Pets are more popular than ever in the pandemic: In times of exit and contact restrictions, many people have acquired a dog, cat or other animal companion. Suppliers of pet supplies also benefit from this, food, collars, baskets and litter boxes are in greater demand than ever. And the market is competitive. Suppliers such as Fressnapf, Pets At Home from Great Britain or the jack-of-all-trades Amazon have recently grown significantly. The Munich-based online provider Zooplus, which claims to be the leading Internet platform for pet supplies in Europe, will also be there. They are active in 30 countries, around eight million pet owners in Europe order regularly.
Now an international financial investor wants to take over the listed company and expand the business further. The American holding company Hellman & Friedman is offering almost three billion euros. It would be offered 390 euros in cash per Zooplus share, announced Zooplus on Friday. The surprising and high supply caused the share price to jump on the stock market. The Zooplus share rose by more than 40 percent or well over 100 euros per share and was now quoted just under 400 euros. That was even above the Hellman & Friedman offer.
After the takeover, Zooplus is to be taken off the stock exchange. The board of directors and the supervisory board of Zooplus support the acquisition by the Americans. “With Hellman & Friedman we can show what we can do,” said company boss and founder Cornelius Patt Reuters. Above all, he hopes that the takeover will generate investments in further growth. In the current structure, these were not always possible on a large scale. Zooplus had recently benefited from the Corona crisis and the associated online boom and last year increased revenues by 18 percent to the record value of 1.8 billion euros; around 2.1 billion euros are planned for 2021. With the help of the new investors, company boss Patt now wants to invest in own brands, technology, marketing and logistics. The potential is huge, according to Patt: “A third of all Europeans have a pet.” The market for animal supplies is expected to grow to 50 billion euros in Europe by 2030.
Zooplus was founded in Munich in 1999. Initially, the Munich-based media company Burda held a stake in the company for a long time, but then left the company and went public in 2008. Hellman & Friedman had already been involved in several well-known German companies in the past, including Axel Springer, Pro Sieben Sat 1 and the Scout Group.