Group sales at Ocado climbed 15.4% to £314 million in the third quarter, despite the chief executive indicating that price wars were expected to continue in the future.

Retail sales increased 13.6% to £286.4m, with Ocado’s food delivery service average number of orders per week increasing 18.9% to 226,000 this year. The figures cover the last 12 weeks ending on 7 August 2016.

Ocado is “confident” it will grow ahead of the online grocery market following a 15% increase in gross sales over the summer. The retailer said the market was “tougher than it would like”, but stressed it was outperforming competitors with revenue growing to £314m in the 12 weeks to 7 August.

Tim Steiner, chief executive of Ocado, said: “As the market remains very competitive, we are seeing sustained and continuing margin pressure and there is nothing to suggest that this will change in the short-term.” 

But of the company’s results, he said it was “our best performance in more than five years”.

Last month Morrisons finalised an agreement with Ocado.

Shares in Ocado, which is one of the most shorted stocks in London, were down almost 12% to 284.8p after an hour of trading on Tuesday 13 September.