Good morning, all. Welcome to the Ocado Retail Q3 trading update, and thank you for joining us. I'm Hannah Gibson, CEO of Ocado Retail, and I'm joined by Matt Hankins, our CFO. Over the last quarter, we have continued to focus on delivering our strategy and giving customers a unique and compelling proposition, focused on unbeatable choice, unrivaled service, and Reassuringly Good Value. I'm pleased to say this has resulted in another period of strong growth. Let me share some of the key highlights from the Q3 period, which includes the three months to the first of September 2024 . Our retail revenue grew 15.5% to GBP 658 million.
On Ocado.com, our volumes grew by 15.4% year-on-year, and our average orders per week grew by 14.7% to 437,000 orders per week, driven by growth in active customers of 10.3% to 1.06 million customers. Our average selling price decreased by 0.4%, below U.K. grocery inflation of 2%, as we continued to invest in price, driving further improvements in customer value perception. That said, our average basket value remained flat at GBP 120.97, with basket size, i.e., the number of items per shop, slightly up year-on-year. Over the last seven months, we've been the fastest growing grocer according to Kantar, and have taken share from multiple grocery retailers. We continue to focus on what matters to customers and what we know will drive long-term growth.
We broadened our already unbeatable choice with more amazing M&S products live on site. We've also grown a wonderful range from our small suppliers, many of which you can't find in any other supermarket. We strengthened our unrivaled service with better availability of products and delivery slots. We continued to improve our already high perfect order rate versus last year and delivered more freshness to customers. And we dropped prices to ensure we're providing Reassuringly Good Value with our latest Big Price Drop and Ocado Price Promise, and customer perceptions around our value continue to improve. We know our proposition is resonating with our customers, and our overall customer satisfaction has improved by seven percentage points year on year, and we continue to have the highest NPS in the industry.
As we continue to strengthen our proposition, we're growing our active customer base by firstly attracting new customers to Ocado and then retaining more of these than ever. This is driven by our continued focus on marketing efficiency, with campaigns driving awareness and improved consideration, as well as data-driven channel optimization and improvements to the customer journey. We also grew our incredible M&S range, which we know is a significant draw. Many people try us for the first time because of M&S and stay with us because of the whole Ocado offer. Normally, it's increases in our active base that drive our growth, but we've now also seen growth from frequency, driving a greater share of wallet, too. We focused on improving slot availability, and we've also seen a high growth in paid Smart Pass members, who we know shop more frequently, as our proposition continues to resonate.
Due to the strong performance in the first three quarters of the year, we're now upgrading our full year twenty-four revenue guidance to low double-digit percentage growth, having previously guided to mid-high single-digit % growth. All other aspects of Ocado Group guidance are unchanged. We're now focusing on delivering a strong end to the year, and we're already seeing customers getting very excited about bagging their coveted Christmas slots. Before I finish, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the great teams at Ocado Retail, M&S, and Ocado Group for their hard work and contribution towards the positive momentum we're seeing across the business. While we've had a super summer, we're pleased with the progress we're making, but always looking ahead at how we can deliver an even better experience for our customers in future. Let's now go to questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment while waiting for them to queue for questions. Thank you. We will now take our first question from William Woods of Bernstein. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking the questions. I've just got two. On the first one, obviously, the investment in price is working quite well to drive volumes. Do you think you still need to invest more in price? And then the second one is, obviously, you've maintained your EBITDA margin guidance for the full year. Why haven't we seen that go up? What are the puts and takes, and I suppose why isn't the additional operating leverage of more sales driving up that EBITDA margin? Thank you.
Thank you, William. So yeah, to take your first question, yeah, as, as you highlight there, we've, we've been investing in price. Actually, really, that's been going on for the last year and a half or so. We've, you know, materially improved the, the value that we're offering to our customers, across all parts of our offering, whether that be Marks & Spencer, Ocado own brands, you know, branded pricing as well. We are now, you know, offering even better value than we were, you know, say, a year ago, versus, versus Tesco, versus other in the market. We still believe we'd, we'd like to go further, and so we'll continue to kind of go on that journey over the next year or so. So that's, that's kind of in terms of, of price investment.
Your second question on guidance, yes, exactly as you, as you point out, we've had a strong top line. We did update on EBITDA at the half year. This is obviously just a trading update, so we're not giving any more guidance at this point, and we'll update again in January. Obviously, you know, we've maintained that percentage margin. We've still got another quarter to go. We want to retain the flexibility to trade the business as needed, but, you know, no further update at this point.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, William.
We'll now take our next question from Sarah Roberts of Barclays. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just two from me. So firstly, do you have any further update on when we should expect to see Ocado Retail deconsolidated from the group? As a quick one. And then secondly, are you able to provide an update on the utilization levels you're seeing at the UK CFCs at the half year? Tim commented that utilization was around 80%. It's fair to say that given volumes are accelerating, you're probably a little bit above that now. How are you thinking about growing kind of volumes, sorry, growing capacity from here on in? And then how much headroom is there to extract extra capacity to grow in the existing CFCs versus having to order additional modules? Thanks.
Thanks, Sarah. So just to take your, your first question, for those on the call who, who might not be familiar. So at, when the original, joint venture agreement was made, you know, there was an agreement on consolidation moving to, moving to M&S at some point. That still remains exactly the case, there's no new news here, no date's been formally communicated, we'll obviously update the market as and when, that is agreed. On your second point, exactly as you say, Sarah, at the half year, we took about 80% utilization. I think it's fair to say we are, well north of that at the moment, so a few percentage points higher than that.
Look, we are actually. I would say, quite excitedly now looking at how much extra capacity we can get out of our existing sites, and that is now where our focus is, so we can continue on the growth trajectory that we'd like to. And we're actually having lots of positive conversations around that. You know, that said, at some point, you know, past that, we will expect to be continuing to look at where, you know, the next CFC beyond that is located. So both in terms of, you know, existing sites and also what happens next thereafter.
Great. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Sarah.
Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We will now move on to our next question from Lara Simpson of J.P. Morgan. Your line is open, please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Thank you, morning all, it's Lara Simpson from J.P. Morgan. We actually wanted to ask on customer retention. I mean, clearly you're showing good customer growth, but could you just talk a bit more about sort of retention and customer behavior that you're seeing? I know in the past you've spoken a bit about the sort of fifth order, but are you seeing any difference in cohort behavior between, for example, sort of new active customers, and your existing ones? Thank you.
Yeah. So thanks for the question. Yeah, so I think this is a another positive story at the moment. So we're seeing our active base growing, but actually we're seeing a mature active base, i.e., those who are, you know, customers who are fifth shop and beyond, growing slightly ahead of the active base number. So what does that mean? We're attracting back. We are getting more customers into Ocado week in, week out, but we are also actually retaining more of them as a percentage to fifth shop as well, versus last year. And we're seeing their first quarter value higher than last year as well. So generally a positive story on that front.
Thank you.
Thank you. And we'll now move on to our next question from Luke Holbrook of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Taking my questions this morning, and my first is just on how the trends fared through the quarter, just to understand the phasing potentially into Q4. My second question would just be, it'd be interesting to hear some of your thoughts on the adoption of On-Grid Robotic Pick, some of the latest technologies and the benefits that Ocado Retail might be seeing from that. Thank you.
Luke, I'm afraid you just cut out on your first question. Do you mind repeating that one again? I got the second one.
It's just on the phasing through the quarter on the growth, like month-to-month growth rates that you might be seeing. Did it exit stronger? Sorry, I'm traveling currently.
Okay. Got it. I've got you understood. Okay. So, we don't normally talk about the within month view. I mean, I'd have to say, like, over the course of the summer, generally, it was very positive. We normally see actually, as we enter into summer, we have, you know, given the shape of our year, that there is a normal decline going into the summer period. This year it was much shallower. I'd say that was the case across the whole summer, so nothing particularly interesting in terms of the shape there. Your second point on adoption of technology across our estate is has actually been, again, positive progress on this front. So On-Grid Robotic Pick, actually, we, we've now reached a point where we've been hitting 30% of items at Luton have been On-Grid Robotic Pick.
So that means that really for many items, they are only being touched once as they go into the grid, otherwise, they're not touched again until they get to a customer's kitchen table. So, that is going positively and we're continuing to expand that base, in Luton, but also in Purfleet as well. We've also got Auto Frame Load, which has been operating well across a number of our sites, too.
Understood. Thank you.
Thanks, Luke.
Thank you. Once again, as a final reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. There are no further questions in queue. I will now hand it back to Hannah Gibson for closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone. So that concludes our call for today. We'll give you our next update on sales with our Q4 trading statement in January twenty twenty-five. Thank you very much.
Thank you. This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.