Ocado is looking to borrow £200m to grow capacity and improve its offering to retailers.
The online retailer today said it was keen to take advantage of “historically low financing costs” to break with its current borrowing terms, due to run out by 2019.
The company has borrowed £210m since 2014 under its revolving credit facility - essentially a collection of bank loans - and will use the new cash to pay back any remaining debts, as well as improving operations.
Over the past three years, Ocado has poured capital into improving its fulfilment technology. In the past six months alone, it spent £26.3m on new central fulfilment centres - opening the new Andover centre in November - as well as £16.6m on technology and £10m on delivery.
Ocado’s announcement coincided with the publication of a 22-week trading update, which showed a 25% increase in revenue but a similar increase in cost of sales.
Revenue passed the £600m mark for the 22 weeks ending 30 April 2017, up from £482m for the shorter reporting period of 20 weeks to 17 April 2016. This was driven by a 16% increase in average weekly orders from 222,000 to 258,000.
But cost of sales also increased by 23.3% over that time from £318m to £392m, despite Ocado opening its more efficient facility in Andover and increasing its average units picked per hour from 158 to 164.
EBITDA rose below the rate of revenue at 21%, from £31.2m to £37m.
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