Sainsbury’s closes gap in online sales March 12, 2012 SAINSBURY’S has claimed to have become the second-biggest online grocer after its orders topped 165,000 a week. The supermarket said a 20 per cent rise in orders per week, with an annualised turnover of £750m, makes its website the fastest growing online grocery business. Overall, Sainsbury’s still ranks third behind Tesco and Asda, but the [...]
London needs somebody to gamble on an IPO March 5, 2012 WITH the Edwards vacuum technology company heading for a £1bn flotation in the US and Mayfair-based jewellery retailer Graff also preferring a Hong Kong listing to braving the UK new issue markets, only one thing is certain: the London IPO market is in a pretty bad way. Bankers that I’ve been speaking to say they [...]
Store wars fail to dent Ocado sales March 5, 2012 ONLINE grocer Ocado said the industry competition in Britain is the toughest in the world as it reassured its battered investors with a jump in first-quarter sales. The firm, which has seen its share price halve over the last year, posted a 10.9 per cent rise in gross sales to £162.1m but chief financial officer [...]
ANALYST VIEWS: SHOULD INVESTORS DO THEIR SHOPPING AT OCADO? March 5, 2012 ANDREW WADE | NUMIS Ocado has posted a solid first quarter, with sales growth of +10.9 per cent, marginally ahead of guidance… Improvements over the last quarter (and the quarter to come) will enable the business to reaccelerate sales growth. PHILIP DORGAN | PANMURE GORDON We expect that the competitive environment will get tougher and [...]
Ocado forecasts faster sales growth March 5, 2012 Online grocer Ocado posted a double-digit rise in first-quarter sales and forecast an acceleration in sales growth as the year progresses, service initiatives kick in and distribution capacity increases. The company, which mostly sells the products of upmarket grocer Waitrose via a fleet of brightly coloured vans, said on Monday gross sales increased 10.9 per [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS February 15, 2012 OCADO UBS has downgraded the grocery delivery service from “buy” to “neutral” due to the stock’s recent outperformance, but raises its target price from 95p to 110p due to high peer group multiples. The broker says the business has yet to prove its credentials, and says consensus forecasts are still somewhat optimistic, especially for 2013. [...]
Grey trading on the Facebook IPO price February 6, 2012 AS THE buzz continues about the Facebook public offering later this year, IG Markets is offering grey market trading on the social networking site’s market cap. The grey market allows shares to be traded on an unofficial market ahead of the IPO expected in May. When it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on [...]
Facebook surges in grey trade February 2, 2012 THE VALUE of Facebook hit $123bn in grey market trading yesterday, after the social networking phenomenon announced it would raise $5bn in a public offering later this year. Financial spread betting firm IG Group, which is running a grey market in Facebook, said the website had attracted an “unprecedented” level of demand. IG Index’s chief [...]
Strong earnings and Greek hopes cause FTSE to jump February 1, 2012 BULLISH company earnings reports and the prospect of Greece nearing a debt deal helped lift Britain’s FTSE 100 higher yesterday, while robust manufacturing data from China, the US and Europe boosted appetite for the mining sector. London’s blue chip index rose 109.11 points, or 1.9 per cent to 5,790.72. The index closed below 5,800, where [...]
Ocado cuts its losses by 80 per cent and says its warehouse problems are solved January 31, 2012 OCADO said warehousing problems that prompted it to issue a profit warning last month were largely solved as the online grocer posted a pre-tax loss of £2.4m for the year to the end of November 2011. In its second set of preliminary results since its flotation in 2010, Ocado said it had cut its losses [...]