Pets at Home’s new CEO James Bailey has praised group’s progress over the past six months despite a drop in retail consumer revenue in the 52-week period to 26 March 2026.

In the announcement of the company’s preliminary results, James Bailey said: “Pets at Home is a business with many strengths, a strong shared purpose and great potential and I am excited to lead it through its next chapter.

“I have spent my early weeks immersing myself in the business, meeting colleagues and practice owners, understanding our customers and learning about the capabilities we have across the Group. I have found a business full of talented and committed people who want to do the best for our customers and their pets. This time in the business has increased my conviction on the opportunity to create value for customers, colleagues and investors of Pets at Home.

“We are the clear leader in the growing UK pet care market with a unique set of highly complementary businesses. We have considerable, sustainable competitive advantages including our unrivalled reach through our 460 pet care centres, our sector leading Vet business, our large and loyal customer base and well invested infrastructure.

“Material progress has been made over the past 6 months stabilising the Retail business, delivering improved satisfaction and better availability. We have the opportunity now to build momentum through profitable volume led growth in Retail while continuing to execute the proven growth levers of our Vet business and launch our Insurance offering.

“We will not achieve this without the continued hard work, passion and dedication of our colleagues and partners. We have clear priorities for FY27 and from what I have seen so far, I am confident we can build a great future for Pets at Home, which I look forward to updating on later in the year.”

Pets at Home announced the following business highlights:

• Launch of Retail Turnaround Plan in Q3 brought improved focus and clear priorities to our Retail business and has driven improving sequential sales and volume growth through H2.
• Customer satisfaction increased. Vets satisfaction was up 1.5pts and Retail Satisfaction increased 4pts, driven by particularly strong improvement in value for money, product availability and promotional clarity.
• Active Pets Club members of 7.4m with total Retail transactions down 1% but returning to growth in H2 and improving customer recruitment with Puppy & Kitten registrations averaging 15k a week, up 5%.
• Pets Club average consumer value4 up 12% to £195 partly due to growth in our Vet consumer revenues and in part due to the change in methodology7 on Pets Club customers that shifted some lower frequency customers to non-Pets Club.
• Vet Group space expansion accelerated with 8 new practice openings and 17 practice extensions in the period, clinical talent underpins our growth ambitions and we saw clinical talent grow 3.5% in FY26.
• Subscription % of consumer revenues5 grew to 15.2%, up from 13.0% in the prior year. Care Plans grew strongly, with now well over 50% of Vet clients having a plan.
• ‘Pets Insurance’ progressing with FCA approval achieved and good progress building the required technology infrastructure. We remain on track for launch in 2026.
• CMA – We welcome the Final Decision Report of the CMA’s veterinary services market investigation which recognised that our practices offer competitive prices and strong customer outcomes while operating a differentiated Joint Venture(JV) model.

Financial highlights

• Total Group consumer revenue up 1.0% to £1.98bn. Vet Group consumer revenue up 5.0% to £688m, outperforming the market again with growth driven by strong Care Plan sign-ups and higher average transaction values. Retail consumer revenue down 1.0% to £1.29bn, against a subdued market backdrop. We saw the early impacts of our Retail Turnaround Plan drive better momentum in H2, delivering positive sales growth and faster volume growth. We remain focused on building further momentum and are encouraged by the early volume response to recent price investments.
• Total Group statutory revenue down 0.8% to £1.47bn
• Group gross margin 45.7% was down c120bps. Vet increased by c310bps due to the growing contribution of Joint Venture fee income. Retail down c180bps, including c80bps from planned price investment.
• Group operating costs grew 1.9% YoY, 1.1% excluding the impact of our Insurance start-up. Cost control remains strong with productivity measures almost fully offsetting underlying cost inflation, ahead of our plans.
• Group underlying PBT of £92.8m down 30.2% YoY, underlying PBT margin# of 6.3% down c270bps. Year on year profit growth improved in H2 across both Retail and Vets. Vet Group underlying PBT £83.8m, up 10.4% YoY, with underlying PBT margin 47.4% driven by operating leverage of growing JV practice sales on a broadly flat cost base as well as strong profit conversion within our company managed practices. Retail underlying PBT £30.8m, down 57.8% YoY, underlying PBT margin 2.4%. Profit came through in line with the revised plan announced in September 2025, with the decline for the full year reflecting operating leverage, with good cost control more than offset by sales and gross margin declines.
• Group statutory PBT £86.5m down 28.3% YoY, statutory PBT margin of 5.9% down c230bps reflecting the fall in underlying PBT together with non-underlying costs of £6.3m which relates to the completion of restructuring the Group’s Support Office functions, which are down from £12.4m last year.
• Underlying EPS 14.8p, down 29.7% YoY with an underlying profit after tax decline of 31.1%, partially offset by share buyback accretion.
• Free cash flow down 26.1% to £61.9m, including Vet Group £74.2m up 9.9% YoY, reflecting the capital light nature of our JV model. Retail £2.7m down from £30.6m in FY25 impacted mainly by the decline in PBT.
• Balance sheet remains robust, adjusted net debt of £19.4m represents a leverage ratio of 0.1x underlying  EBITDA. Net debt increased £25.6m YoY due to lower Retail underlying PBT.
• At our pre-close update we announced a refreshed capital allocation approach. In line with this policy we propose a total dividend per share of 7.4p, representing 50% of EPS, and a further £50m share buyback.