The pet space is showing no signs of slowing down in growth and wherever you look, there seems to be another subsector that is emerging, such as pet insurance. And now it looks like another category is coming into focus: digital pet health. One CEO of a publicly-traded company explains.
“Pet telemedicine is pretty new,” PetMed Express Inc. (Nasdaq: PETS) CEO Matt Hulett tells Mergers & Acquisitions. “Even people thinking about pharmacy fulfillment online is pretty new. Maybe not now, but maybe in the coming years, as the economy brightens up, I wouldn’t be surprised to see consolidation.” PetMed is a Delray Beach, Fla.-based pet healthcare and medication company.
“What vet clinics want because of technology, they want high-yield visits,” Hulett adds. “They don’t want the ‘my dog ate this, should I take him in?’ kind of calls. I think that’s where the digital vet component starts to become interesting, and I think that’s going to be a real interesting trend long-term.”
PetMed has over $100 million in cash which at least some will be used towards acquisitions. Last year, PetMed invested in a veterinary telemedicine company called Vetster. Hulett says that PetMed will be looking for deals around anything that “provides us the capability to become a pet health expert.”
“The pet space is massively fragmented,” he adds.
–Demitri Diakantonis
