Ocado Group chief executive Tim Steiner says that both Ocado and M&S are “in agreement” despite M&S chair Archie Norman telling investors last week that he was “not happy” with its performance.

M&S chair Archie Norman told investors last week that he was “not happy” with Ocado Retail’s performance and that there was “work to do”, despite adding that he “strongly believes in the future of Ocado”.

This came in response to shareholders asking the M&S board when they could anticipate a “proper return” from Ocado Retail after it recently suffered following consumers’ return to shops.

Following Ocado’s latest trading update earlier today, Steiner said perspective is vital when considering Ocado Retail’s current trading position and added that he was confident in the business returning to its historic levels of profitability.

“Overall, if we look back at where we were in 2019 and what we hoped the business would be trading at right now, obviously that is disappointing.

“Covid was a huge surge and an increase in profitability, but management made decisions at the time to deal with the pandemic and the demand that the existing loyal customers had and that drove enormous volume and good profitability during that time period.

“The latter effect of that is we came out of it with fewer customers than we went in with.”

Speaking of the comments made by Norman, Steiner added: “I think we are all in agreement, everybody is very pleased with the progress that has been made and everybody is very clear on the strategic direction.

“I think Archie’s comment is more around ‘is this what we expected in 2019?’, this is my interpretation and from having spoken to him, and obviously from that perspective it is disappointing.

“Are we making the right moves at the moment to improve the offer, to get back to basics, to improve the execution, to drive customer acquisition, to therefore drive growth to fill the capacity and to get back to cash flow neutrality, to get back to cash flow generation and deliver on what we all hoped the business would be? We are on track to do that. It is just not where we wanted it to be if we looked back four years ago.”

M&S and Ocado Group became joint owners of Ocado Retail in August 2019 and both now have a 50% stake in the venture.

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