British online retailer Ocado Group has posted a 14.8% revenue increase on 2015, reaching a total of £1.27 billion.
The company said revenue growth was driven by a 17.9% year-on-year increase in the year's average orders per week, up to 230,000.
General merchandise destination sites saw 85% growth, due to the popularity of the 'Fetch' pet store and the new launch of beauty site 'Fabled' in Q2, the company said.
However, the rise in order growth was adversely affected by a reduction in the average hypermarket order spend, dropping 2.7% from £111.15 in 2015 to £108.10 in 2016.
The Ocado Group said this was due to deflation in average item price, a trend seen across the grocery industry, and the fact that less items were purchased due to more frequent purchases made by consumers.
Increased revenue from Morrisons fees, as well as recharges for services rendered to aid the expansion of Morrisons.com, brought in £99.4 million in 2016, an increase of more than 25% compared to 2015.
Tim Steiner, Ocado's CEO, said: "We are pleased to announce results today which reflect robust trading in our core business and shows continued progress against our strategic objectives in what has been a challenging retail environment.
"Over the course of the last year, we grew our active customer base by almost 14%, with growth in average orders per week approaching 18%, testament to the strength of our customer proposition, market position and technology."
Ocado has increased its operations efficiency, improving its capacity from existing facilities to 20,000 weekly orders, he said.
The Ocado.com range also expanded to over 50,000 SKUs in 2016, up 3,000 from the previous year. Ocado private label sales were up 10%, with an average of more than six items per basket.
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Karen Henderson. Click subscribe to sign up for ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
