Confirming a rumoured restructure alongside the company’s full-year 2025 results, Ocado CEO Tim Steiner this morning confirmed that “a significant number” jobs would be lost as Ocado shifted to a “lower structural cost base”.
Under the restructure, Ocado will fold its commercial brands Ocado Solutions and Ocado Intelligent Automation into a single entity, and cut back on R&D. The group will also consolidate sales teams for its grocery ecommerce and supply chain solutions under new chief revenue officer Nick de la Vega.
The plans are part of Ocado’s long-standing struggle towards profitability, and the tech group has set its sights on positive cashflow in FY2026.
Ocado made strong progress in 2025, exceeding market expectations to grow adjusted EBITDA 59.4% to £178m.
Revenues at the tech and logistics group jumped 12.1% to reach £1.2bn in the year to 30 November, and Ocado managed to slash its pre-adjustment operating loss from £48.5m to £27.5m despite a £48.1m jump in finance costs.
The company’s strong performance in 2025 came thanks in part to a 26% jump in volumes through its international sites – excluding the closure in North America of three of Kroger’s sites in January 2026, and one of Sobey’s.
Commenting alongside the results, Steiner called the year one of “tangible progress”, and pointed to further profitability gains ahead as Ocado moves to a less intense phase of its R&D cycle.
“We have largely completed a very significant phase of investment in our robotics and automation capabilities,” he said.
“As that development cycle concludes and we accelerate deployment of our latest products, we expect aggregate technology and support costs to continue reducing. Our ongoing R&D investment will be concentrated on areas where we see the clearest path to value creation for Ocado and our partners.”
Ocado downplayed the impact of Kroger’s and Sobey’s customer fulfilment centre closures would have on its future prospects, and said the company had taken “pragmatic steps” to “place partnerships on a stronger footing for long-term growth”.
The closures represent a reduction of around £57m in Ocado group revenues, and were taken by investors as a bad omen for Ocado’s international prospects, on which its struggle for profitability depends.
Both Kroger’s and Sobey’s remaining facilities have seen financial improvement since the closures, and the group touted its Ocado Re:Imagined tech improvements as a strong pull for clients: under the programme, Kroger’s Detroit warehouse gained an additional 50% capacity.
The group also revealed it would move away from its current model of exclusive partnerships in a bid for growth.
Having rehired former CEO of Ocado Retail Laurence Hene as chief partner success officer in November 2025, Ocado is now set to chase new business.
“With exclusivity arrangements concluded in most markets, we have greater flexibility to pursue new partnerships and growth opportunities,” said Steiner.
“We are well set to re-enter multiple markets with an evolved technology platform, designed to be more flexible, offering a wider range of solutions to help retailers to run more efficiently and deliver a better service for shoppers, in any market environment, at any stage in their online journey.”
Ocado’s strong 2025 figures were not enough to dispel fears of the restructure’s impact on earnings, however, and shares tumbled more than 12% in early trading following the results.
A re-rating would be justified, according to RBC analyst Manjari Dhar, who called the stock’s pre-update pricing “on the fuller side”.
“Ocado is the only global provider of an end-to-end platform solution for online grocery retailing, which we view as industry-leading,” she said.
“However, our analysis of the group’s cash flow potential suggests management’s mid-term targets appear ambitious and, we question whether the growth of in-store fulfilment options (eg Instacart) reduces Ocado’s long term total addressable market. We think capacity is likely to remain ahead of demand in the near term, which pressures profitability.”
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