Pets At Home retail revenues hit £1bn for first time as more Brits become pet owners

A UK pet retailer has announced that its revenues reached £1bn in 2021 for the first time despite the impact of the pandemic.

Pets At Home, which has stores across the country, reported total group revenue of £1.1bn, up by 7.9 per cent, and retail revenue of £1bn for the first time, growing by 8.7 per cent.

The group’s profit before tax was also ahead of predictions, with a 6.4 per cent drop to £87.5m, and it predicts that its 2022 profits will reach between £120m to £130m.

The company also said that its growth outlook has increased due to the rising level of pet ownership, adding a “tailwind” to customer revenue opportunities.

Peter Pritchard, group CEO for Pets at Home, commented: “We ended this unprecedented year a far stronger pet care business.

“Despite challenges to how we were able to do business, we grew our market share across all channels and our underlying growth trajectory accelerated.

“Our loyalty clubs saw record periods of new customer registration, strong growth in subscription customers increased the visibility and quality of our sales profile, whilst new clients across our veterinary estate helped increase practice profitability and cash flow.

“We achieved all of this while remaining mindful at all times of doing the right thing for all our stakeholders.

“Covid-19 has structurally changed the dynamics of the pet care market.

“We estimate that the rising level of pet ownership, combined with structural demand drivers such as premiumisation and humanisation, has increased the outlook for growth across our addressable market, and in conjunction with our expectations of continuing to take market share, provides a tailwind to the £600m customer revenue opportunity we see across our business over the medium term.

“We will, as the UK’s leading omnichannel pet care provider, capitalise on this opportunity through continued investment in our infrastructure, further digitising our business and leveraging our extensive and unique dataset to provide insight throughout the customer lifetime to support investment decision-making that will drive quality and profitable growth.

“I am incredibly grateful for the tireless efforts of all our colleagues and partners across the group in the most challenging of environments and am very proud of their collective achievements this year. I look to the future with much confidence.”

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