Lockdown pet boom boosts CVS revenue to £245.6m
The UK’s lockdown pet boom brought a boost to veterinary services provider CVS, which enjoyed a 9.4 per cent revenue growth in the last six months of 2020.
The company saw its revenue rise to £245.6m, up around £20m from the year before, as customers were found to be spending around six per cent more on their pets.
“We’re well positioned with our fully integrated model to continue to provide great quality care to our clients and their patients. Clearly, having some tail wind behind it in terms of increased pet ownership and this continued willingness to spend on pets is helpful for our future growth as well,” CEO Richard Fairman told City A.M.
The six percent rise in spending was also due to a shift towards what is best, away from what is cheapest, COO Ben Jacklin explained, signalling the growing humanisation of pets.
“We worked really hard to make sure our vets are giving the best advice and not simply giving customers a cheap option and assuming that they wont want to spend.
“When you give clients the detail on what’s the best thing for their pet, the vast majority of clients will then see what the best thing is, not what the cheapest is,” Jacklin said.
Like-for-like sales growth lifted 7.8 per cent, as the pet services provider saw share price increase 36.5 per cent to 33.3p per share.
New client registration also grew by around 17 per cent, as the company acquired four new practices.
The increase in registrations echoed the rise in the UK’s pet population, which will benefit CVS in the mid to long term.
“It’s clearly helpful. I think the real impact we’ll see in the future because it’s in the later years of a pet’s life that they need more veterinary intervention, as with humans,” the CEO added.
“In the short term, there can be more neutering and vaccination work, and it’s a great opportunity for us to sign puppies and kittens up to our Healthy Pet Club which is our preventative health scheme and actually register them with our practices. But actually we’re yet to see the real benefit of that, which will come in the medium and longer term.”