Pets at Home has reported a strong rise in half-year profits after the boom in pet ownership during the pandemic helped the retailer hit new sales records.
Underlying pre-tax profit climbed by 77.2% to £70.2m over the 28-week period to 7 October on group revenues up 18% to £677.6m, despite some difficulties in supply chains.
Retail like-for-likes jumped 21.9%, whilst its Vet unit climbed 26.2%. The company stated that sales growth was underpinned by a continuing increase in the number of active customers. It also noted that cat and dog owners were buying more premium food and products to pamper their pets.
Peter Pritchard, who is due to step down from the Chief Executive role in May next year, commented: “Our business has never been more robust. Our pet care strategy continues to deliver, we continue to take market share and improve spend per customer and the benefits of our investment in capacity and capability are really starting to deliver.”
The company is expecting its full-year underlying pre-tax profit to come in at the top end of the current range of analyst expectations and looking further ahead, sees a pathway to £2.3bn of customer revenue across the business over the medium term.
Pritchard added: “Notwithstanding some near-term, industry-wide challenges, we continue to grow ahead of our plans and, based on trading year to date, we are on track to report a record year of sales and profit growth.”
