Petco files to go public — again 

Petco Health and Wellness Co. Inc. plans to return to the public arena as consumer spending on pets continues to surge amid the pandemic. 

The San Diego-based pet supplies and services company has filed  for an initial public. The stock is expected to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "WOOF."

Petco, which has about $3.3 billion in debt outstanding according to its prospectus, hasn’t yet determined how many shares it will offer in the initial public offering or the pricing. In September, Bloomberg reported that the company was mulling a sale or an IPO that would value the company at $6 billion. 

This is not the first time that Petco, which is owned by private equity investors CVC and Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, has gone the IPO route. The company first went public in 1994, but then went private in 2000 when it was acquired by TPG and Leonard Green in a $600 million deal.

Petco went public again in 2002, but TPG and Leonard Green took it private again in 2006 in a $1.7 billion deal. They sold it to CVC and CPPIB for $4.6 billion in 2016. 

The retailer reported $24.8 million in net losses for the 39 weeks ended 31 October compared with roughly $94 million in losses for the year-ago period. Net sales rose 9% to $3.58 billion compared with the the year-ago period. Same-store sales are up 9.6% to date this year.

Petco operates more than 1,500 locations across the U.S., Mexico and Puerto Rico, including more than 100 in-store veterinary hospitals.