Tags: petsmart | chewy | ipo | one billion dollars

Shares of Online Pet Store Chewy Soar 60% in Debut

Shares of Online Pet Store Chewy Soar 60% in Debut
Kellyrichardsonfl | Dreamstime.com

Friday, 14 June 2019 01:51 PM EDT

It’s raining cats and dogs on Wall Street.

Chewy, the online seller of pet food and squeaky toys, went public Friday and its shares soared 64%.

The stock rise now puts the value of the 8-year-old company at more than $14 billion.

Demand for the initial public offering has been high, with investors banking on the growth of the pet market. Chewy raised just over $1 billion, with 46.5 million shares sold at $22 each. That’s above what the company had expected.

Chewy’s shares (CHWY) rose as much as 88% in the first hour of trading Friday from the $22 offer price. The shares closed up 59% to $34.99, giving the company a market value of about $13.95 billion.

Chewy may bring to mind the failed online pet stores of the 1990s, but a lot has changed since the days of Pets.com. People are accustomed to buying nearly anything online. And pets are more pampered: Americans spent $72.6 billion on their furry pals last year, more than triple the amount spent two decades ago, according to the American Pet Products Association.

The Dania Beach, Florida-based company says most of its sales comes from shoppers who have signed up for automatic shipments of their pet supplies, giving Chewy a steady stream of revenue and time to plan shipments from its seven warehouses around the country.

Chewy was founded in 2011 and was bought six years later by pet store chain PetSmart for more than $3 billion. Even after the IPO, PetSmart is still Chewy’s largest shareholder.

To grow, Chewy plans to create more in-house pet food brands, expand its year-old animal pharmacy and venture beyond the U.S.

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InvestingAnalysis
Shares of Chewy Inc. rose more than 60% in their debut, giving the online pet products retailer a market value of $14.35 billion, more than four times the price PetSmart paid for the company in 2017.
petsmart, chewy, ipo, one billion dollars
276
2019-51-14
Friday, 14 June 2019 01:51 PM
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