https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/29/petsmarts-online-business-chewycom-files-to-go-public.html https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...bond-market-the-no-1-retail-lbo-is-in-trouble The rest it took on to buy what was intended as an Amazon-beater -- the $3.4 billion acquisition last year of online pet merchant Chewy.com. It was the biggest e-commerce acquisition to date, topping even the $3.3 billion that retail giant Walmart shelled out for its takeover of Jet.com the year before. Some of PetSmart’s securities are now trading at about half of face value and yielding 21.2 percent, reflecting creditors concern that they won’t be fully repaid. Perhaps most disconcerting about PetSmart’s struggles is they are coming even as Americans spend more on buying and taking care of their pets -- $70 billion in 2017, compared to $41 billion in 2007, according to the American Pet Products Association. Its first quarter with Chewy on board last year saw earnings fall almost 40 percent under the weight of debt. CEO Departures After that, its post-buyout CEO Michael Massey abruptly resigned, and has yet to be replaced eight months later. This year, Chewy’s founder and CEO Ryan Cohen quit too. Massey reasoned that Chewy would establish a defensive line against Amazon and shore up earnings that had sagged since the takeover. But the plan backfired. PetSmart’s financials deteriorated even more sharply as Chewy, which has yet to turn a profit, dragged on earnings. In the third quarter of 2017, the latest available, the combined companies lost $56 million. “On the one hand, they can now say they’re a leader in the online pet space,” said former CEO Lenhardt. “On the other hand, they have a lot more debt.”
More rats fleeing the ship. They should have introduced a subscription-box service, opened a chain of "millennial-focused pet cafes", or released a dog-walking app. As it is, with so many unicorns trying to squeeze through the exit, I don't think they'll see too much interest in a bog standard money-losing ecommerce site.
https://www.recode.net/2019/3/6/18249997/lyft-uber-ipo-public-profit In 2018, 81 percent of US companies were unprofitable in the year leading up to their public offerings, according to data from Jay Ritter, an IPO specialist and finance professor at the University of Florida. That’s a statistical dead heat with the rate in 2000, the year the dot-com bubble burst, plunging the US economy into recession. It’s the only other time unprofitability was this high, according to Ritter’s data, which goes back to 1980. In 2019, we might hit 90 percent! When Chewy.com has the balls to go for an IPO, you know it's a wrap