, with a number of enhancements to our routing system resulting in improvements towards the end of the period
Commenced first installations of our proprietary infrastructure solution into our Andover CFC (CFC3) and it remains on track
Order volumes grown to an average of over 191,000 orders per week (1H 2014: 161,000 OPW), with the highest number of orders delivered in a week exceeding 207,000 during the period
Enhance end-to-end technology systems
IT systems replatforming progressing well and remains on track with our expectations
Continued expansion of our technology team to 620 developers and IT professionals with plans to increase this to over 700 by the end of 2015
Enable Morrisons' and future partners' online businesses
Morrisons.com reached around £200 million in annualised run-rate sales after 12 months of trading (announced in Annual Report, March 2015)
Discussions continue with multiple potential international partners to adopt Ocado Smart Platform with target to sign first agreement in 2015
