It seems to have taken a long time for Ocado to finally list on the London stock market,  but it has finally happened. The shares were listed at 180p which was considerable lower than the 275p that seemed to be the original intention.

 In fact they dropped almost 10% on the first day down to just over 162p.

 The press seem to be very unsure about the prospects for Ocado, with some suggesting a market cap should be half of what was originally suggested at £500mill.  The company has never actually returned a profit,  although they do feel that as turnover increases a profitable year is getting nearer.

 What intrigues us here is that the company although closely linked is nothing to do with Waitrose, they have a contract with Waitrose but that will expire in 2017.  Without that contract they are a company who own two warehouses.  Now Waitrose do actually offer their own delivery service from a local store, which is Waitrose owned and completely separate. It will be interesting to see how that side of the business increases and whether that impacts on the contract renewal decisions.

 For now we’d give Ocado a wide berth.