Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Ocado Group half year results for the 2022 financial year. I'm delighted to be with you all this morning online and, at last, in person again. We meet at a time of great challenges, but also crucially, a time of extraordinary creativity, innovation, and progress for the Ocado Group. Of course, we must and will confront the realities of today, but it is the delivery of our market-leading technology platform promise that holds the key to our future and to the value of the group. In the first six months of the year, that delivery has demonstrably accelerated with the opening of six new customer fulfillment facilities worldwide. Four of these were in the U.S. for our partner, Kroger, in Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, and Detroit, one in Stockholm for our partner ICA, and a second for Sobeys in Montreal.
We've also opened Zoom two for Ocado Retail in Canning Town, London, and Alcampo is now live on OSP with in-store fulfillment, which is an important milestone as it means a partner going from signing to go live on the platform in well under a year. These openings are part of a fast ramp-up of capacity, which will take the total number of robotic CFCs worldwide from 1 in February 2020 to 17 by the end of this year. The fact that these CFCs have been delivered to our partners on schedule, even under often challenging circumstances, and the fact that our partners have seen such consistently strong customer satisfaction as they ramp into available capacity, is a testament to the hard work and intense focus on execution of our people. Each of these CFCs, when live, will produce highly visible, recurring annuity-like cash flow streams.
The more CFCs we have open, the better off our shareholders will be in terms of quantum of cash returns. We're making excellent progress as we deliver the 58 CFCs announced by our partners to date. Of course, we ultimately expect to deliver multiples of this number, and the pace of growth and capacity will only increase as a result of a groundbreaking suite of innovations, which we have called Ocado Re:Imagined and announced in January this year. When I spoke to you last, I talked about Ocado Group being a cauldron of creativity, and nothing better exemplifies this than this next leap of game-changing technology, which transforms the economics of this Ocado Smart Platform for Ocado Group and its partners.
We hosted Ocado Beyond, the first in-person meeting of current and prospective partners for three years, and I can tell you that the level of excitement about what Ocado Re:Imagined can offer is truly extraordinary. I've also been traveling to meet our partners face to face, and I can confirm that they are all talking enthusiastically about what these new innovations mean for the customer experience and the economics of the model. Investment in these assets requires capital, and we have decisively taken financial risk off the table with a GBP 875 million raise undertaken in challenging and volatile capital markets. The funding brings total liquidity today of around GBP 2 billion, which would allow us to fund existing and expected requirements into the midterm with no additional group financing.
By this time, Ocado Group will be cash flow positive, producing a forecast GBP 750 million+ in group EBITDA. Today is an opportunity to review our five building blocks for momentum. First, strong execution and the ramp-up of new CFCs. Second, Ocado Re:Imagined, which significantly enhances the financial base we presented at our modeling seminar in May. Third, new partnerships now on horizon. Fourth, ample liquidity with financial risk now off the table. Finally, number five, our resilient model demonstrating how Ocado Retail is successfully positioning for growth in current turbulent times. I hope that you enjoy the session, and by the end, you'll be as excited as I am by the momentum in the business, as well as the scale of the opportunity ahead of us.
First, let me hand over to Stephen, who will take you through the financial results for the first half. Thank you.
Okay. Morning, everybody. Nice to be here in person today, presenting results for the first time for me in two and a half years. It's good to be back, meeting a bunch of analysts, and investors in person. The financial review section, and then we're gonna move into the five building blocks for momentum that Rick outlined, and that's gonna be a session myself and Tim are gonna host. The agenda for the financial review, first of all, an update on key financial priorities. These are the ones that I outlined at the half year 2021 results. The results themselves, and then an update on outlook and guidance for the full year. An update on the key financial priorities.
First of all, on the left-hand side there are the priorities that I laid out this time last year, and the progress that we've made on them on the right-hand side. The OSP economics. We held an accounting and modeling seminar on the 25th of May, as you know. At the same time now, that proved to be pretty popular, and at the request of many of our shareholders, but also analysts as well, we plan to hold a cash flow seminar in the second half of the year to help you better understand our cash flow dynamics, particularly around how those will evolve over the next few years. Capital allocation. Ocado Re:Imagined delivery is very much on track for deliveries in the second half of the next financial year.
We're gonna talk about that a little later. The balance sheet is a lot stronger. We have around GBP 2 billion of liquidity today, as Rick outlined in his opening comments. That gives us the financing to see us through to the midterm cash flow positive and no further financing required. Then an area that's particularly close to my own heart, embedding the improvement of the group operations functions and teams. We're strengthening the finance teams. We have a new group finance director, a new treasurer, a new head of tax, and at the same time, we put in Oracle Fusion for the finance systems or the finance platform. We're extending that to MRP, supply chain, and procurement as well.
We have an enterprise platform that takes us through for the next decade at least, to support our business. In a strong position to deliver on our known and expected growth commitments regardless of the prevailing market environment. The financial summary today. Reporting today, revenue down 4.4%, largely driven by the 8% decline that we saw in Ocado Retail. We'll come back to that shortly. Strong growth in International Solutions, growing at around 120%, largely driven by the increasing number of live modules in our clients around the world. We saw an EBITDA reduction of GBP 75 million, and again, that's almost entirely driven by Ocado Retail. I'm going to go through those numbers shortly.
The underlying loss before tax increased, largely driven by an increase in depreciation costs, which you might expect given the growing capital base as we continue to roll out the CFC program, but also the non-repeat of the insurance income exceptional income that we had this time last year. Retail, 8% decline in the Ocado Retail business. First of all, strong momentum in customer acquisition, 867,000 active customers at the end of the period. This is a number that we expect to grow even further in the second half of the year, and probably the key driver around our conviction of the ability to deliver full-year revenue growth, notwithstanding the 8% decline in orders in the first half.
Strong growth in customers expected in the second half on the back of that strong growth in the first half and orders per week growing as a consequence. The dynamics that we've seen in Retail are smaller baskets. This time last year, peak COVID time, we've got seven items fewer, down 13% from the levels we were at last year. We're moving into a period now of much easier comparatives when we look at basket sizes, and we're at very similar levels now to the second half of last year, which is an important point, but growing customers at the same time. We saw some gross margin pressure, but pretty resilient at 34%.
Now distribution costs grew 11%, up ahead of the order growth and largely driven by the utility inflation, the fuel inflation, the labor inflation, the costs of labor shortages that we saw in the early months of this half of the year. Marketing costs are up GBP 10.5 million to support that customer acquisition that I just talked about. Admin costs are down GBP 15 million, largely driven by the release of prior year accruals for management long-term incentive plans. Looking at some of the key drivers around the Retail and the underlying progress that we're making. First of all, on the left-hand side there, growing active customer numbers, 12% growth there. Orders per week are up 7%. We expect that to continue into the second half of the year, if not accelerate.
Our customer acquisition at the moment is at the strongest levels we've seen for quite some time, growing at around 15,000 per week over the last six weeks. Items per basket, this has impacted clearly revenue here. Items per basket down 15%. The average sales price is up 3%. The average basket value when you put those two together is down 13%, half on half compared to this time last year. That ripples through to revenue there on the right-hand side. While orders are growing, the basket value is down 13%, resulting in that 8% decline in the first half of the year. As a reminder, much easier comparatives as we move into the second half and the second half of last year, again, moving out of COVID.
Now, the near-term margin impacts of the cost of living crisis and inflation. These are just some stats here just to highlight the very specific and material impacts on the Retail business. Non-underlying reasons we expect, but impacting very much the numbers that we're reporting today in Ocado Retail. First of all, a 50% increase in cost per each. That's the cost of each item processed through our distribution centers, our warehouses in the U.K. That's an impact of the lower volumes of the CFCs, but also last mile costs. A 6% EBITDA margin is expected, though, in the midterm, not despite that. Moving on to the utility prices.
A 300% increase in electricity prices, that's worth about GBP 20 million or so in the half year, that electricity price inflation alone. On the other hand, we are seeing in excess of 200 units per hour being in our latest sites and in particular, Andover, achieving 220. We expect this number to get to over 300 with Ocado Re:Imagined. Market-wide increases in customer acquisition costs. Not only have we grown our marketing costs, but also in an environment that has become increasingly competitive, particularly in the online environment. You'd be very familiar with lots of the names that have entered recently and the sorts of marketing spend there and expensive marketing spend that those players are incurring to grow their customer base. We're competing in this market.
We are outperforming our peers, though, in growing our share of the online market. Closer look at operating performance, and this just breaks down the profit and loss account, showing the key components and how each of the costs have moved as a proportion of sales. Moving on to our U.K. solutions and logistics business, and this is the business that, number one, generates fees from our OSP partners, that's Ocado Retail and Morrisons in the U.K., but also passes through the costs incurred to run our warehouses and our distribution and so on, in the U.K. Fee revenue grew by 9%. Now that's reflecting the growth of live modules. 54 live modules now at the end of the half, up from 44 at the end of the previous half.
The management fee growth in line with the costs incurred to render the logistics services for our clients. Cost recharges, going back to my earlier comments, grew by 11% ahead of the growth in volume of 8.8%. That's driven by high inflation, which I've just talked about, and higher labor costs, but also the higher fixed costs of the newer sites that haven't yet ramped up to full capacity. EBITDA are pretty much flat year-over-year, and that's after the growth in admin costs driven by the increased investment that we'll see shortly in our technology capabilities, largely around the Ocado Smart Platform. That cost per each number there, sorry, that 70% increase in underlying cost per each has been driven by volume, inflation, and then variable costs.
You can see the breakdown there of that number, as we build through to the increase. Again, that's the cost of processing the number of items through the distribution network. On the right-hand side, number of live modules, I've mentioned that previously, 44 up to 54 at the end of the half. The underlying operational efficiencies, just to reinforce that point, and over, and Purfleet both over 200 units per hour. Our peak that we've achieved in the first half is 220 units per hour. We expect that number to only get better. Now, the underlying improvements in drop efficiency per van per shift are not reflected in the reported drops per van. We've got 10% drops per shift.
We've grown our van fleet by 15%, so drops per vehicle are down by 3%, drops per van per week. That's largely driven by the impact of the surplus vans that we've held to mitigate supply chain uncertainties. International solutions. We're starting to recognize significant revenue growth here. 119.9% growth, GBP 59 million of revenue now. The fees invoiced, which is the top line there, that's the fees, the design and the capacity fees that we receive from our customers in respect to the build out of the CFCs. That's grown by 22% to GBP 61 million in the first half. The revenue growth is largely driven by GBP 52 million of Ocado Smart Platform fee revenue. That's recognized from partners. That's primarily the ongoing capacity fees in respect to the live modules.
It also includes the revenue release of prior year cash receipts that are currently sitting on our balance sheet. That's the design and capacity fees that are, where the cash is received but not recognized immediately, and that's around 10% of the total revenue. EBITDA is broadly flat, so notwithstanding the revenue growth at the same time, distribution costs have gone up as we've got the engineering and cloud costs to support those newer clients and those newer CFCs that require a minimum level of support to run those facilities. Admin costs are up quite significantly. Again, a reflection of that growing technology cost base that we expect this year, next year.
This sort of period now we're entering is the peak period of technology costs as we start to move to head towards that GBP 200 million number that we've guided to as part of our mid-term modeling seminar into the mid-term. International solutions, it's a growing installed revenue base. On the left-hand side there, we're now live at 10 international sites, as Tim outlined in his message. 32 live modules compared to 10 this time last year at the end of the first half of 2021. We've got robust growth in the build pipeline. We've got 14 sites under construction. We've added 38 more modules have been ordered since the first half of 2021, and that will add around an extra GBP 2.5 billion of pro forma sales capacity to the Ocado Smart Platform.
The growth is driven by two new clients there in the bottom right-hand corner, Alcampo and Auchan Polska, and additional orders from existing partners as well. Capital expenditure. Capital expenditure in the first half, pretty much as we guided, GBP 367 million of CapEx, and you can see the split there across Ocado Retail and Logistics of GBP 53 million, and then in Technology Solutions of GBP 340 million. We've identified on the right-hand side for you, the split of the technology solutions spend around tech development. That's the red piece, GBP 103 million of the total cash spent in technology of GBP 161 million. The balance going through the P&L account, around 30% for solutions and logistics and around 70% to international solutions.
Finally, there, the amber box on the bottom right of that column is the CFC, the MHE that we're investing in predominantly around the six sites that went live during the first half, but also the 14 sites that are currently under construction. Technology solutions is scaling up and improving economics. You'll see here that we're starting to use the terminology around the three segments that we hope to be reporting on in fiscal 2023 around a technology solutions business. That's global solutions, U.K. logistics business and a U.K. Ocado Retail business. Working very hard to get to that segmentation. I'm not gonna commit to it today, but we hope to deliver that for fiscal 2023. Technology solutions. 221 modules now ordered.
That's up from 177 this time last year. Eight sites live and 16 this time last year, and now 16 sites live. That number will only grow as we start to deliver and get closer to that 58 commitments that we have from our existing customers. We have a revenue base that we expect to deliver attractive returns. Now, the direct operating cost here, this is a key metric for us. We gave you an indication at the modeling seminar where we're getting to with Purfleet and where we think we can get to on our operating costs. While we're at 2.4% today, our target is 2%, and in fact, we expect to get lower than that. Not formalized yet as a KPI, but we think we can take that cost even lower. Moving on.
Just reinforcing my earlier point. Technology costs as they stand today, GBP 161 million in cash spend. We now have headcount in excess of 2,700. That's around 300 heads higher than the prior year. We do believe that we're approaching our peak levels of technology spend, largely driven, of course, by the Re:Imagined innovations that we launched in late January. We do expect for that to move down in the midterm to a run rate of around GBP 200 million pound per annum, or as you see there on the right-hand side, GBP 100 million pound on a half year basis. That remains very much our goal for the midterm, notwithstanding these peak levels that you're seeing today, just to reinforce that point. As a reminder, the P&L costs are currently allocated on a 30/70 split.
That's the 67 that you see there in that mix of the 161 around U.K. solutions and logistics and international solutions. Group support costs. This is group operations, which is finance, legal, and human resources, and then some platform implementation, client services, solution sales management teams, and so on. GBP 56 million for the half year. GBP 9 million of that will go to logistics. When you look at the GBP 47 million for technology solutions, very much in line with the guidance that we gave at the modeling seminar, and we expect that to stay flat, if not come down, over the next four to six years. That's a key goal for us, to get more efficient on our group support costs. We have strong cash position to support our significant growth plans.
We were delighted to complete our financing in June of this year. We now have pro forma liquidity of around GBP 2 billion, and we've deliberately sized our financing to see us through to cash flow positive in the midterm with no further financing required. You can see here, we've had around GBP 400 million of cash outflows in the first half of the year, largely driven by that GBP 388 million of CapEx that you see, the big, red block in the middle of the chart. CapEx will, of course, start to decline as the Ocado Re:Imagined benefits come in. On a unit basis, they will decline. We'll talk more about that in the Re:Imagined session during this particular discussion. Accounting update.
An accounting update for you, and this will help you with your modeling on this one. Under IFRS 16, the lease costs of the CFC sites used exclusively by Ocado Retail have been determined as finance leases, because of the exclusive use and therefore the full right of use accounting treatment and the ownership treatment effectively, for those particular assets. While, the Dordon and Erith sites have been accounted for as shared sites and therefore a service arrangement, and the income thereto to Solutions and Logistics and the cost to Ocado Retail go above the EBITDA line as an operating cost. Like that, for the shared sites, they're finance items, and they go below the line as a finance cost and finance income in Ocado Retail and Solutions and Logistics, respectively.
It makes no difference to our group numbers, of course, eliminated in consolidation, but in terms of modeling around the segments, we thought this would be a helpful piece of information for you to understand. The impact of that is around GBP 9 million of capital recharge fees for those Bristol and Andover CFCs that you might have modeled otherwise above the line rather than below the line. I just wanted to be clear about that particular accounting treatment, 'cause it is important that it's fully understood.
The outlook for the year, I won't go through the detail on this one other than to say our guidance remains unchanged from that we gave at our full year results on the 8th of February, but also the retail trading update that we gave on the 25th of May. Clearly, there's a lot to do in Ocado Retail. That's probably, when we look at guidance, the most challenged areas. We can see that route through, though, to full year revenue growth and through to that EBITDA low single digit margin. Clearly, these are challenging times for Ocado Retail. Notwithstanding that, we feel confident in maintaining the guidance as it stands today. That's all I wanted to say at this stage on the financial review.
I'm gonna be joined now at the front with Tim, and we're gonna do a little discussion between ourselves. I'll be asking Tim a few questions around Ocado Re:Imagined and our five building blocks for momentum, so Tim? Now we're gonna discuss our five building blocks momentum that Rick mentioned at the start of this session. I'll just start running through them. Number one is strong execution and the ramp of our CFCs. I'll let you read and digest the chart. I guess, Tim , my question for you on this one or a couple of questions for you, how are you feeling about the ramp-up?
The sort of, you know, growing, you know, CFCs going live, how are you feeling about the opportunities to improve the challenges that we're facing? Tell us about how the clients are reacting to the ramp-up as well. How are their first experiences of running an automated warehouse?
Sure. Look, I think the most important thing is that we've delivered them, we've delivered them on time, we've delivered them on budget. I think if we actually were, you know, willing to cast our mind back a few years ago when we started signing this many clients, people were quite worried about whether you could execute this much in this timeframe. We've clearly driven, like, you know, completely through that and could roll out more quickly. We've got to a point in the business now where I'll find out that a site went live and nobody bothered to tell me. You know, it's kind of, oh, so and so decided to start inbound, or so and so decided to start outbound, and every one of them just turns on.
I've had comments from other partners where they've got a couple of other bits of automation in their business, and they said they've never seen a site or any site ever go live like these with the automation just working. While they might have other challenges, which we'll talk about in their businesses and stuff, they never hear the automation's not working or the automation's not capable or the software delivers the wrong box or whatever it is. They are phenomenally reliable, predictable, do what they say on the tin, and capable of significantly outperforming the service level agreement, kind of, productivity levels and throughput levels that they signed up for, which again, they've never seen in automation in this space.
You know, what's great is we've got confidence to roll out as many of these sites as we want to build them on plan, on budget and for them all to function. They are incredibly kind of repeatable. I visit quite a lot of them. If you blindfold me and took me to one and then, you know, the only way you can work out where you are is by trying to look at the products that are being picked and we're trying to work out which retailers they are 'cause they are remarkably the same kind of thing wherever they are. The scalability, the modularity, and the efficiency of them at low operating numbers. We talked today about Andover and Purfleet hitting levels like 220 UPH.
They're not operating at more than half of their end goal capacity. Normally don't see full efficiency until they hit, you know, max capacities. We're seeing that early on. The partners' customers who are ultimately the judge of the business, they are, you know, the NPS scores that they're achieving, the repeat, the baskets, all these kind of key underlying metrics are really positive and the partners are excited about them. It's all good and it's gonna, as we're gonna talk about in a minute, it's gonna get a lot better with Ocado Re:Imagined.
We'll talk about the impact of those things 'cause it's always worth remembering that while some of the benefits are only for the new sites, like a smaller building, a number of the benefits are retrofitable into the existing sites like taking you know out some of the human effort that's required and making them more efficient. They're very upgradable, which is also highly unusual in automated facilities.
Anything that keeps you awake at night on this topic?
On this topic?
Yeah.
No. You know, global supply chain is difficult at the moment, so you know we sit and have to decide how many of the 500 Series bots we're gonna order out for the next 12 months prior to the launch and the ramp-up of 600 Series bot production. Before you could have done that with, say, a three-month lead time, now you've got to do that with at least a one-year lead time. It's a bit harder to operate any business that involves physical goods that are manufactured from multiple components around the world today than it was three years ago.
I think we're doing a great job handling it, but you know, if you're not involved in that type of thing and you don't realize how much more complicated the global supply chain has got, you know, it's worth flagging. I think every business probably sits here and flags that as well. It doesn't keep me up at night, but it is obviously challenging.
Very good. Let's talk a little bit about return on capital. This is almost certainly gonna become a key performance indicator for us. Why is this important, do you think?
Well, obviously it's important because we're deploying our shareholders' capital, and they'd like to see us make the highest returns on it. The returns on individual sites need to obviously contribute back to the center to contribute to the ongoing R&D, and obviously the historical R&D that's gone into the amazing product set that we deliver for our clients. I think what's important here is the journey from the blue to the green to the whatever that color is, amber or something in on the chart. I think that so much of that is down to the improvements that we have where we can now build faster, cheaper and higher throughputs and generate more fees.
The combination of slightly more fees but with less capital deployed, and in a compressed timeframe, and also enabling our clients to ramp it fast and with less labor requirements, ramp it even faster, means a better return on capital for us and a better return on capital for our clients and a better service for their customers.
Got it. Ocado Re:Imagined. We talked around, you know, the reduction in operating costs, the reduction in CapEx, the reduction in time to get the MHE in and installed and running, and then also adding to the versatility of the platform. How are our partners responding to this, Tim?
Look, they're all incredibly enthusiastic and waiting for installations of things that are coming. You know, one of the challenging things at the moment is working out where you put the first robotic pick arms and where you put the first automated frame loading machines. We've not only had to design an automated frame loading machine that will go into future sites and take out that, you know, most laborious kind of job, but also how we make one that can fit the footprint in all the existing sites, despite the fact that obviously when we started envisaging it, when we built those sites, we weren't envisaging that machine type of thing. In the latest version of prototype that's gonna go into production will now fit all those existing sites. It's that type of thing.
Look, Ocado Re:Imagined is just better for everybody. It's technology at its best, where everybody's a winner. The planet is a winner because we need smaller buildings that therefore have a smaller footprint, and we use less energy that has a smaller footprint. Our clients are winners because their economics are materially improved. We're talking about 30%-40% reduction in labor costs because you've got over 300 UPH up from 200 in the current version.
Bear in mind at 200, that's when we say, given the inbound efficiencies that we have as well with direct delivery, that we're at, you know, we've historically said we're at 15 minutes for an order going out the other side of the warehouse, compared to about 74 minutes in a traditional bricks and mortar business operating as an online retailer. We're now taking that 15 minutes to sub-10. Obviously there's only nine and a bit minutes left to go for, but we're gonna continue working on them.
You know, the cost of the MHE coming down, meaning that we can put it in cheaper and then reinvest some of that in the incremental new kit as well, but hopefully with an overall reduction in capital despite the incremental equipment to deliver the extra UPH, and generate a bit more income from it as well because of the massive savings on the client side, and a significant reduction in installation time. We've come down from whatever we were at 18 months ago at something like 10 months to install. Now on future projects, looking at five months. You know, people think that we take a long time. It's usually the building footprint that takes a long time.
Our own kind of install time for a building that can do half a billion pounds of runway capacity is now looking like about five months. If there's an existing building, you know, the time to prepare it for us to come in will be much quicker, and the new equipment is much more friendly to existing buildings and standard kind of building specifications. You know, for the end customer, not only the cost savings that I'm sure that our clients will pass on to them, but also significant improvements in the proposition from shorter lead time deliveries. We've had the first bits of code of that rolling out actually in the last couple of weeks now. We're just working out who's gonna start trialing them for us.
You know, a lot more to come. Also from the supply chain software, higher levels of availability, lower levels of waste, again, good for the planet and the retailers and keeping the customers happy as well. It's a win everywhere and they're quite big changes, you know, the scale of them. Anything that anyone orders from us today in terms of a CFC will benefit from the suite. That is the timeline of it arriving.
Very good. We all won't go through this. It's just a list of all the items that we unveiled in late January. Expanding and evolving the OSP Club. We're gonna see a video shortly. Tell us about the relationship with partners, Tim , and, more importantly, how they're talking with each other.
Yeah, I think that's what's really interesting. Obviously we've got a good relationship, spend a lot of time with all of our partners. I personally spend a lot of time, in particular with one of our partners, and working with them to work through challenges to help them to grow the business and to, in the future, add significant numbers of new facilities to their existing schedule. What's really interesting is that we have encouraged our partners to work together with us, and we've created a series of, you know, we've created the club, and we've created a series of areas of focus within it. You know, there'll be e-commerce forums, there'll be logistics forums, there'll be supply chain forums and stuff like that. The work that's going on between them is amazing.
As we mentioned earlier, we had a conference a couple of months ago now here, called Beyond. There were well over 100 people here, some people from all of our clients around the world. We had let a couple of prospects, I think, in the room as well. Maybe we should have added more. The energy there was palpable. It was, you know, it was phenomenal. We had some. I think there was a slide when I was first up where I was standing next to a 600 Series robot, an on-grid robotic pick that we had managed to move into the Renaissance Hotel, having had to move some people out of bedrooms that had windows overlooking that area of the hotel to keep the IP police happy.
You know, even on the way there, one of our clients had gone to visit two of our clients. One of our clients who's not yet live had got themselves invited to see two of our clients who one had been live for over a year, one had just gone live, and they'd kind of gone there to pick up any learnings and stuff. That kind of collaboration they all think is invaluable. As you said, rather than hear it from me, we did a little impromptu recording at Beyond and got a few of our clients to give a bit of feedback. Let's hit the button and we're a family, but we're a future family as well.
With all of the great innovations that are coming down the pipe, there's just going to be so much more to do and so much more to support the customer. The strength of all the partners together will ultimately give each of us a much better opportunity to succeed. Podem aprendra cap on aniran les coses en el futur, intercanviar situacions i reptes que compartim amb altres retailers d'arreu del món i molt, i molt adequat per aprendre i evolucionar en aquest mercat online que és tan important en els últims temps.
Being able to pick up the phone and talk to, Sobeys or Kroger or ICA or any of the partners anywhere around the world, for us, that's really, really important, and certainly is one of the biggest and most beneficial parts of being a part of the club. I have a network between different countries, different teams that creates the possibility of good practices, future evolutions and relationships.
Very interesting because we can share our experiences. We've all launched CFCs or some are launching CFCs in the months to come. We've all witnessed different sides of the project and sharing best practices will allow us to eventually enhance our customer's experience. Because the sum is greater than its parts, and this holds very true for our partnership. I think it's both about, you know, not making the same mistake twice, learning from each other, but also together, really come together, discuss challenges, and create that superior customer offering that will make us all win in our local markets.
As we talk about and think about, you know, adding new partners there on the right, are there any signs of any new partners just wanting to wait and see Ocado Re:Imagined actually in before signing up?
No, I think we've got a good track record of delivering what we promised to deliver. I think that there's enough of it that you can see as well. You know, we have 600 Series bots now that are running around on test grids. We have arms now under what we call full dash control, so that's kind of, you know, integrated with the other robots so that they don't collide into each other, like controlling the full airspace above the grids. We have live robotic pick in Erith, but you know, in the normal location. Later this year, we'll be able to see it on the top of the grid in Purfleet live picking real customer orders. We have automated frame load.
The first prototypes, you know, you've seen live in not far from our offices. We've got the latest version coming over from Greece at the moment. I think the combination of our track record and our clarity on what it will achieve and how, if we say something will drive productivity to a certain level, we've got so much evidence historically of delivering that. You can see the new equipment, that I think the trust level's in it pretty high. We have, as you know, lots of discussions ongoing, more than we've ever had live at any one point in time. Lots of visits to live sites now people's travel has opened up. Hasn't opened up completely. I had a visitor wasn't able to get here this week.
There's just a lot going on and, you know, the newest client in Poland, as you know, is very significant because they are a country with a lower GDP, you know, significantly lower GDP per capita than we previously set as the kind of, you know, as the target customer base. We previously said over 25,000 GDP per capita, and they're at 17,000 GDP. I think that just shows that with Re:Imagined, we can open up more markets than people believed before. I've learned my lesson about making specific predictions on what will happen by year-end. I won't do that.
Let's leave it at that then.
You know, obviously we'd be disappointed if all the conversations we have don't result in more sites being added to the client committed and the customers committed and et cetera.
Very good. I think, Tim, this might be your chance to ask me a question now.
Well, I guess the question is, how confident are you that we don't go back to market, and we've got enough cash to see through the you know, both the ongoing R&D and the rollout of these facilities.
Yes.
Given what you've now seen in the business work. How long have you been with us now? It's been a year and a half now.
I am confident, actually. We deliberately sized the raise to get us through to cash flow positive in the midterm. We've got a very detailed five-year plan, as you know, that you've been going through in some detail that has, you know, a strong, you know, understanding of cash flow broken down by key metrics, CapEx, operating cost, headcount. We've got a pretty granular five-year plan. Indeed, the board went through it in Stockholm, a few weeks ago. It, you know, I think having that strong balance sheet to give us confidence around the rollout plan, we've got 16 live CFCs, we've got 58 commitments, is really important.
I think it's important for, you know, for the management team, for our shareholders, and for our partners to know that we're well-funded to fund that growth and that rollout plan through to cash flow positive. I quite like the fact that we've actually got sort of a set of targets here that are very visible across the organization, hold our feet to the fire, and get us all aligned around delivering those metrics.
What I enjoyed most about the whole process was splitting it into the new segments as we've described at the accounting seminar, 'cause it really simplifies looking at the business when you say, okay, retail's over there, it's got its part, its own CapEx in terms of, you know, the fridge plant in the building or something like that, or its vans or stuff that it needs to deliver on. But in terms of it being a client, it's just a client, and it has to pay a fee to us, but otherwise we provide the equipment. So kind of isolating those businesses and looking at them. Isolating the logistics business that's just a cash cow, and then looking at the technology solutions part of the business. I think that was a one part clarity.
The other thing is, it was we did it on a cash basis only because, you know, some of the stuff that Stephen was talking about before in the IFRS accounting, you've got to treat this warehouse differently to that warehouse because two people's orders come out of it. It's not helpful to try and actually have, you know, really clearly defined kind of targets and what you're trying to achieve. Just taking the whole thing back to, you know, we build and deliver sites. Our clients pay us a fee up front. Our clients pay us ongoing fees based on the amount of drawn down modules.
The CapEx that goes into those sites, the ongoing, you know, engineering and hosting and support costs of those sites, delivering us a, you know, an operating margin that is then offset by the cash that we lay out on R&D every year and the central costs and coming down to a net number. I think the simplification and clarity that it gave was great, and as you say, it gives very, very clear targets as to what we need to do and clearly shows how important it is to drive that long-term operating costs down, what the benefits are of Ocado Re:Imagined in doing that and bringing the CapEx down, as alongside the benefits to the clients of massively more efficient facilities, smaller facilities, and, you know, faster facilities.
Very good. Finally, Ocado Retail. Now we've described it as a resilient model for challenging times. These are challenging times. How do you feel about that resilience now, Tim, in these times that we're operating in?
Look, I think you can see that in the long term, it's a phenomenal business. It obviously had, from a profitability perspective, enormous tailwinds through COVID in terms of bigger basket sizes, in terms of relatively unlimited demand, and in terms of people willing to take deliveries at, you know, 11:00 P.M. on a Tuesday night, right? We've moved back to a normalization in terms of shape of week. It's come back in a different way, as I've described before. There's more in the morning than there was before. People are a little bit less willing to take the orders on the wings very slightly than they were before. We're doing work in terms of rebalancing the labor and having more overlapping shifts, so we move a little bit of volume out of the very earliest in the morning, the very latest in the evening.
We're rebalancing the labor into the right shape. You've seen basket sizes come down to their historical levels. At the same time, you've got the cost of living crisis that is driving, you know, some consumer behavior in terms of slight trading down. We've seen average item prices underperforming the average inflated kind of inflation on our average items by about 30% of the inflation. We see that. The positive thing is that we're seeing increasing productivity in the sites, and in particular in the new sites dramatically outperforming the historical ones. As we keep growing, that is a big benefit. The challenging things at the moment are labor has gone up at the moment faster than grocery items. Although if I look at what's being reported by as per Kantar, that is gonna change.
The energy is just, you know, crazy at the moment, where we're seeing some months 5 x, you know, 5x the price per kilowatt hour than we were paying before, and a significant multiple of, you know, independent long-term energy sources, whether that's, you know, renewables, whether that's nuclear or whatever it is. What used to be the cheapest source of energy, which we rely on gas and which sets the benchmark today for pricing, has gone to crazy levels, which I don't think is long-term sustainable, but as you mentioned earlier, is hitting the P&L to the tune of tens of millions GBP this year. Diesel's gone up, but not nearly to the same extent.
I think the other challenge, of course, is that we've opened up new capacity, and with the rebalancing of the market, we've got more capacity than we need today. It's something we've not historically had, and obviously, it's, you know, the Ocado Retail is paying fees on it's paying rent, it's paying rates, it's paying chiller plants, and it's paying management teams. That is costing it money, but we can see the clear path to coming out the other side, restoring mid-teens kind of growth numbers, getting back to mid- to high-single-digit EBITDA margins. I think it's a relatively clear path.
The business is gonna benefit from Re:Imagined, but also from the replatforming that it will eventually conclude to get it all the benefits that are on the OSP platform that it hasn't yet got, some of our other clients have got. The very strong customer reaction. As you mentioned earlier, the last, I think it's now eight weeks, we have had the highest number of new customers I think we've ever had in an eight-week period. By a reasonable margin. We are now seeing cut-through coming in in the marketing.
Some of the challenge in marketing earlier in the year was the sheer amount of recycled VC money that was trying to enter some parts of the grocery market at furious levels, just being pumped kind of almost thoughtlessly, if you see what I mean, just into marketing spend, which was crowding out kind of normal market, you know, normal underlying marketing. It was making it very expensive. We're seeing a significant slowdown in that for obvious reasons, which it was the only long-term sustainable place. Nevertheless, that should be helpful in the second half.
Very good. This slide just summarizes some of the key messages that we've shared with you over the last 45, 50 minutes or so.
You know, I think the key ones are we've signed 11, eight are already live. As we mentioned earlier, getting Alcampo live was in record speed. Of the 58 kinda contracted sites, we now have 16 live. They're all returning, you know, positive cash for us and will generate strong recurring cash flows. Re:Imagined is just. You know, it was a lot to try and explain in 1 hour when we did the Re:Imagined presentation, but we thought we couldn't keep everyone's attention for longer. But the, you know, the suite together really transforms everything. It transforms, as I said, the planet, the client's economics, the client's proposition, what the customer receives at the end, and our own economics and our own market opportunity.
We continue to be as excited by Re:Imagined as we were, but probably more because we've delivered more of it, and we've got a clearer line of sight to the rollout of the rest of it. Pipeline's strong. Got the liquidity, so we think all the building blocks are in place. We look forward to the future with confidence. We are obviously aware of the challenging kind of global economic environment. Thank you very much. Now it's over to you for this Q&A. Andrew.
Morning. It's Andrew Gwynn from BNP Paribas Exane. It was a mouthful. Thank you very much for your presentation. Time as well. Just one question actually, but I suspect the answer is gonna be quite long.
Great.
Apologies. You mentioned that in terms of you've got more capacity than you need at present. You've got significant amount more capacity coming through with Bicester, Luton, another CFC to be named. Is there an option to flex the supply of the business? 'Cause it's been one of the challenges around Ocado's OSP. Or is actually selling more demand, is that really just the key? You know, in the end, it's just a moment in time, maybe turn down longer term planning, but actually you're not too concerned by, say, Luton.
Not too concerned, but I didn't understand the first part.
By Luton, sorry.
Yeah, what you said.
You said Luton coming down.
Luton’s coming downstream, and Bicester’s coming downstream.
Yeah.
Those two will come on. Yes, they give us runway that we don't normally have. We're normally hand to mouth in terms of automation capacity that we can take advantage of. Now we're probably, whatever we are, a year ahead of ourselves or something, right? We need to kinda grow into it. We are also looking at the rollout beyond there because while before we wanted to accelerate it, we're also working out the exact numbers of what Re:Imagined's going to do in the existing sites. Re:Imagined is gonna allow us to generate more volume out of Andover, out of Purfleet, out of Bristol, out of Luton, out of Bicester.
That might influence the decisions on what we want to do on next sites as well, because when we actually look two years out, they're all bigger than you know. We're gonna work out how to take advantage of Re:Imagined and do more volume in each of them as well. Really it's about growing into them. As I mentioned before, that the growth numbers at the moment are good. The environment to create that is easier than it was six months ago, given the kind of crazy competitors have had to tone down their craziness. I'm not sure what the other point was, the option to return it or something?
Well, more obviously, you've committed to a huge amount of capacity. You've got a lot of sites which are underutilized. You mentioned before, I think, Purfleet less than 50% utilized. Is there an option to sort of turn off modules? Or actually, when you open Luton-
Um-
For instance, you can actually just.
We can.
-open a small corner of-
Ocado Retail as a client can have a conversation with Group about what it's asked for and, you know, in theory, we can move stuff from one site to another or something like that, or defer rollouts. Importantly for the group, if a client asks us to deliver something, and we deliver it, then the client needs to pay for it, right? They can terminate it, but terminating it has an expense. If they want it, if they know they want it a year later, it's cheaper just to keep it, right? You know, we wouldn't want to be in a space where we roll it out, and then the client throws it back at us and then asks for it back again three months later.
Because there's a physical amount of stuff that we install there. You know, think of it as like a loan facility that you draw down, but it's like a one time draw down option and not, it's not an instantly returnable option. Yeah, they've got. You know, the answer is the retail business needs to grow. It's always grown, and there's no reason why it won't grow now.
Mm-hmm.
As you see in the numbers, the customer numbers have grown. The order numbers have grown. It's just that we've reversed the basket size. Unfortunately, in 2020, 2021, you didn't acquire a lot of customers because actually you were doing a record amount of business from a, you know, just from the absolute core of the customer base, 'cause everybody was trying to buy more, to consume everything at home. We're just seeing that kind of whatever you wanna call it, rebalancing as people go back to historical patterns as such, although slightly altered by new behaviors. I think where there is flexibility is in the sites that we've announced.
Like we have guided, for example, we have said that we've identified a site in the southeast and one in the northwest, where we have flexibility around both of those in that, you know, nothing has been signed, committed. There's no construction underway right now. That's where we do have flexibility should we wish to exercise that. Certainly with Luton and Bicester, well, it's all full steam ahead on those.
Double-digit growth next year, is that possible?
I would hope so. I mean, look, it's a lot to say in the current market environment. I've seen. When we look at what we're doing today, and we look at customer acquisition over the last few months, and we look at customer behavior, and we look at historical basket sizes and where they are today, there is no reason why we shouldn't go back to double digit growth. Or we are. You know, all of the kind of COVID benefits of share and basket size have unwound. Now it's left the market at 12%, not 7%, having peaked at 15%. What it has also left is more customers in the overall online grocery market, which has always been the richest seam.
I've described for many years how, for us, it's easier to say, you know, it's easier if Tesco and Sainsbury's have persuaded someone to move out of going, doing the shopping themselves in the store and move online. We've only got to come along and say, "Look, this is actually, we do this better." Right? As opposed to having to persuade somebody who shops in store at Tesco that they wanna shop online and they wanna do it with us. So when we've looked, and it's quite dramatic, the over-indexation relative to the market of our acquired customers being from our competitors' online business is dramatic. Therefore, we think we, you know, we're not nuts to believe that there's rich seams out there to go and mine in terms of new customers.
And with Re:Imagined and with some of the enhancements to code and stuff that's coming down, the proposition is going to improve. Over the next few years, it's gonna improve materially.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Rob.
Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Stephen. I've got three. Let's go through one by one.
Yeah, let's do that 'cause you know my memory is not there.
Mine neither. First one, just in terms of the quick commerce funding environment you mentioned. Firstly, are the changes there affecting the conversations you're having with your OSP partners? Are they thinking less about small sites and thinking back more about big sites again? Just quickly linked to that, has that funding environment, are you seeing any impacts in your sort of automation competitors? Any changes in how they're behaving?
Immediacy is still an area of focus, I think, in the global grocery market. I think that it's probably not quite at the conversation level that it was because there was a mania being driven by the VC investment into startups that could suddenly be worth, you know, multi-unicorns and multi-unicorns in the space of three days after announcing that they were gonna deliver a carrot in one minute or something.
You know, the idea that you can do it in a sustainable, profitable way with a proposition that blows anything that anyone's seen out of the water, which is what we can do with our micro facilities and Zoom range, and both in terms of ranges of up to 10x what you've seen up to now and sustainable economics at kinda traditional convenience store type premiums is of great interest. Our clients remain very interested in it. I think that the pressure to try and get a couple of them live immediately to show that you're reacting is probably a little bit abated, but the interest is not abated at all. In terms of...
I don't know what's happening at competitor automation sites and most of that money was initially just going into entirely manual because manual is fast to roll out. Manual is fast to scale. You know, we saw that in Corona. We saw that with the rollout of some of these players. It's also incredibly inefficient. In the kind of labor markets that we're starting to operate in, you know, some of the labor that we, our clients and our competitors need for the next 20 years to operate, you know, grocery supply chains, distribution, et cetera, it's not proving to be that price elastic. It just, in some places there just aren't people just don't necessarily want to take up those opportunities.
I think the importance of the automation and the robotics is going beyond the fact that you can replace something that costs X with something that, you know, X a year, that actually costs X up front and runs at a 10th of X a year and is therefore much cheaper to operate. It's really going beyond that, and it really is starting to think about how will we distribute food in five and 10 and 20 years' time, given the trends in the global workforce. I don't think there's ever been a better time to be in the automation business.
Which leads seamlessly into the second question, which was basically, how are you fixed as a business, do you think, versus competitors to deal with the inflationary environment? In terms of your OSP partners, how is inflation feeding into those conversations?
Look, in the core, you know, in the technology solutions business, there is inflation in shipping that we see, but it's not a huge component to us. You know, things like we use aluminum and steel. We use electronics, but at the moment, I would say it's quite manageable. Our client contracts are almost entirely linked to something like a CPI. In terms of, you know, does our revenue grow while our costs are growing? The answer is yes. You know, if there's a massive disparity between wage inflation and CPI, then, you know, that can be a bit more challenging. It's challenging for the ongoing engineering costs, which we are anyway driving down.
Stephen talked about some historical targets at 2% and 1.5% that he mentioned at the what's it called?
Modeling seminar.
Modeling seminar. We're targeting something that's significantly under that, and I think we've got a relatively good line of sight to how we achieve that. We're achieving under, well under that in Andover and Purfleet at the moment. I think we're heading in the right direction. Ultimately, if you can get the cost down so low that a bit of inflation is not material anyway to the overall business model. In the retail space, you know, it is a question of it's not great selling food that's up 3% and having to buy electricity that's up 500% to keep it cold. Now, you know, in the short term, someone else might have done a better job than we did at hedging that out and might have some, you know, immunity to it.
Although, of course, they could actually, that's a financial trade 'cause they could just sell the cheap electricity they bought in the market if they wanted to. You know, we have shown before that we believe that our model, you know, has a similar to lower footprint than a retailer excluding the customer and ours including getting it to the customer's home. If you just think about that for a moment, we clearly use more diesel, so one can only believe that we use less electricity to ship 1 million pounds of groceries in our model than anybody else does. In theory, increasing electricity ought to be good for us, if you see what I mean, relative to the sector. Right now, trust me, when you see what it's costing, it really doesn't feel very good. Okay?
It's kind of a slightly weird scenario, if you see what I mean. Our model uses less energy. In the long term, that also ought to be a good thing. I would say it's challenging, but it's not, you know. We just have to work our way through it. In the same way that ORL made phenomenal results for two years, it's gonna, you know, as we've shown, it's not making phenomenal results this year, but we expect that in the, you know, kind of in the medium to long term, it will make very good results.
Last quick one. You mentioned historically that new customers have been easier to acquire from competitors' online businesses. In terms of the last six weeks, where are those customers coming from, and how's retention looking?
Well, I mean, that's kind of livelier data than I would expect to see exactly where they're coming from. What I would kind of look at is just sheer new customer numbers every week. We're seeing, you know, tens of % higher level of new customers every week than we've seen in any previous year. Okay, more significantly at the start, from the start of the second half than we. You know, we didn't see that in the first half.
As I say, what we know historically is we look at the percent of the market that is represented by, for example, Tesco online and Tesco stores, and Sainsbury's online and Waitrose online, and Waitrose stores and Sainsbury's stores, and then we ask our customers as they come in the door, "Where did you do the bulk of your shopping?" The over-indexation is extreme. You know, it's not minor, it's extreme.
We've always actually liked it when our online retail competitors grow because they're really creating an online grocery customer who we now need to go and persuade to shop from a bigger range, you know, at a similar pricing level, but much better value because it's a better, you know, it's a bigger range, it's an easier shopping experience, it's more reliable. You know, the fulfillment has an order of magnitude less fulfillment errors, et cetera, right? That's why we like that.
Thank you.
At the back.
Hi there. William Woods from Bernstein. Two questions. The first one's just on inflation and FX within the international solutions business. So obviously it's inflation protected. How are you seeing that flow through at the moment, and when does it actually? Is it on a trailing metric and that kind of thing? And then on FX, are you modeling a pretty strong FX boost from, obviously your U.S. earnings this year? And are you able to quantify what that looks like?
You know, it's really hard to do, I would say. I mean, look, some of the things that we buy are dollar-based. You know, our robots, we manufacture some in the U.K. We manufacture also globally. We manufacture in Mexico. Even if you manufacture here, some of the components that you put into them, the motors, the PCB boards, chipsets, et cetera, they're all dollar-based. You will see some increase in cost there. Actually, because the overall trajectory of what we're doing here is so cost down, you kind of don't necessarily notice it. It would've been better if it wasn't for those increases. In each of the client sites, we obviously have ongoing costs, some in their local currency.
The local engineering resource that support those sites are local currency. The parts that we use are probably dollar-based, even if we account for them in sterling, if that makes sense. The ongoing hosting costs are. Well, we're not really sure what they are, because sometimes they're charged in local currency, but they're based on the cost of running, you know, global data centers and stuff like that.
I would say, if anything, if I was to imagine where we are based on what our receipts are and what our expected receipts are in the different currencies and what our expenditure is, we're probably positive to a weak sterling because a lot of our headcount, you know, the R&D headcount, over half of it or so is here. Most of the rest of it is then in euros. We do have income coming in a whole wide variety of currencies, some of which we've hedged a bit out, some of which we haven't. I say overall, we're probably in a, would you say in a, I would say in a reasonable space. But I-
Yeah.
It's not a-
It's not a material risk.
We don't aim to be a currency trading business in disguise as an automation and robotics business. It's kind of like-
But-
You know, what do you want? Like, to the extent you think there's margin in a contract, should I be putting the margin in our Kroger contract back into sterling because we're a U.K. business, or do you leave that margin in dollars? Because also, it's not only your margin, but it's also your, you know, the margin could be larger or smaller. Where, where do you know? How do I know exactly how much to hedge? We've tried to make sure that we're kind of not exposed on what, where we do know that we've got sterling costs against a dollar contract. At the same time, we probably have a business that will generate kind of long-term contributing margin in dollars, in yen, in Australian dollars, in euros, and et cetera, and pula, Eswatini, and sterling.
Just check, that should help top line into H2 as well, right? We should get a benefit.
I think it's pretty small because you saw the international solutions revenue as a part of the total revenue was whatever it was, 5% or something. It's not gonna move the Ocado Group revenue because most of the group revenue is retail revenue in the U.K. in st erling. Correct.
Great. Thank you.
One at the back over here.
Morning. Tom Davies from Berenberg. Two questions for me. Firstly, with the online orders returning to, like, their peakier shape through the week, how are you thinking of, like, leveraging that, like the periods of, like, more latent capacity? Is that evolving Ocado Orbit? So it becomes like an omni-channel hub, something or like with Kroger in Dallas, are they using the CFC for their restaurant delivery? Secondly, with U.K. solutions in H2, it implies like a profit step up. Can you just remind us what drives the profit step up in H2?
Let me just stick with the kind of yes. When we look at end consumer kind of shape of week, you know, obviously we've done a lot of work here in the U.K. over the last 20 years to flatten it, which we've been successful at, and obviously there's a huge amount of lessons and functionality there that we're helping our clients with to help them achieve similar kind of profiles to we do. That does leave capacity in the automation on non-peak days, for example.
Yes, you're absolutely right that to the extent that you build things like Zoom sites, you will use that capacity to aid in the replenishment of those Zoom sites and over-replenish them on the non-peak day, if you see what I mean, going into the peak day, so you can reserve the peak day automation capacity for end customers. Yes, we are talking to a number of our clients about other ways that they could utilize those inside their businesses for economic advantage. Whilst it's hugely interesting on paper, it's not most of their first priorities in how they wanna improve their businesses, 'cause they're new and they're rolling out a lot of infrastructure and they've got a lot of, you know, challenges and opportunities that they can see that are bigger than those to work on first.
Some of the future Swift Router functionality that's coming that kind of divorces the work going on in the warehouse from a specific van route will allow us to smooth and utilize the production stuff in the warehouse even better and flatter than the consumer demand on the other side, right? Which will enable us to get more capacity out of the existing warehouses, both for us and our clients beyond their expectations, you know.
Shall I do this one?
Yeah, I can't remember what it was. That's a good idea.
EBITDA, U.K. solutions and logistics. There's three big drivers here. Number one is OSP fees will grow more than they did in the first half. That's new live modules increasing, but also Bicester going live, so there's gonna be improvement there, growth there. You've got the management fee on a growing order and volume base as well. That will grow. Finally, we're expecting the group support costs in the second half of the year and the proportion in solutions and logistics to be lower than the first half, because we're expecting a lower total group support costs across the group. Those are the three core drivers.
Sorry, just keep going, and then we'll go back around the other way.
Thank you. I'm Charles Allen, Bloomberg Intelligence. First question is on M&S said in their bond call on the same day as your accounting seminar that they expect to consolidate Ocado Retail in a couple of years. Is that your understanding as well? Following on from that, do you expect Ocado Retail to be able to pay a dividend?
In terms of consolidation, the way the contract works is it would allow them to elect to do that. That whisker of control that means that we consolidate it or they consolidate it will pass, and therefore they can choose if they want to consolidate it at that point. In terms of the dividend policy, look, I think if I look at that business, in the medium term, and if you understand the capital that it requires to grow versus its cash generating ability in the medium term, it will generate more cash than it needs to sustain double-digit growth and entirely finance its own side of that growth. The question then is what does it do with that cash?
The answer may be that at some point it pays dividends to its parents or it dramatically accelerates its growth. I'm not sure what else it could, you know, what else it should do with that cash, but I'm not putting a date or a timeline or whatever on that. As I say, it's not difficult to model out what the retailers' commitments are to new buildings and vehicles and things for growth, what the negative working capital that they generate as they grow are, and then if you look at the underlying sales and, you know, an EBITDA margin, you can see that at mid-single digits EBITDA margin, that business generates more cash than it ought to be able to consume to finance its own growth on a medium-term basis.
Just for the sake of clarity as well, the consolidation is just the accounting treatment. The economics remain exactly the same, the 50/50 JV structure.
If they consolidated it would mean that your target EBITDA would be considerably lower than GBP 750 million.
It would indeed, yes. It's not, as Stephen's saying, it's just an accounting number. It doesn't actually make any difference. We own half the business today, we own half the business then. It's a question of who shows it in a slide deck.
Yeah.
In-
Sorry, the second unrelated question is, when you talk about group financing needs, does that assume that your convertible bonds won't need refinancing or repaying?
Yes, it does. They'll be refinanced. That's what it assumes.
That would mean that there would be financing to refinance those bonds if need be?
If need, yes, correct.
Sure.
Thank you. Simon Bowler at Numis. Just one bit I wanted to explore, which came as part of the conversation earlier with regards to partners' ability to understand what Re:Imagined could mean for them, and therefore confidence to kind of order those modules. I guess with your existing CFCs, there's a number of service level guarantees that you'll give upon building those. When you're talking to partners around kind of what Re:Imagined can bring to them, to what extent can you provide them the same granularity of what new service level guarantees would look like and how they compare and contrast?
Sorry, it's a good question, and it's completely straightforward. We used to say it was something around the 200 number, and that's what you're guaranteed to get out of it. The answer now, if you buy a new warehouse, is it's something around the 300 number. I'm not sure exactly where we're setting, 'cause you don't normally wanna set it at what you actually, you know, I'm aiming with the old kit to hit 220. I'm doing it in some of the facilities, but you don't wanna SLA 220 because then every week you're gonna be on, you know, did I make it, did I not make it?
Relatively, it's about 50% uptick in performance that one is expecting, which corresponds to a reduction of a third of the headcount required to run the facility from an operational perspective. That's just where it is. That is the impact of a certain percentage of pick going robotic, automated frame load and a few other bits around the building.
Do you SLA any of the other aspects in terms of peak throughput and-
Quite, quite a few.
Four hours and-
Yes, correct. We SLA all kinds of things. I don't know what the exact number is, but without having the exact stat in front of me, I would be surprised if we're not 99. some high single-digit number% in terms of the available fees that we've earned because we've had to give, you know, something off 'cause we didn't hit an SLA. We have a very, very strong track record on hitting all those SLAs.
Thanks.
Have we got any questions online?
Yeah, we've got a few. Unless, is that the last?
Should we wrap up?
The last one, maybe. If that's the last one.
Yeah. Thank you. Xavier from Bank of America. One, just you said you've got 15 potential discussion right now. As you said, you would be disappointed, of course, if they were not to come to fruition. Can you tell us a bit of when this discussion started? Was it before COVID, during COVID, recently?
Uh-
Potentially, the second one, which is linked to that, you said you expect multiples of the 58 CFCs you've got already in the pipelines in the future. How much is coming from new partners? How much potentially is coming from existing partners?
The 58 are sites that our existing partners have said. Some of them it is literally I've ordered two, and then it's two. Some of them is you know I'm gonna take on 20, and they might have actually announced 16 or 17 or something so far. There's kind of three that have announced a larger program. That was Ocado Retail, Aeon and Kroger. Some of them are just like Sobeys have been announcing them one at a time. I'm at one, I'm at two, I'm at three, I'm at four, right? The 58 is all from the 11 existing clients and specific numbers they've put out there. Obviously, we expect to build more. Any new clients would be on top of that would add to that 58. That was that part of your question.
The other part of your question was, oh, when did we start talking to these people? It completely varies. There are some people who we didn't know particularly before. When we say we're in conversation, we often have, like, an underlying level of, we catch up with people on a frequent basis. That number would be much larger than 15, if you see what I mean. 15 means there are people at Ocado running around furiously helping people analyze things and think about things and, you know. That does not mean you're gonna translate 15 into 14 clients, right? It just means that there is a high number of detailed conversations going on with people that hopefully will result in some piece of business at some point in the future.
That could be in one month, but it could also be in one year or 18 months. You know, that's just sometimes how these things turn out. I have personally had to visit sites of ours probably more in the last two months than I have done at any point before, other than when I used to have to go frame loading and picking in Hatfield in the early days, right? I'm in Purfleet, Erith, Canning Town, and then some of these guys we've even taken into some of the test facilities that we have in near Hatfield to show them some of the ongoing development and some of the work that goes behind the stuff that you can see live.
You know, you go into some of these sites, and some clients go, "There's nothing happening in here." I go, "Well, there's a quarter of a billion pounds of business going through it." That's the whole point. It's supposed to look like there's nothing happening. When you go into Hatfield, and it looks like a frenetic, like, kind of, you know, you wonder how are you managing this place 'cause everyone's running around like lunatics. In the new sites, you always wonder, are they actually operating? They are, and they're shipping hundreds of millions of pounds of groceries out the door. But there's just a lot of activity.
Okay. Yes, we have some online. I think we can get through this. With rising costs and lower profitability in Ocado Retail, does this act as a deterrent in new customers, and, you know, for OSP to take the step with Ocado?
Look, I think it obviously would be nice if Ocado Retail was sitting making record EBITDA margins in the market. I think it's quite an easy to track the specific impacts and to show that, you know, when it grows into its current capacity and without energy, you know, costs where they are today coming to some kind of higher but more normalized rate, that is still a very good business model, and I think everyone, you know, pretty much understand that.
Let's see. I guess related to the U.K. retail business, can you please give us a sense for the energy cost and distribution and labor cost as a percentage of sales?
Look, I think without knowing exact numbers, we would have looked at, if I'd been budgeting this two years ago, you'd have said energy costs this year were in the GBP 10 million-GBP 15 million range, and now you can multiply that by something. I don't know if that's three or four. You know, it's that kind of order of magnitude. It's tens of millions of GBP on the electricity bill alone. The diesel, as I say, while it's up, it's not up anything like the same proportion. As I said, if you know, if you did long-term take-or-pay agreements on renewables and stuff, you would be ending up buying energy at significantly less than the spot market today. It has to be some form of temporary aberration in the market.
While it's unattractive for immediate profitability, it's not gonna be sustainable long term.
Great. Can you touch briefly on the non-food retail clients you have? When you acquired Kindred, you gained customers such as Gap, American Eagle. How are those going? Any other thoughts on GM?
I think we talked about in the numbers the Kindred's increase in revenue. Kindred, when we bought it, had one live product, in terms of sort. It's made enormous progress on the subsequent product that it wants to launch, which is INDUCT. Hopefully INDUCT is getting towards the point where it, you know, could become a very big opportunity. Obviously the majority of people at Kindred are working together with existing historical Ocado teams around the world, actually, on its third product, which is on-grid robotic pick, for which we have a large number of clients anxiously waiting. You know, it has had some more, you know, kinda client wins and is doing, you know, rolling out more machines. We'll wait and see.
I think that, you know, we are looking more broadly in the group about what we think about with Kindred, with Haddington, and with the advances that we're making in Ocado Re:Imagined, what opportunities that leads to outside of the core of, you know, e-commerce grocery. I'm sure we'll talk about that during the rest of the year or over the rest of the year.
You flagged a 30% return on capital employed in the midterm at the modeling seminar or the path to. Can you provide us with a similar type of metric for your clients? For example, how is your longest standing client, Casino, performing on an ROI basis?
Look, I think some of those questions are not for me to answer. If you wanna ask Casino a question about their performance, then you have to ask Casino. It'd be completely inappropriate for me to sit here and talk about 11 other people's financials, a lot of which I have no knowledge of. I don't know what their average item price is. You know, that's their business. The machine that we provided does exactly what it was supposed to do, so there's no surprises. They're not sitting there going, "Oh, well, we need to have a 10% contingency because your machine doesn't pick at X units an hour." They're exceeding all of their performances.
As [Frédéric] was saying, you know, their NPS scores and their client, their customers are very happy, and they need to grow their business, and they've got a great opportunity to do it.
Can you give some indication as to how the fee stream in international is capacity based versus throughput dependent?
I think on the whole, we are 80%+ or 80-ish% capacity based. Some of them are 100% capacity, and I think some of the newer ones are maybe 80% capacity and 20% throughput or something like roughly. Right. It's about that magnitude. On the whole, they're capacity based.
Now we've just got, I think we've got time for.
Just for clarity, again, that is drawn down capacity, not endgame capacity.
Yes.
The, the-
modules.
The design and implementation or whatever we call, the upfront fees are based on the finite capacity of a building. The ongoing, module fees are based on the drawn down capacity.
At your accounting seminar, you flagged a mid- to long- or mid-term 50% EBITDA margin for tech solutions. You've also flagged low levels of ongoing CapEx for mature CFCs. Can we therefore imply that the long-run free cash flow margin for tech solutions, excluding the build out of new CFCs, is around 45%-50%?
That's actually a reasonable number, yes. I'll share more the second half, this year, this second half of this year.
Can you give more color on Japan? When should we expect the first CFC to go live? Given the specificity of the country, is a five modules standard CFC the right size?
Again, I think if there's any news on the date other than what's been said before, so I don't believe there is, it would be for Aeon. Offhand, I can't remember the date. The plan is, the program is on plan. We had a short delay that I believe we've already made up, relating to supply chain challenges on certain parts coming out of parts of China that were under lockdown. It was, I think, two to four weeks, and I think we've made it up in the plan already. That one is on plan for whenever it was due to go live. I can't remember what that date is, but I think everyone's working towards it, and it's a good date.
The first few sites that I think that I'm seeing there are larger than a five module average. I don't know what they're gonna be going forwards, if you see what I mean. I think, you know, availability of sites is challenging, very challenging in their market. It was even more challenging with the lockdown, and their ability to find new sites. I know they're working very hard at it. It will be a significant go live in Japan because it's obviously a highly seismic region of the world. It will be the first time that we've launched a site in that level of seismicity.
The grid is going in at the moment, and has a lot of steel in it, compared to their normal grids, which is at some small increasing cost. It doesn't affect the overall economics and very excited to get live there. I think it's a really big opportunity.
Could you further, you know, I guess, expand on the consumer benefit from Ocado Re:Imagined, beyond, you know, the cost and technology benefit for you and your client?
Sure. I think the main consumer benefit is that we have worked out how to manage to use automation and, you know, optimized chilled fleet delivery, but managed to achieve using that shortly, you know, significant portion of quite short lead time deliveries. Kind of more akin to what in the U.S. would be kind of an Instacart type standard market, as opposed to what we've been more familiar with here in the U.K. of kind of a today for tomorrow market. One of the significant benefits is going to be, you know, the ability to kind of place an order now and get food in time for lunch, right? From a 50,000 item range somewhere with, you know, hypermarket type pricing. That's coming downstream from Ocado Re:Imagined.
That's because we can build smaller sites closer to customers. It's because we've got the smart supply chain to enable us to do that. It's because we've got the smart router to enable us to divorce the production of an order from a route and to put orders that were placed in the last hour and pick them in five minutes and place them on the same van with orders that were produced last night and stuff like that, and send them out on a multi-hour van route. Do those short lead time ones with the first deliveries and stuff like that. That's all coming.
There's a lot of smarts in the ongoing development that we might not have tagged as Re:Imagined, but just in the ongoing development of the platform that's improving the predictive algorithms that help customers to shop. That is, there's work going on that enables our clients to put even more range if they chose to in warehouses of the same size and still have lower stock holdings. Orbit is part of that, but there's more parts of that as well that goes on in the warehouse management software and control systems. Clients should get access to more range, you know, to more range selection, faster turnaround of the food. You know, fresher if we can improve the forecasting algorithms, make them more accurate and all this kind of stuff.
Overall, clients should continue to get more range, fresher food delivered, much shorter potential lead times if they want them. Our clients ought to be able to do that more economically. The grocery industry, I think, is pretty well known globally for passing on a significant portion of any efficiency benefits into the end consumer proposition. I think what we're doing is helping to drive to the point where e-commerce becomes cheaper than store-based retail.
Good. Just two more, so I think we can probably knock those off. Firstly, obviously the JV with Aeon in Japan, you announced a capacity equivalent to 20 CFCs launching through to 2030, so longer dated. Do you feel that that's on track with the first two sites only announced so far?
I mean, I don't think we've put a number.
It was the capacity equivalent. It was the JPY 1 trillion conversion, yeah.
Which might be in less sites 'cause they might be larger.
Yeah. Yeah.
Look, I think that we'll have to wait and see. As I say, you know, it's too early to tell because sites that could be live by 2023, you know, I've just said I can put my kit in them in five months now. So, you know, I don't know how many they're gonna have ordered by the beginning of 2029 on that plan. They're clearly ambitious. It's clearly a huge market opportunity. It has proved in the first two years more challenging to find sites. How much of that is down to a lack of availability versus the fact that it was COVID, and their restrictions in COVID were significantly stricter than anything I think any of us in the room were exposed to. We'll have to see how successful they are.
Obviously, with the new site rolling out in the next whatever it is, trying to remember what the date is on it.
2023.
Yeah, next year. Obviously they'll start to get trading experience, and they'll start to get consumer reaction to the proposition, which I think is gonna be better than anything in market. They're also, so then there's a long kind of period. They could go ahead. They could go behind. Realistically, I think their target was realistic, and we'll see how long it takes them to get there. Might be faster, might not, I don't know.
Great. The final one was just, how do spoke site economics work? Kroger has announced a few of these. Does Kroger pay 5% fee once at a CFC, 2x to CFC and a spoke, et cetera?
There's no fees at a spoke. I mean, a spoke is just running cloud-based software of ours. We don't put automation into the spokes. They have a fridge in them. If you have double-deck trailers, they have things like dock lifters in them, but they're client-side division of responsibility expenses. The software that runs them is just part of the overall SaaS software offering. There's no incremental cost to run anything through a spoke. What the significance of it is just showing you the growing geography of what they're selling from those CFCs and therefore the market opportunity, the TAM from those warehouses.
Over time, what you hope they do is exactly what Ocado Retail has done over time in the U.K., which was, you know, we served almost all the geography we serve today from Hatfield. Then, you know, the geography grew, and then, you know, the end customer penetration in the geography grew, and then we needed Dordon, and then we needed Andover, and then we needed Erith, and then we needed Bristol, and then we needed Purfleet, and, you know, et cetera. What you hope is that probably most of those spoke sites one day become a warehouse.
Great. I think that's it. We're online.
Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.