The Ocado Group has posted results for the 53 weeks ended 3 December 2017, showing retail revenue of £1,346.1m, a rise of 12.4%, against the previous year's figure of £1,171.6m.
Retail EBITA stood at £81m, a rise of 4.5% from the pervious year's £75.8m.
Solutions revenue stood at £117.7m, against the previous year's £99.4m, a 16.2% uplift. EDITA was £2.5m, and the year before it was £5.5m.
Active customer numbers were up by 11.2% to 645,000 (2016: 580,000).
Total order volumes grew by 14.3% to an average of 263,000 orders per week (2016: 230,000 OPW), with the highest number of orders delivered in a week exceeding 296,000.
Average Ocado.com basket value declined slightly to £107.2, impacted by continued uptake of Ocado Smart Pass and the ongoing trend of ordering on mobile phones, resulting in customers ordering slightly smaller baskets more frequently.
During the period, Ocado continued to enable the strong growth of its first commercial partner, Morrisons.com, supported by the provision and initial roll out of store picking capabilities for the supermarket.
Tim Steiner, Chief Executive Officer, said, 'The last twelve months have been transformational for Ocado. We have primed our Ocado Solutions business for growth and received an important validation of the business model through our latest partnerships with Groupe Casino and Sobeys. Looking ahead, we are confident that we will be able to do further deals with the momentum of new signings building over time.
'At the same time, our unrelenting focus on our customers in the UK has delivered 12.4% growth in retail revenue and further significant market share gains as well as a 4.5% increase in Retail EBITDA*. We have ramped up capacity in our revolutionary CFC at Andover, which opened at the end of 2016, and prepared the way for the opening of our fourth CFC, in Erith, this year.
'Now is the time to take advantage of our growth opportunities. We will invest to ramp up our new solution in both Erith and Andover and to have the right resources in place to meet growing demand for the Ocado Solutions offer. We believe that taking advantage of these international opportunities now will make our virtuous cycle turn faster in the years ahead and we expect that to translate into higher returns on capital. We look forward to our future opportunities and challenges'.
Outlook
Assuming economic conditions remain broadly stable, Ocado is confident in achieving revenue growth in Retail business of between 10-15% in the 2018 financial year, as it increases its fulfilment capacity, and grow market share in the UK