Ocado fears lop £79m off boss’s shares

A FALL in Ocado’s stock has wiped more than £79m off co-founder Tim Steiner’s shareholding.

The online grocer’s shares have slipped more than a fifth in the past five trading days as investors worry that rivals’ technology is catching up.

The 21pc stock price fall from 1360p last Wednesday to 1074.5p yesterday dented the chief executive’s holding of 27.6m shares. Ocado is valued at £7.5bn, meaning £2bn has been wiped off its market capitalisation in a week.

Steiner’s stake is now worth about £296m.

The decline started after it was said relations with its key client in the US, Kroger, were cooling – claims that Ocado has dismissed. At the same time, taxi-hailing app Uber said it plans to keep investing in grocery and food delivery and did not rule out acquisitions to move into the grocery sector.

Shareholders also worry that US rival Takeoff, which works with Tesco, could disrupt Ocado, especially in America.

Ocado is known in the UK for delivering groceries, but its robotic warehouse technology has now been sold to eight supermarkets all around the world, pushing its stock up more than fourfold in the past two years.

It sold half of its online grocery business to Marks & Spencer for £750m as a joint venture, which will start delivering groceries in the UK next autumn. Tesco is building 25 automated centres by 2024, to improve margins in its delivery business. The ‘big four’ grocers currently use staff walking round the store with a trolley to pick stock for online orders.