With a revenue of around $6 billion a year, PetSmart stock is on fire because the PetSmart store is one of the hottest pet supplies stores in the US right now. What’s more, it is growing all of the time and that is attracting many searches for “PetSmart stock price” and other queries associated with this chain.
The question is, can you buy PetSmart stock, is it publicly traded and will it be in the future? And if the answer is in the affirmative, then what makes it so special and why does it deserve to be part of your portfolio?
PetSmart Stock
PetSmart stock launched its IPO in 1993, with a listing on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the PetSmart stock symbol PETM. This signaled some good times for the brand, because shortly after they launched their own non-profit organization to help animals nationwide and then they launched their online operation in 1995.
A decade later PetSmart stock was one of the most popular of its kind and the chain had grown to over 1,300 locations across the United States. But that’s when the bad news struck for anyone looking to buy PETM stock, because they were fully acquired by BC Partners in 2014, with PetSmart stock ceasing trading shortly afterwards.
So, unless there is another PetSmart IPO anytime soon, then this is not a company that the general public can invest in.
PetSmart Acquisitions
Like all big brands PetSmart has bought many big companies over the years. One of these included Pet.com, which launched an IPO that has gone down as one of the worst ever. In under a year it had its IPO and then went into liquidation, with PetSmart acquiring most of the remaining assets. This was prior to the new millennium, when big brands were buying up premium domains and using them as the basis for an entire company.
In 2017, PetSmart made their biggest acquisition yet when they bought Chewy. This is essentially the company that Pet.com wanted to be. It was founded in 2017 and was quick to grow from that point on.
Chewy Stock
As with PetSmart stock, you can not buy Chewy stock on any US stock market. If that changes though then this will become a big part of the PetSmart stock package. Chewy is a huge brand that received over a quarter of a billion in investment during its early stages of development, which shows just how confident the experts were that it would succeed.
It built itself on a model of acquiring former brand warehouses and staff, taking a distribution center from Toys R Us and then headhunting top employees from Amazon and even PetSmart. It was a model that worked very well for the brand and took it to the top, at which point PetSmart saw fit to purchase it.
PetSmart Stock Price
The final closing numbers for the PetSmart stock price was 82.98. PETM stock had a year high of close to 84 and a year low of around 50, which shows how much volatility was surrounding stock in PetSmart in its final year on the market.
The volume for PETM stock was 11.61 million, with the average volume set at 2.13 million. The market cap wasn’t too far away from its value at the point of sale, coming in at around $8.25 billion, with just under 100 million shares outstanding.
Those are positive figures and it gives you an idea as to the previous and the current value of PetSmart. But whether they will play a role in any future IPO is a different story entirely.
PetSmart Stock Symbol
As mentioned above, the previous PetSmart stock symbol was PETM, or rather “NASDAQ: PETM”. It would have been fitting for them to have the PETS stock symbol, but that is currently in the hands of Petmed Express, who sell veterinary medicines.
PetSmart Stocks Alternative
If you come here looking to buy PetSmart stock then you’re obviously going to be a little disappointed. But there is similar stock that might be of interest to you. The pet toy market has never really interested us here on Buy Shares In as few stocks (apart from PetSmart stocks, of course) have interested us.
But there are similar markets that have. Hasbro stock (NASDAQ: HAS) is one such stock. They are the true toy giant of the US, with a brand that encompasses many of your favorite toys, comics and card trading games. You may also want to take a look at our LEGO Stock page, although prepare to be just as disappointed as you are with this PetSmart Stock page if you do.
PetSmart Stock News and Controversy
PetSmart has had its fair share of negative news and controversy over the years. This is not the sort of tax controversy that seems to follow many big companies around, including the likes of Google and Starbucks. Instead, and perhaps more worryingly, it has concerned the alleged mistreatment of some animals that have been under their care.
This is not something that any potential customer wants to hear about. We all love our animals and for many of us they are a part of the family. So, when stories like this emerge it is a major concern. These have included everything from serious lawsuits resulting from the death of an English bulldog, to injury claims from when a customer slipped on dog feces in one of their stores.
There are also some rather strange stories regarding sick animals that allegedly led to the death of humans, but many of these links seem to have been pulled from the sites that originally covered them, so we can only assume that they were completely made-up, or they were kicked out of court.
The important thing to consider as a customer is that huge companies will always have some complaints. When you think about how many animals they have groomed, trained and sold, along with how many customers they have served and how common it is for animals to get illnesses, disorders and diseases, it’s easy to understand how these things could happen and it is probably nothing to worry about.
Saying that, if you do suspect anything has happened and that your animal has been mistreated, you should push that case as far as it will go. Because whether it’s the result of bad practices or even the malicious intent of a single employee, it’s not something that should be allowed to stand unpunished.