Wilmslow-based pet and vet retailer Pets at Home Group announced on Thursday that its CEO Lyssa McGowan has left the business with immediate effect.

A search has commenced for a permanent CEO. 

Ian Burke, non-executive chair, has assumed the role of executive chair until a permanent CEO has been recruited.

Pets at Home also published an unscheduled trading update for FY26 “reflecting our updated views on retail trading and lowering profit guidance accordingly.”

The firm said: “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.

“Our Vet Group continues to deliver high-single digit sales growth. We are on track to deliver our planned 10 new practices in FY26, alongside 15 vet extensions and another year of profit progress.

“In light of the performance gap we have seen in retail versus our plan, we now expect FY26 underlying PBT in the range £90-100m.”