Shares in online grocery delivery and technology group Ocado (OCDO) slumped as much as 70p or 20% to 281p on 20 June, taking them to their lowest level in seven years, after Empire Company (EMP.A:TSE), the owner of Canadian supermarket firm Sobeys, announced it would delay the opening of its Vancouver CFC (customer fulfilment centre).

The UK firm has long held that the ‘hidden value’ in the business is its software which enables customers such as Sobeys and others worldwide to operate their own CFCs as online grocery shopping increasingly becomes the norm.

Ocado said it and Sobeys had decided for now to ‘focus their joint resources into driving order and sales volumes across the current network’, which comprises three live CFCs in major Canadian markets across Toronto, Montreal and Calgary, and manual fulfilment solutions in nearly 100 stores.

Shares in the Hatfield-based group are now down 59% year-to-date and were recently relegated from the FTSE 100 large-cap index to the mid-cap FTSE 250 index. 

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