Pet tycoon's £67m doggy bag
HE has spent more than a decade selling dog food, but Anthony Preston will soon be eating caviar.
The Manchester founder of the Pets at Home superstore chain will bank £67m by selling a majority stake to venture capitalist Bridgepoint and keep a stake worth another £76m, making £143m in all.
Preston, 49, and his family will see their stake fall from 62% to around 33%. Backers 3i and ICG will sell out in the deal, which values the chain at £230m.
Preston, a former 3i employee, worked for his family's hardware wholesaling business but spotted an opportunity to transplant pet shops from the back streets to US-style out-of-town retail parks. He began trading from a single store in Chester in 1991. Pets at Home now sells its cockatoos-to-cat-litter range from 155 superstores.
He plans to add 200 more outlets within five years after opening a new distribution depot. The group made a gross profit of £24m in the year to March on £218m sales.
It was valued at just £23m in 1995 when 3i bought a 22% stake. The business was transformed in 1999 with the £30m acquisition of 92 superstores from US rival PetsMart, which had failed to crack the UK market.
Preston has now handed day-to-day management control to finance director Matthew Davies.
Bridgepoint beat off more than 20 bidders, including Change Capital, led by former Marks & Spencer chairman Luc Vandevelde.
