Ocado Group has released its trading statement for the 16 weeks to 30 November 2014.

Gross group sales for quarter four increased by 18.6% to £331.9m, while retail sales were up 14.9% to £311.4m.

Ocado’s chief executive officer, Tim Steiner, said: “We are pleased with the continued steady growth in our business against the backdrop of a more competitive grocery market. This performance reflects an increasing number of customers who value the wide range of products, keen prices and great service made possible by Ocado’s unique operating model, and further demonstrates the ongoing shift to online grocery shopping.

”We remain committed to constantly improving the quality of the proposition to customers, which we believe will support continued growth, and although we anticipate the retail environment to remain challenging, we expect to continue growing sales slightly ahead of the online grocery market.”

The company will announce its preliminary results on 3 February 2015.

Commenting on Ocado’s results, Numis said: “Despite the challenges in the food retail sector, we are encouraged by Ocado’s robust top-line progress and leave our FY forecasts unchanged. Despite a good recent run, which has seen the shares rally 45% from lows, we remain positive, seeing huge long-term potential for Ocado to benefit the ongoing shift online and leverage its market-leading IP.

“In all, we see this as a reassuring update from Ocado, demonstrating that, despite the ongoing challenges in the grocery market, it can continue to drive steady growth and outperform the online growth rates being achieved by its competitors. Despite a good recent run, which has seen the shares rally 45% from lows, we remain positive, seeing huge long-term potential for Ocado to benefit the ongoing shift online and leverage its market-leading IP.”

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs said: “We are encouraged by the continuing sales growth (15.3% in FY14), which is in sharp contrast to store-based competitors. Over Ocado’s last four reported quarters Tesco UK/Sainsbury/Morrisons have delivered like-for-like sales growth (excl. fuel) of -3.5%/-1.7%/-5.7%. While Ocado now expects to grow “slightly ahead” of the online grocery market (previously “in line or slightly ahead”), this is more a function of the slowing online growth of competitors as store-based retailers less aggressively chase unprofitable customers. Note that Sainsbury reported 1H online sales growth of 9%. As such, in our view these results not only reflect the strong growth of the online grocery channel, but also Ocado’s superior positioning to benefit from that.'

Bank of America Merrill Lynch said: “Ocado has proven once again it can deliver strong order growth in light of competitive pressures, and while it is not immune to the price actions across the industry, its much broader product range relative to its supermarket peers offers some degree of protection.”