Pets at Home Group has announced that chief executive Lyssa McGowan has left the business with immediate effect.
The sudden departure coincides with an unscheduled trading update for the full year (2026), which said that the performance of the retail side of the business had been “below expectations”, with in-store sales declining 5% in the year to date. The group further lowered its projected profit for the year.
A statement from the company read: “Our existing guidance assumed a central scenario for retail of 1% market growth against which we expected to return to market outperformance through FY26 as the investments we made in digital bore fruit.
“Through Q2, the underlying pet retail market has remained subdued, declining slightly year to date. Against this, we have seen the performance of the Retail business improve sequentially, narrowing the gap to the market, but the rate of improvement has been below expectations.
“We continue to see double-digit digital sales growth, outperforming the online retail market supported by our improved digital platform and strong growth in Easy Repeat subscriptions. In contrast, our store sales have proved more challenging, declining 5% year to date.
“In light of the performance gap we have seen in retail versus our plan, we now expect FY26 underlying PBT in the range £90 million-100 million.”
A search has commenced for a new permanent chief executive. Non-executive chair Ian Burke has assumed the role of executive chair until a permanent chief executive has been recruited.
Ms McGowan became chief executive of the business on June 1, 2022.
