Bar one notable moment, Pets at Home has been a good boy in 2019.
Opening at £1.17, it climbed all the way to a £1.64 in early April, its best price in almost exactly a year. Yet a day later the stock suffered a blow, as the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board sold its entire 10.8% stake in the company, quickly dragging it back to £1.40.
Around 5 weeks later, and Pets at Home shares now sit at a current trading price of £1.47.
The firm’s last update came in January, one that provided the catalyst for its very strong start to the year. For the 12 weeks to January 3rd, group revenue jumped 6.3% to £237.2 million, with like-for-like sales not far behind at 5.1%. More specifically, its Retail division saw a 4.7% like-for-like increase, while its Vet Group continued to expand with a 9.1% rise.
It also reiterated its full year guidance, stating that it expects group underlying profit before tax to be between £80 million and £85 million, effectively unchanged from the previous year’s £84.5 million. That doesn’t sound impressive, but given between 2017 and 2018 pre-tax profit fell 12.3%, it is certainly an improvement.
If Pets at Home is to return to the levels struck back in April, then it needs to not only post profit before tax at the upper end of estimates, but give some signal that things will start to pick back up on that front in the next financial year.
Pets at Home shares have a consensus rating of ‘Hold’ alongside an average target price of £1.31.
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