Australians, while shunning many bricks and mortar fashion retailers, are still spending up big on their pets.

Greencross, the Australian petcare group, today posted a 17% lift in half year profit to $21.9 million. Revenue jumped 14% to $412.3 million for the six months to December.

CEO Martin Nicholas says the result is a strong endorsement of the company’s integrated petcare strategy.

Like for like (LFL) sales at Greencross, which includes Petbarn and Greencross Vets, were up 4.3%, with a 23% rise in cross-selling between the veterinary practices and the pet food and accessory stores.

The company added another 16 stores in the six months to December, including the opening of its 200th Australian retail store at Neutral Bay in Sydney.

“We remain confident we can meet our long term target of 350 stores in Australia and New Zealand,” says Nicholas.

“We had a good Christmas with strong growth in services revenue and record sales in our core dog and cat food categories driving 4.% group retail LFL sales growth.

“I am particularly delighted with our veterinary division which achieved industry leading 5.3% LFL sales growth driven by the rapid ramp up in visits to our in-store clinics and continued cross referrals from our retail stores.”

The company declared a fully franked dividend of 9.5 cents a share, an increase of 5.6% on the same six months the year before.

Greencross first half results in detail:

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