Pets at Home's VIP treatment pays off

More in-store veterinary practices, dog "groom rooms" and a VIP club have helped Pets at Home boost its revenues by nearly 10 per cent, to £729.1m, in its first full year as a listed company.

Pets at Home, which had a disappointing initial public offering in March last year - in terms of subsequent share price performance - said trading in the year to March 26 was in line with forecasts.

However, it gave no specific guidance for the coming 12 months beyond a statement by Nick Wood, chief executive, saying that the FTSE 250 company expected to "successfully deliver further profitable business growth".

Pets at Home was one of several retailers that went public early last year but investors were initially unimpressed. Its share price fell below the offer price of 240p and only bounced back above it in February this year.

It refinanced much of its debt earlier this month in a refinancing arrangement that should reduce the company's net financing costs by £2.7m per year.

In the full-year period, services revenues jumped 25.2 per cent to £63m, while fee income from the company's joint venture veterinary practices rose 30.7 per cent to £28.2m. Pets at Home opened 61 new practices during the year, of which 32 were refitted existing facilities, bringing its total to 338. It also opened 25 new pet superstores, taking the total to 400.

Its groom room business where pets can be pampered also expanded from 129 facilities to 179.

Membership of the store's VIP club proved popular, with numbers increasing from 2m in March 2014 to 3.2m a year later. VIP members accounted for 65 per cent of store revenues in the fourth quarter, up four percentage points from the previous three-month period.

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Underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation for the full year are expected to be in line with market consensus, which has a mean of £120.6m.

Pets at Home's shares were up 0.7 per cent at 260p in early trading on Tuesday.

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