Pets at Home profits climb after ‘outstanding year’ for vets business

Performance was driven by Pets at Home’s vets business, while the retail arm took a hit last year.

The retailer reported a rise in statutory revenue of 0.1% to £1.48bn in the year to March 27, but pre-tax profit rose 14.1% to £120.6m. At an nuderlying level, pre-tax profit inched up 0.7% to £133m. 

Consumer revenue at the vet business was up 13% to £655.1m, generating underlying pre-tax profit of £75.9m – a 23.3% increase. The retail arm, however, suffered a revenue decline of 1.8% to £1.3bn and profits slid 16.6% to £72.9m.

Pets at Home chief executive Lyssa McGowan said: “The past two years have seen a profound transformation at Pets at Home. We have moved from a business with a strong presence in pet retail and vets, to a true pet care platform.

“We now have a platform that is fit for the future and capable of delivering sustained outperformance and market share gains through delighting consumers and increasingly fulfilling all of their pet care needs. During this period of transformation, we have completely replatformed our digital infrastructure, built new capabilities around our data, brand and marketing, and simplified our distribution network to a single distribution centre fulfilling stores, online and subscriptions, and we have achieved this against the backdrop of a normalising pet care market and low consumer confidence.

“[Last year] , we also saw another outstanding year of growth in our vets business, fuelled by the commitment and expertise of our partners, supported by our best-in-class scale services, platform benefits and industry knowhow. Our practices significantly outperformed a more subdued industry backdrop and delivered this progress despite the ongoing uncertainty of the CMA investigation – further demonstration of the power of our unique joint venture model…

“While [this financial year] comes with its own challenges as we digest externally imposed cost headwinds and heightened macro uncertainty, our objective is clear - to deliver outperformance against our underlying markets, across our business.”