Tag: Ocado

Brexit, Ocado Trading and Facebook Law Suit

As I expected Boris Johnson’s visit to Brussels did not produce a positive outcome. A firm deadline of Sunday has been set for concluding discussions. I suspect that will be another deadline passed, and it won’t be the end of talks completely. In the meantime, the EU has unveiled plans to prevent chaos in case of a no-deal Brexit. Specifically planes between the UK and Europe will continue to fly and trucks will be able to continue crossing the Channel. The EU is also proposing temporary measures on fishing rights. These temporary measures could last for many months I suspect.

Good results from Ocado (OCDO) this morning in terms of revenue, driven by the epidemic encouraging internet food shopping. With three new warehouses opening in 2021, which will ultimately give the company 40% more capacity to the business, that is a positive trend as customers have been hampered by limited delivery slots. But they are finding it difficult to sell their technology solutions it seems because of the travel restrictions on which much of the future value of the company depends. The share price has fallen by 6% at the time of writing.

The real big news on the financial scene though is the law suit launched by the US Federal Trade Commission against Facebook. They allege the company has demonstrated anti-competitive behaviour particularly by the acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp who were potential competitors. But it cites other issues as in addition. They wish to break up the company. The legal action is supported by attorney generals in individual states.

The big problem is that Facebook is a natural monopoly as more people are attracted to the biggest network. So it’s rather like AT&T and the Bell operating companies who used to have a monopoly over US phone traffic and were broken up in the 1970s by an anti-trust law suit.

Also it’s reminiscent of the break-up of Standard Oil even earlier who developed such a dominant control of oil production, refineries and even rail transit lines that they could force competitors out of business. Google (Alphabet) is also facing a big anti-trust lawsuit because of its very dominant position in the search engine market.

Comment:  These lawsuits will probably take years to come to a conclusion but they are clearly a major threat to Facebook and Google. Regrettably it’s probably a case of power going to the heads of the chief executives of these companies where they think they can do no wrong. In the case of Standard Oil and Rockefeller he argued, unsuccessfully, that their monopolistic position was for the good of their customers because it avoided wasteful competition and enabled products to be delivered at the lowest possible prices. No doubt Zuckerberg may use similar arguments which may not get upheld by the courts, but it’s not easy to see how the core Facebook product could be broken up.

The dominant positions of Facebook and Google in internet advertising should be the bigger target though which is what is generating most of their profits. There are surely some solutions to that such as price controls or giving other companies the ability to piggy-back on the companies’ software platforms. Lawyer’s can get very creative on possible solutions.

Note: I hold a few shares in Ocado, but not many because the valuation of the company looks like it is based on future hope that it will be a world beater rather than actual short term financial data. I do not hold Facebook or Alphabet, but no doubt like many readers, do hold them indirectly because of holdings in funds. The threat to their finances may be long-term rather than short-term, particularly bearing in mind how long anti-trust law suits take to run through the courts.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson  )

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Boris Johnson Not Backing Down and the Technology Stocks Bubble

Today I received an email from the Conservative Party signed by Boris Johnson and entitled “I will not back down”. The first few sentences said:

“We are now entering the final phase of our negotiations with the EU. The EU have been very clear about the timetable. I am too. There needs to be an agreement with our European friends by the time of the European Council on 15 October. If we can’t agree by then, then I do not see that there will be a free trade agreement between us, and we should both accept that and move on. We’ll then have a trading arrangement with the EU like Australia’s. I want to be absolutely clear that, as we have said right from the start, that would be a good outcome for the UK”.

But he says the Government is still working on an agreement to conclude a trade agreement in September. However the Financial Times reported that there are problems appearing because the “UK government’s internal market bill — set to be published on Wednesday — will eliminate the legal force of parts of the politically sensitive protocol on Northern Ireland that was thrashed out by Mr Johnson and the EU in the closing stages of last year’s Brexit talks”. It is suggested that the EU is worried that the Withdrawal Agreement is being undermined. But reporting by the FT tends to be anti-Brexit so perhaps they cannot be relied upon to give a balanced commentary on the issues at present.  

Of course this could all just be grandstanding and posturing by both the UK Government and the EU to try and conclude a deal in their favour at the last minute. But we will have to wait and see what transpires.

Well at least it looks like Brexit news will dominate the media soon rather than the depressing epidemic stories.

Technology Stocks Bubble

Investors seem to have been spooked last week by the falls in the share prices of large technology stocks such as Apple and Tesla (the FAANGs as the group are called). This resulted in overall market falls as the contagion spread to many parts of the market, particularly as such stocks now represent a major part of the overall indices. I am glad to see my portfolio perked up this morning after substantial falls in my holdings of Polar Capital Technology Trust (PCT) and Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (SMT) both of whom have big holdings in technology growth stocks although they are not index trackers.

I’ll give you my view on the outlook for the sector. Technology focused companies should be better bets in the long-term than traditional businesses such as oil companies, miners and manufacturing ones. There are strong market trends that support that as Ben Rogoff well explained in his AGM presentation for PCT which I mentioned in a previous blog post.

But in the short term, some of the valuations seem somewhat irrational. For example I consider Tesla to be overvalued because although it has some great technology it is still in essence a car manufacturer and others are catching up fast. Buying Tesla shares is basically a bet on whether it can conquer the world and I don’t like to take those kinds of bets because the answer is unpredictable with any certainty. I would neither buy the shares nor short them for that reason at this time. But Tesla is not the whole technology sector.

Some technology share valuations may be irrational at present, but shares and markets can stay irrational for a very long time as different investors take different views and have different risk acceptance. In summary I would simply wait to see if there is any certain trend before deciding to buy or sell such shares or the shares of investment trusts or funds focused on the sector.

Investment trusts are particularly tricky when markets are volatile as they often have relatively low liquidity and if stocks go out of favour, discounts can abruptly widen. Trading in and out of those kinds of shares can be very expensive and should be avoided in my view.

I don’t think we are in a technology stocks bubble like in the dot.com era and which I survived when anyone could sell any half-baked technology business for oodles of money to unsophisticated investors. But it is worth keeping an eye on the trends and the valuations of such businesses. Very high prospective/adjusted p/e ratios or very high price/sales ratios are still to be avoided. And companies that are not making any profits or not generating any free cash flow are ones of which to be particularly wary (Ocado is an example – a food delivery company aiming to revolutionize the market using technology). Even if the valuations are high, if a company is achieving high revenue growth, as Ocado is, then it might be able to grow into the valuation in due course but sometimes it just takes too long for them to do so. They risk being overtaken by even newer technologies or financially stronger competitors with better marketing.

Investors, particularly institutional ones, often feel they have to invest in the big growth companies because they cannot risk standing back from the action and need to hold those firms in the sector that are the big players. Index hugging also contributes to this dynamic as “herding” psychology prevails. But private investors can of course be more choosy.

This is where backing investment trust or fund managers who have demonstrable long-term record of backing the winners rather than you buying individual stocks can be wise. Keeping track of the factors that might affect the profits of Apple or Tesla for an individual investor can be very difficult. Industry insiders will know a lot more and professional analysts can spend a lot more time on researching them than can private investors. It is probably better for private investors to look at smaller companies if they want to buy individual stocks, i.e. ones that are less researched and are somewhat simpler businesses.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson  )

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Babcock Dividend, Ocado Placing, AGM Reform and Why Are People So Angry?

To follow up on my previous blog post about Babcock (BAB) and the possibility of it “skipping” its final dividend, the company issued its Final Results this morning and spelled it out. This is what it said about the dividend: “Given the current level of uncertainty over the impact of COVID-19, the Board has decided to defer the decision on our final dividend for the year ended 31 March 2020. We recognise the importance of the dividend to our shareholders and the Board will keep this under review during the financial year as the impact of COVID-19 becomes clearer”. That is not what Shore Capital suggested at all.

Although the company appears to have met forecasts for last year, and says it has a record order book, the share price has fallen 5% at the time of writing. The market in general is down considerably also though.

Ocado (OCDO) announced an institutional placing yesterday together with an offer via Primary Bid to retail investors. Like the one for Segro I commented on yesterday, this is a fund raising for expansion and is at a relatively small discount and dilution. These arrangements are now becoming common but I still don’t like them. They give private investors very little time to decide whether they wish to take up the offer and they do not know what price is being offered. As a holder of Ocado, this is another one I declined to invest in. Ocado share price is down 5.7% this morning at the time of writing which is exactly the same as the discount in the offer to the previous closing price, i.e. you could pick up shares in the market just as cheaply. I suggest companies should do proper rights issues rather than this dubious method and that the FCA should regulate this area more robustly.

There was a good article in the Financial Times today under the headline “Coronavirus casts doubt on the future of AGMs”. It describes the debate over the reform of AGMs and the use of virtual AGMs. It also covered an initiative by organisation ShareAction who are raising money to fund research into the issue. They quote Catherine Howarth as saying “We hope to co-develop a robust framework for AGMs that would still include shareholder votes and which would also help companies interact with a wider range of their important stakeholders including employees, customers, suppliers and communities”. That may be a worthwhile initiative if it makes AGMs more vibrant and useful than they are now but bearing in mind the funding of ShareAction it may not be a totally unbiased proposal.

What we do not want is AGMs dominated by “stakeholders” with political views as happens already at some companies – such as oil and mining company AGMs with endless complaints from environmental activists or defence industry company AGMs dominated by those who believe the company should not be involved in that industry at all. Companies are not in business to right all the social wrongs in the world, but to provide a financial return to their shareholders. They just need to operate within the laws set by national governments. Company law in the UK already requires the company to take the wider interests of stakeholders such as employees or customers into account and they can be represented at AGMs easily enough now by just buying a few shares – you only need one share to attend an AGM.

The FT article does make some good points about virtual AGMs, one of which I commented upon yesterday (EKF Diagnostics). But it suggests that it might cost £10,000 to hold a “hybrid” meeting at a small company. That is surely a grossly excessive estimate if voting is done on a poll. It’s trivial to set up a Zoom meeting for the number of investors likely to attend such a meeting (only a dozen at EKF).

I don’t often comment on general political or economic issues, but I find the current hysteria about the death of George Floyd and the resulting demonstrations over “Black Lives Matter” in the USA and UK totally out of proportion. George Floyd was a very tall and heavy person who it is alleged resisted arrest. He had a past criminal record and was a drug user. The full facts of the case have not yet been revealed and it is way too early to say whether the police used excessive force or not, even if the result was very sad.

As to whether there is wider discrimination against black or coloured people in the USA or the UK is also doubtful. From my experience of working in the USA, there appeared to be very little direct discrimination. Did not Colin Powell become head of the US Army and Secretary of State? Did not Barack Obama become US President? But as in the UK, black people are disadvantaged often by the social and cultural backgrounds of their families. Righting that can only be done by education not by demonstrations or laws. Demonstrations actually make matters worse, and the recent violent ones and attacks on property such as historic statues actually make people less sympathetic to the cause. Meanwhile the failure by the police to stop these events undermines law and order in general, just as happened with the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations.

Why are people so angry that they feel the need to take part in such demonstrations, including many people who are not black and hence could not have personally suffered from any prejudice? You can see the same problem in the divisive politics of Brexit where rational debate soon flew out of the window and it degenerated into personal slanging matches on social media. In fact social media and national media reporting of news has actually coarsened political life. The BBC in particular has often seemed to be more interested in stimulating outrage to improve their readership or programme viewing and web site clicks than in reporting the facts in a neutral and unbiased way. This is not a useful national broadcasting service. It has become a medium for slanted propaganda and for stimulating social unrest. This is a problem that responsible politicians will need to tackle sooner or later. But in the meantime those such as Sadiq Khan in London seem more interested in stimulating political division over trivia with the objective of gaining a few votes.

As investors, my readers will have to face up to these issues sooner or later because when the social fabric of a country crumbles as the result of poor leadership, sooner or later the economy crumbles also.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson  )

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Ocado Trading Update, Coronavius Apps, EMIS AGM, IDOX Pay, Segro Dividends

Ocado (OCDO) issued a trading update today, and it shows their joint retail venture with M&S is benefiting from the coronavirus epidemic. In the second quarter revenue was up 40% on the prior year. They have had to ramp up capacity significantly to meet this demand, and they have suspended delivery of mineral water so as to cope with the needs of additional households. The announcement gives the distinct impression that they need more warehouses (or CFCs as they call them).

On a personal note, my family has been using Sainsburys’ on-line delivery system and as a “vulnerable” person we get priority. The result has meant neighbours asking us to shop for them. But at least I don’t need to accept the offer of food parcels sent to me yesterday by the local council!

There has been good coverage of coronavirus apps in the national media in the last couple of days. This UK Government has chosen one that relies on a centralised system and it looks distinctly insecure and not good enough to protect privacy. Robert Peston pointed out another flaw in it that someone could maliciously chose to report themselves as suffering from symptom thus causing everyone they might have come into contact with in the last two weeks to self-isolate. I am not at all clear why the Government has chosen this approach, which may deter take-up anyway, when Google and Apple are implementing a different system with fewer privacy concerns. That has been adopted by other countries so there will be problems with international travel.

EMIS (EMIS) held their AGM today. Nobody allowed to attend and no on-line session which is not good enough for an IT company. EMIS operates in the healthcare sector. Recurring revenues have held up but new business sales have been lower. They still expect to meet full year expectations.

However, they did get 15% of votes AGAINST the remuneration report. That included my votes as a holder as it looked a typical complex scheme with total pay too high in relation to the size of the business.

Another example of a poor pay scheme is that of IDOX (IDOX), an AIM listed company that operates mainly in the provision of software to local authorities. Reviewing the Annual Report, the Chairman acquired 585,000 share options last year (current price about 40p, exercise price 1p) based on a share matching scheme. The CEO acquired 3,512,400 share options under an LTIP with an exercise price of 0p (nil). The CFO also acquired 1,000,000 share options, again with an exercise price of 0p, but with a performance condition of the share price being greater than 45p. In summary I think this is way too generous so I have voted against the remuneration report. The AGM is on 28th May, so other shareholders have plenty of time to submit their votes.

Another item of annoying news I received recently was from Segro (SGRO) the property company. They will no longer be sending out dividend cheques from next year. I still prefer dividend cheques for my direct holdings because it is easy to check that the dividends are received and you know exactly when the money is in the bank because you pay them in yourself.

However looking at a report published by the Daily Telegraph last year, it quotes registrar Equiniti as saying that up to 30% of dividend cheques do not get presented which is a rather surprising statistic and must create a lot of extra work. Kingfisher, Marks & Spencer and Vodafone have already stopped dividend cheque issuance, forcing you to give the registrar your bank details. I may have to accept this as a reasonable change even if I don’t like it.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Fascinating Ocado Interim Results Presentation

I watched a fascinating on-line presentation from Ocado (OCDO) this morning. The financial results are difficult to interpret due to heavy investment in new CFCs (Customer Fulfillment Centres, i.e. warehouses), the exceptional costs of a fire in their CFC at Andover and the time lag on new CFCs becoming operational. Key points though are that retail revenue was up 9.7% and Solutions Revenue up 20.6%. The Solutions business is that part of the group that builds and operates CFCs for other people. But the statutory loss increased substantially and the adjusted group EBITDA fell 46%.

The interesting aspect is more their future business plans. As the CEO, Tim Steiner, said “2019 has seen a shift in the centre of gravity of Ocado Group. We have pivoted from being a pure play online grocer in the UK with a separate Solutions business to being a technology-led global software and robotics business providing a unique end-to-end solution for online grocery”.

They are also investing in Karakuri which provides robotic meal preparation, and Jones Food that operates automated vertical farms. They also covered the Ocado Zoom service which promises delivery within one hour, and averages 30 minutes. They suggest this will be profitable even with delivery charges of only £1.99 or £2.99 and will compete with food delivery services such as Deliveroo, most of which lose money.

Ocado clearly has ambitions to revolutionise the retail food market and they have the funds to do so it would seem with no need for more fund raising required in the short term. But valuing the business is not easy.

The share price is up 5.7% today at the time of writing.

The presentation can be viewed here: https://www.ocadogroup.com/investors/reports-and-presentations/2019.aspx

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Supermarket Winners and Losers – Ocado, M&S, Waitrose, Sainsburys and ASDA

As a recent purchaser of Ocado (OCDO) shares I have received the notice of a General Meeting to approve the deal with Marks & Spencer (MKS). The agreement is the formation of a new joint venture and will effectively replace the previous partnership with Waitrose (part of John Lewis) to provide own-brand products. This looks a very positive deal for Ocado if you read the detail as the Waitrose deal was restrictive in some regards and Waitrose has also been developing its own on-live supply operations. So far as M&S are concerned, it will enable them to provide on-line ordering and delivery via Ocado when shoppers who want M&S grocery products only appear to have a “click and collect” capability at present.

The new joint venture will be 50/50 owned by M&S and Ocado with Ocado receiving over £550 million in cash which will “give the group the option to develop and grow the business carried out by Ocado Solutions”, i.e. the technology they are selling to other supermarket operators. Although it is nominally a 50/50 joint venture, Ocado will have certain tie-breaking rights which means it effectively has control and should be able to continue to consolidate the accounts of the joint venture into those of the listed parent company. It would appear that Ocado see the real growth in their business profits as coming from selling technology solutions rather than baked beans or M&S cakes.

Altogether this looks like a very positive deal for Ocado so I shall vote in favour. It also looks positive for M&S as it will avoid them having to build a completely new IT and logistics system for on-line grocery orders, but Waitrose will lose volume.

A deal that collapsed last week was that of the merger of Sainsburys and ASDA. Killed off by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). This is what the CMA had to say about it: “It’s our responsibility to protect the millions of people who shop at Sainsbury’s and Asda every week. Following our in-depth investigation, we have found this deal would lead to increased prices, reduced quality and choice of products, or a poorer shopping experience for all of their UK shoppers. We have concluded that there is no effective way of addressing our concerns, other than to block the merger.”

That’s quite damning although Sainsburys’ CEO Mike Coupe complained the CMA was wrong about higher prices. The Sainsburys’ share price has been heading downhill since mid-2015 and the shares now look relatively cheap on some valuation measures although their return on capital looks quite dire. The collapse of the ASDA deal had relatively little impact probably because it has been looking difficult to get approval on it for some time.

All supermarkets have a challenging environment with too much floorspace now that shopping habits are changing and new growing competition from low cost operators such as Aldi and Lidl. It’s difficult to see where growth is coming from if mergers are off the agenda.

This area of retailing is changing rapidly and with a resurgent Tesco the operators in the middle ground are clearly being squeezed. Ocado seem to have a good view of where they are going while Sainsburys will no doubt be doing some hard thinking.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Audit Market Shake-Up, Ocado on TV, and Judges Scientific Presentation

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) have issued their final recommendations to improve competition in the audit market after an earlier public consultation. This follows widespread concerns over the dominance of the big four audit firms, the lack of apparent competition on price or quality, and repeated complaints about the quality of audits following several big and small company failures. Audit firms seem to have got off relatively lightly if the CMA’s recommendations are implemented by the Government. Here’s a brief summary of the proposed changes:

  1. Audit firms will have to operationally split their auditing operations from their consulting operations. This is not a requirement to totally split their businesses but to have separate management, accounts and remuneration.
  2. Mandatory joint audits are proposed for large companies where a big four firm is involved, with a few exceptions. This will enable smaller audit firms (“challengers” as they are referred to), to increase their capacity and credibility.
  3. Audit committees of companies will come under closer scrutiny with the audit regulator having powers to mandate standards, monitor those standards and issue public reprimands where appropriate. But the latter is surely going to be a somewhat ineffective remedy to incompetent audit committees. The CMA have rejected the idea of an independent body to select auditors as proposed by John Kingman due to legal barriers to that change, although they suggest it might be worth keeping under consideration.

One interesting statement in the CMA’s report is this: “In light of the consultation responses, we are recommending a combination of joint audits for most FTSE 350 companies and peer review for others”. That is important because previously it was suggested that only large companies be covered by either rule.

The key question is whether this will improve the quality of audits which is the major issue. I suspect not because more price competition might simply result in more bids at minimum cost with the result of cutting corners on the audit itself. Improved regulation is the key to improving audit quality. But improving competition by reducing the dominance of the big four is otherwise surely to be welcomed.

For more information on the CMAs report, go to https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/statutory-audit-market-study#final-report . You can see what I said in my response to the original consultation here: https://www.roliscon.com/CMA-Audit-Market-Review-Response.pdf

There was an interesting glimpse into the operations of on-line supermarket operator Ocado (OCDO) on BBC television last night (programme entitled “Supermarket Secrets”). It showed their automated warehouse picking system although the final bagging up is still done manually – however that might change in future. Ocado is of course different to other on-line supermarket operations who mainly pick from in-store stock whereas Ocado have only central distribution operations with no physical retail outlets. Apparently most supermarkets have lower profits on their on-line sales as opposed to their in-store sales because the costs of delivery are not fully recovered in delivery charges. There are also more replacement items when delivery is from local supermarkets rather than from Ocado’s system.

There was an interesting review of Ocado’s business by Ian Smith in an FT supplement a month ago under the title “Pick of the Bunch”. It covered how Ocado moved from being a favourite of short-sellers to one of the best performing stocks in 2018. The change has been brought about because it is now perceived as more of a technology company than a simple retailer. That’s because it is selling its automated systems to other companies. That includes sales to Casino in France and Kroger in the USA.

Ocado lost money last year and is still forecast to lose money in the next two. But I bought a few shares regardless recently. It is interesting to see how the shopping habits in our family have changed. My wife does most of our food shopping and used to go to our local Sainsburys supermarket a couple of times per week. She started to occasionally use their on-line service when she was unwell. But now she uses it most of the time for her big weekly shop with only occasional visits to the store. If the habits of other families change in this way, one can see supermarkets adapting to the Ocado model.

A more long-standing holding of mine is Judges Scientific (JDG). This is a company that is an acquirer of small scientific instrument makers, and as with all good companies the management has a strong focus on return on capital. An interesting breakfast presentation after the results announcement can be seen here: https://www.piworld.co.uk/2019/03/26/judges-scientific-jdg-2018-full-year-results-presentation/ . It explains a lot about how the company operates.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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