Petco closes FY2025 with lower sales, stronger profit
CURRENT BRIEF VERSION: Petco finished fiscal 2025 with lower sales, but better profitability, underscoring how far the retailer has moved from its earlier push for volume at any cost. In results released March 11, 2026, the company reported full-year net sales of $6.0 billion, down 2.5% year over year, while adjusted EBITDA rose 21.3% to $408.2 million and operating income climbed to $120.4 million from $7.1 million a year earlier. Petco said the improvement came as it pulled back from unprofitable sales, tightened inventory, and reduced leverage, then outlined its next phase, “Reach for the Sky,” focused on consumables, fresh food, owned brands, omnichannel execution, and services. For veterinary care, that means renewed emphasis on productivity in its existing hospital base, vaccination clinics, grooming, and training, rather than an immediate wave of new hospital openings. (corporate.petco.com)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, Petco’s update is a reminder that corporate pet retail still sees veterinary services as a core traffic, retention, and basket-building engine, even when store sales are soft. Management said it optimized a significant number of its roughly 300 hospitals in 2025, has about 25 underutilized locations still to work on in 2026, and now expects hospital expansion to resume in 2027 rather than sooner. That suggests the near-term focus is staffing, workflow, and cross-selling inside existing locations, not rapid footprint growth. It also comes as other pet retailers are showing a different growth profile: in Brazil, newly merged Petz and Cobasi reported combined 2025 revenue growth of 8.8%, with gains in both stores and e-commerce, services acceleration in the fourth quarter, and private-label momentum, even as they cut back investment in new stores and hospitals to focus more on integration and improving existing locations. For clinicians and practice leaders, the signal is clear: integrated retail-and-care models remain strategically important, but growth may come more from operational discipline and better use of current capacity than from aggressive de novo expansion. (fool.com; globalpetindustry.com)
What to watch: Watch whether Petco can turn its services productivity push into sustained same-store growth in 2026, and whether its planned return to hospital expansion in 2027 holds. A second useful marker is how its measured, margin-first approach compares with peers such as Brazil’s União Pet, where Petz and Cobasi entered 2026 as a unified company after posting faster top-line growth, stronger digital penetration, and rising service sales in 2025. (corporate.petco.com; globalpetindustry.com)