Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) quest for world domination continued today as the company launched a full online supermarket service called AmazonFresh.
Starting today, Amazon Prime customers in east and central London will be able to order their full weekly shop and have it delivered on the same day.
The company teamed up with Morrisons (LON:MRW) recently but, before today, only provided a limited amount of fresh food through its Prime Now service.
It plans to roll out AmazonFresh deliveries further across the UK, although for the time being it will focus on just 69 post codes in London.
Will ‘the big four’ feel threatened? This twitter user certainly thinks so…
i swear I heard some retail bums squeaking this morning? @amazon does groceries in London https://t.co/q311t0dXJB pic.twitter.com/yWxjO226Cg
— Chamberz (@stevie_chambers) June 9, 2016
Elsewhere, wind farm operator Dong Energy has become the largest IPO so far this year with a US$15bln valuation.
Investors lined up to own shares in the Danish firm, priced at 235 krone (approx. £24.80) per share, as it transforms itself into a renewable energy company.
The firm was once almost entirely focused on power generation and oil exploration in Denmark, but now almost three-quarters of its business involves the development and operation of offshore wind farms.
The Danish state will remain the firm’s largest shareholder with just over 50% of the shares, while US bank Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) has a 13.4% stake.
It was very much the definition of an up-and-down day for UK retailer Argos.
The high street chain store reported its strongest sales performance in two years, while at the same time revealing that it had set aside £30mln to refund store card customers.
Starting with the good, Argos said buoyant sales of top-end TVs ahead of the upcoming summer of sport, as well as computers and tablets, helped like-for-like sales to rise 0.1%
It may not sound a lot, but that was the company’s first growth in six quarters. Internet sales also rose 16%, while total group sales grew 2.6% to £868mln after new store opening.
On the flip side, the strong trading performance was overshadowed by news that it had to set aside £30mln to compensate some of its store card who had been charged “excess fees” after a calculation error.
The firm said that this problem only affected around 10% of store card users, and reassured that it remained on track to complete its £1.4bln takeover by Sainsbury’s (LON:SBRY) in the autumn.
In other trending news, wearable tech group Cloudtag Inc (LON:CTAG) has started to roll-out its health and fitness wristband monitors through major retailers.
Shares in the firm jumped on the news, which was accompanied by a funding that raised £300,000 at 5.05p – a sizeable premium to yesterday’s close price.
Cloudtag’s monitors, which can accurately measure heart rate and energy expenditure, are now being trialled by some big retailers (some of which are mentioned above!), including Amazon, Argos, John Lewis and Dixons.
Sticking with the small caps, troubled African airline Fastjet (LON:FJET) has pulled off a bit of a coup by nabbing the boss of one of its rivals to become chief executive.
Nico Bezuidenhout will start in his new role on 1 August, having been in charge of South African Airways’ low-cost carrier Mango for the past decade.
The company hopes it will start to take flight after posting losses of US$37.9mln last year.