Chewy’s Largest Investor Sells $1.25 Billion of Stock

BC Partners lowered its Chewy stake by nearly 30 million shares. (Angus Mordant/Bloomberg)

The largest investor in pet-products retailer Chewy just fetched a large amount of cash by selling a big block of its shares.

An entity affiliated with BC Partners, an investment firm that is Chewy’s largest shareholder, sold $1.25 billion of stock through a public offering and a concurrent stock repurchase by Chewy itself on June 25. It converted 29,940,120 Class B shares to an equal number of the publicly traded Class A common shares. J.P. Morgan, the sole underwriter for the offering, bought 27,544,911 of those shares for $41.75 each; Chewy bought the remaining 2,395,209 shares at the same price.

Class B Chewy shares carry 10 votes each and don’t trade publicly. They are convertible at any time into an equivalent number of Class A shares, which carry one vote each.

The Class A Chewy shares were sold to the public at $41.95 each in the offering. Chewy stock has surged 23% this year, topping the 6.8% rise in the S&P 500.

BC Partners still owns 189,758,441 of Chewy’s Class B shares—all of the shares in the class—and still holds a majority of voting power. Before last week’s sale, it controlled nearly 92% of Chewy’s voting power, according to the company’s latest proxy.

BC Partners didn’t respond to a request for comment on the stock sale.

Chewy’s repurchase of stock from BC Partners is separate from the company’s existing $500 million share-repurchase program that was authorized in May 2024.

Inside Scoop is a regular Barron’s feature covering stock transactions by corporate executives and board members—so-called insiders—as well as large shareholders, politicians, and other prominent figures. Due to their insider status, these investors are required to disclose stock trades with the Securities and Exchange Commission or other regulatory groups.

Write to Ed Lin at ed.lin@barrons.com