- Non-executive chair will assume CEO role temporarily
- Profit guidance lowered for full year 2026
- Shares down 38% over the past year
Shares in Pets at Home (PETS) fell by nearly 20% to less than 180p as the pet food-to-veterinary service group said CEO Lyssa McGowan was leaving the business with immediate effect and warned on profit.
The company added that non-executive chair, Ian Burke, will assume the role of executive chair until a permanent CEO has been recruited.
The news came as Pets at Home provided investors with an unscheduled trading update for full year 2026 lowering underlying pre-tax profit guidance to £90 to £100 million from the previous range of £110 to £120 million.
‘Our existing guidance assumed a central scenario for retail of 1% market growth against which we expected to return to market outperformance through full year 2026 as the investments we made in digital bore fruit.
‘Through the second quarter, the underlying pet retail market has remained subdued, declining slightly year-to-date.’
On the plus side, Pets at Home continues to see double-digit digital sales growth and strong growth in easy repeat prescriptions.
Its vet group continues to deliver high-single digit sales growth, and it is on track to deliver 10 new practices in full year 2026 and 15 vet extensions.
'DISAPPOINTING UPDATE'
Analysts at Jefferies said: ‘This is clearly a disappointing update from Pets at Home, with the anticipated inflection in retail LFL (like-for-like) trends failing to materialise despite annualising disruption effects and with the tailwinds from investments supposedly supporting growth.
‘The debate will now focus on what measures (price, product, range) can be implemented to alleviate market share losses and/or recover the substantial profit declines.’
