Ocado’s plans to cut jobs across its research and development workforce in the UK have continued to generate headlines in the papers this morning.
The group, which runs robotic warehouses for other chains alongside its Ocado Retail business as a joint venture with M&S, said it was trimming investment on R&D to cut costs, having spent more than £800m in this area over the past four years.
Chief executive Tim Steiner would not confirm how many jobs would be cut, but said it would be “significantly” fewer than the 1,000 group-wide redundancies made in 2023/24.
The group, which employs nearly 20,000 people, has R&D sites across the world, with about half in the UK. It lost £374.5m for the year to 1 December, down year-on-year £393.6m. Revenues rose 14.1% to £3.2bn – but shares fell 18.1% or 1.59p, to 273p (The Mail, The Independent, The Standard).
The nationals also reported that Ocado was seeking a final £190.7m payment from M&S for its joint venture, due in April.
M&S will be due to pay Ocado a final instalment of the £750m 50/50 tie-up between the businesses, Ocado Retail, which was launched in 2019.
Ocado was in “constructive talks” with the retailer, wrote The Mail, while The Telegraph painted an altogether less rosy picture, reporting that the online retailer would use “all available means” to force M&S’s hand.
The FT reported that a buyout of Walgreens Boots Alliance would set the stage for a three-way break-up of the US pharmacy chain, with executive chair Stefano Pessina maintaining a significant shareholding as part of the deal.
Financing for potentially taking the troubled retailer private is not anticipated to be an obstacle, said people familiar with matter, after weeks of on-off deal discussions with New York-based Sycamore Partners, an investment group known for targeting troubled retailers.
While the company would initially be taken private as a whole, Sycamore plans to separate Walgreens’ three main businesses into their own units with distinct capital structures, they said. The company’s structure gives the buyer flexibility to prise apart US pharmacy retailer Walgreens, Boots and speciality pharma unit Shields Health Solutions into independent businesses.
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