A turbulent year has seen Ocado’s share price slump by 43 per cent since January, falling to 1688.5p when markets opened this morning.
The online supermarket’s stock is now at its lowest point since May 2020, signalling that it could surrender the gains it made in the early months of lockdown.
Its retail arm’s revenues plunged 10.6 per cent in last week’s Q3 results, which Ocado blamed on a fire at its Erith warehouse two months ago.
The blaze, which began when three grocery-packing robots collided, cost the retailer £35 million in lost orders.
READ MORE: Ocado pledges to stop robots burning down warehouses
Chief executive Tim Steiner recently blamed the disaster on the “old robot” design, claiming: “With the new robots, nothing would have happened.”
A fire at Ocado’s flagship centre in Andover two years ago saw the e-commerce platform haemorrhage 10 per cent of its market share.
Revenues were down 1.8 per cent year-on-year before the Erith fire, and collapsed by almost a fifth afterwards.
However, at £142 million, revenues are up 38 per cent on their 2019 levels.
“I would like to pay tribute to the efforts of all my colleagues who worked so hard to get Ocado back to business so quickly following the fire in Erith,” Steiner said last week.
“The success of these efforts demonstrated again the resilience of Ocado and its people.
“Ocado Retail is performing well, improving the customer experience even further and continuing to grow the business in a post-lockdown environment.”
Despite Steiner’s optimistic tone, Ocado’s share price has continued to slide well below its peak of 2895p from 12 months ago.
Click here to sign up to Grocery Gazette’s free daily email newsletter
