Ocado admits to uncertainty over the impact on trade from Olympic Games

The group, which delivers Waitrose and its own products to much of the UK, said yesterday orders dipped ahead of the Jubilee, while its delivery slots meant it was unable to fully cash in on a last-minute dash for food.

With half of its sales within the M25, there is potential for the Olympics to disrupt deliveries amid the influx of visitors, while it is possible that more of its customers will go on holiday or eat out more, it warned.

Shares dropped 12 per cent yesterday as it admitted there was “uncertainty” about the impact of the Games.

However, the company returned to profit in the 24 weeks to May 13.

It scraped a £200,000 surplus after suffering full-year losses due to capacity constraints.

It said efforts to improve its main distribution centre at Hatfield were paying off, helping average orders per week increase 13 per cent.

Supermarkets were boosted by the Jubilee celebrations, with Tesco enjoying more than £1bn of sales in its best ever week outside Christmas and Sainsbury’s seeing an extra two million visits from shoppers.

Despite the uncertainty over its third quarter, Ocado still expects sales growth to increase in its second half year as a whole but analysts said the group had previously expected an acceleration in sales growth.

Half-year underlying earnings increased 4.5 per cent to £14.9m after sales rose 12 per cent to £332.3m.

But Numis analyst Andrew Wade said current trading may have been hit by “aggressive vouchering” from supermar- kets.

He reduced his forecast for full-year underlying earnings by £1m to £37m.

The group hopes to ride a surge in demand for online shopping but its shares have suffered a difficult time since it floated amid concerns over whether it can compete with supermarkets’ online offers.

Chief executive Tim Steiner said: “More customers are shopping online.

“While we remain cautious about the general economic backdrop, we are well placed to attract a significant number of these new online shoppers as we continue to enhance our offer to customers.”