Ben Gilbert: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Of course. Service is business. They own thousands of hospitals. We don’t know the margin of the pet hospitals versus the dog food, versus the candy. Specifically about Mars, we can probably look at industry comparables to try to understand that. At least on a top line basis and an employee basis, pet care is the dominant component of this business. If you want a little bit of a hint, the new CEO in 2022 came from their pet care division. In many ways, they are a pet food company that also makes candy and always has been. If you look back, it was the year after Forest Mars founded the UK division when they bought the first dog food, which was almost immediately cash generative. The biggest aha moment to me is, they’ve been doing this the whole time other than the veterinary services. That is again new. You might be wondering, well, how significant of the market of vets do they own? Mars owns 3000 locations out of 35,000–40,000 vets in the US. That’s 8% of vets. They’re not just exploring vets, they’re the largest or one of the few largest players in vets in the entire country. I think they are the largest. There are other vet roll up plays. A darling of search funds and private equity in the last decade is veterinary roll ups, dental roll ups, stuff like that.…

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