Almost a third of Ocado shareholders voted against the £2m pay packet of chief executive Tim Steiner at its AGM on Tuesday.

A total of 30.14% of Ocado investors voted against Steiner’s remuneration package, which was set at £755,000 in salary and a £1.19m bonus in a year where the online grocer reported losses deepening to £500m.

Sales fell 3.8% to £2.2bn for the period, as customers shifted away from lockdown trends of buying groceries online and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis shrunk basket sizes.

Ocado also announced it would be closing its Hatfield fulfillment centre on April 25, putting 2,000 jobs at risk.

These “challenging market conditions” have also hit Ocado’s share price, which is down 45% in the past year.

As a result, Ocado is currently top of the list of the Financial Conduct Authority’s ‘most-shorted’ stocks as of March 2023.

Despite this, Steiner has been bullish about Ocado’s recovery prospects.

“Over the last year, every company has had its business model tested by a combination of macroeconomic and geopolitical headwinds, and I am pleased that thanks to the creativity and commitment of my colleagues, we have more confidence in our model than ever before,” he said in February.

“Ocado Retail, our UK joint venture with Marks & Spencer, has shown its resilience against a backdrop of higher costs and smaller baskets, reflecting the Covid unwind and the UK cost-of-living crisis, by growing customer numbers and increasing online market share. As the Covid unwind fades and customer growth continues the business will start to recover the fixed costs of recent capacity commitments.”

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