Amazon often crops up in conversations about Ocado – with recurring speculation that the web behemoth will buy the online grocer. There is also the question of profits.

Ocado CEO Tim Steiner is fond of reminding critics that it took Amazon many years to turn a profit.

He is yet to reach that point and today Ocado moved in the wrong direction, reporting a half-year loss before tax of £3.8m, compared with a loss of £0.2m this time last year.

But it would be unfair to get too hung up on the bottom line. A large chunk of the loss was down to professional fees linked to the Morrisons tie-up – which even the most ardent sceptics of the online grocer admit is a very good deal for the company. It has certainly been good for the share price, which increased over 60% to 325p in the month after the deal was announced.

And behind the headline profit figure, there is a lot to celebrate in today’s results. Basket size is up, the number of on-time deliveries is up, EBITDA is up and sales growth is accelerating.

Analysts expect Ocado to finally make a profit next year. It would be an important milestone for the retailer. The question then is whether Ocado can emulate the kind of profits achieved by Amazon.

That is a long way off but there is certainly a lot of potential for profitable growth if Ocado can repeat the Morrisons deal in other countries and industries.

Ocado also has the opportunity to grow at the expense of Amazon. Fetch – its new online store for pet products – is a small side venture for the moment but Ocado wants to grow it and repeat it in other categories including kitchen, toys, gifts, and health & beauty over the next couple of years.

These ‘destination sites’ have considerable potential. Like Amazon, Ocado will stock a very wide range of products on the sites – Fetch sells 5,000 products – but unlike Amazon, Ocado will deliver the products in a one-hour window. There will be no need to wait around for a courier to arrive or pick up the delivery from a depot.

Ocado has had a very busy first half of 2013. More than 11 years after the business was founded, it feels like it is on the start of a journey. Looking five years into the future would be very interesting indeed.

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