Ocado Group (LSE:OCDO) shares climbed 6.24%, to 234.8p, after it agreed a commercial partnership to power Asda's UK online business with the Ocado Smart Platform.
The deal will integrate Ocado's end-to-end solutions, front-end webshop, In-Store Fulfilment and last-mile planning and route-efficiency software, into Asda's operations; Asda is one of the UK's largest retailers, reporting more than £21bn of sales in 2025, operating around 1,100 stores and fulfilling over 700,000 ecommerce orders weekly.
"Through this partnership, Asda will be able to deploy a technology platform already processing more than 70 million orders annually worldwide, supporting market-leading customer propositions across 11 countries," Tim Steiner, Chief Executive Officer of Ocado Group, said.
Under the agreed commercial framework Ocado and Asda will work together in the coming months to enable go‑live in early 2027, and Asda will use the platform for scheduled and short lead-time orders, click & collect and to fulfil aggregator orders placed via Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat.
Ocado said the transaction is not expected to have a material financial impact in FY26 and reiterated its expectation to turn cash‑flow positive in the second half of this financial year with full‑year cash‑flow positivity expected in FY27.
The next published milestone is the planned early‑2027 go‑live.
