Four pet brands are reportedly looking for buyers right now.

After three years of the slowest deal environment in over a decade, Q1 2026 just produced more meaningful pet industry M&A activity than most of the past year combined.

Five confirmed transactions in the first eleven weeks of the year.

Four more brands reportedly in active or exploratory sale processes, according to ION Analytics and Mergermarket. And the deals that are getting done tell a very specific story about what the next cycle of pet M&A actually looks like.

It does not look like 2021.

The pandemic-era playbook was simple. Pet ownership surged, spending followed, and buyers paid whatever it took to get in.

EBITDA multiples for the best pet consumables companies climbed into the mid-20s or higher, according to Carol Frank of BirdsEye Advisory Group.

Deal counts peaked at 58 in 2021 on PetfoodIndustry.com's tracking and 200 across the broader pet sector in Capstone Partners' universe. Capital was abundant, leverage was cheap, and the thesis was straightforward. More dogs, more spending, more deals.

Then the music stopped.

By 2023, pet food deal volume had dropped to just 18.

It ticked up slightly to 26 in 2024, then fell back to 23 in 2025.

ION Analytics reported that North American pet products and services logged only 43 deals in 2025, the lowest total since 2015.

Financial sponsors, the private equity firms that had fueled the boom, pulled back dramatically.

PE comprised just 31% of pet sector deal volume in 2025, down from 49.3% the year before. Add-on acquisitions, the bread and butter of PE platform building, collapsed from 28 deals to 10.

Carol Frank, who has tracked pet M&A for fifteen years, called 2025 "the slowest period in my 15-year M&A career."

Perhaps the most telling statistic came from Cascadia Capital's Winter 2025/2026 Pet Industry Overview.

In 2024, only 15% of pet industry deals brought to market through a bank-led process actually closed.

That is the lowest realization rate Cascadia has ever tracked. Sellers were launching processes.

Buyers were showing up. And then nothing happened. The gap between what sellers expected and what buyers would pay had become a chasm.

Several things, and they happened roughly at the same time. Interest rates started to stabilize.

The tariff landscape, while still evolving after the Supreme Court's IEEPA ruling in February, at least gave companies something more concrete to plan around than the uncertainty that had paralyzed decision-making for most of 2025.

And the PE hold clock started ticking louder.

Cascadia noted that many pet consumables companies that attracted private equity investment in the early 2020s are now approaching the end of their typical holding periods.

Sponsor-backed pet assets peaked in 2020 through 2022.

The math on a five-to-seven-year hold period means those exits are coming due whether the market cooperates or not.

The result has been a Q1 unlike anything the industry has seen since the cooldown began.

On February 6, Spanish conglomerate Agrolimen acquired fresh dog food brand Ollie in a deal Reuters reported at over $600M.

Agrolimen is a family-owned company that already controls Nature's Variety (the Instinct brand) in the U.S. and Natures Menu, Europe's largest raw pet food manufacturer.

Adding Ollie gives them a DTC fresh food brand with national cold-chain infrastructure to complement their raw portfolio.

Ollie's previous investors included Primary Venture Partners, Canaan Partners, and Lerer Hippeau, among others. This was a VC-backed brand finding its exit through a European strategic buyer, not a U.S. private equity firm.

Eleven days later, two more deals landed on the same day.

French family-owned Nasta Pet Food acquired Vancouver-based FirstMate Pet Foods, backed by a €120M financing facility from H.I.G. WhiteHorse.

The combined entity projects roughly €200M in 2026 consolidated revenue. It was a family-to-family transaction, which is notable in a market where PE has dominated the deal landscape for years.

On the same day, Pure Treats acquired Primal Pet Group from Kinderhook Industries, the private equity firm that had bought Primal during the 2020-2021 deal boom.

Pure Treats, which owns PureBites, now controls what Marc Cathcart described as "an unquestioned leader in the raw and freeze-dried space." Primal founder Matt Koss said the return to private ownership "is very positive for the brand." This is what a PE exit looks like in 2026.

Not a massive multiple expansion play, but a strategic combination where manufacturing footprint and format expertise justify the price.

Then on March 17, just last week, "I and love and you" acquired Made by Nacho, the premium cat food brand co-founded by Bobby Flay and CPG entrepreneur Elly Truesdell.

The combined company now reaches 30,000+ retail locations.

Flay is joining as Chief Culinary Officer, investor, and board member.

APPA data shows cat-owning households grew 23% year-over-year as of June 2025.

If you wanted a single deal that crystallizes where the industry's M&A attention is pointed right now, this is it.

Premium positioning. Cat-focused. Clean label. Omnichannel distribution. Celebrity brand equity that actually converts.

And Icelandirect's acquisition of SOMA Labs, also announced March 17, added supplement manufacturing capabilities in powders, tablets, capsules, and chewables.

That one flew under the radar, but it signals something important. Acquirers are not just buying supplement brands. They are buying the infrastructure to make supplements at scale.

Beyond the confirmed deals, Mergermarket reported on March 19 that four additional pet companies are currently in or coming to market.

Weruva, the family-owned premium wet food company based in Natick, Massachusetts, is reportedly in an ongoing sale process.

Weruva acquired DTC cat brand Cat Person in July 2024 and manufactures in human-grade facilities in Thailand. The company's portfolio is heavily weighted toward cat (BFF, Cats in the Kitchen), which puts it squarely in the category buyers are prioritizing.

Westminster Pet Products, a portfolio company of AUA Private Equity since August 2020, is reportedly running a bake-off to select a new advisor. This is not Westminster's first time on the market.

ION Analytics reported in July 2024 that the company was in advanced stages of a sale process via William Blair, with bids coming in around 8-9x EBITDA on roughly $12M in EBITDA.

That process did not close. The fact that AUA is reinitializing tells you something about PE's need for liquidity after five and a half years of ownership.

Nulo Pet Food, the Austin-based ultra-premium brand that Forbes named one of the Top 25 Most Innovative U.S. Brands, is reportedly exploring a potential sale.

Apax Partners took a majority stake in June 2021, buying out CAVU Venture Partners and Main Post Partners.

Revenue was $108M at the time of the Apax deal, and the company has continued expanding since. At roughly four and three-quarter years into the hold, Nulo sits within the typical PE exit window.

The Honest Kitchen, the San Diego-based pioneer of human-grade pet food, is also reportedly exploring a potential sale process. This one carries particular weight.

In April 2022, Monarch Alternative Capital made a $150M minority investment via convertible preferred, with Bloomberg valuing the company at approximately $500 million.

Goldman Sachs was the exclusive financial advisor. The San Diego Business Journal reported projected 2025 sales of $275M.

Founder Lucy Postins has transitioned from CEO to Chief Integrity Officer, a move that often precedes a sale.

Earlier investors Alliance Consumer Growth and White Road Investments have been in since 2011, which is a very long hold by any standard.

To be clear, "reportedly exploring" does not mean these deals are done, imminent, or even certain to happen.

Sale processes stall, bake-offs lead nowhere, and the 15% deal realization rate from 2024 is a sobering reminder of how many processes fail to close.

But the fact that this many recognizable brands are simultaneously in play tells you the market has shifted from "wait and see" to "let's test the waters."

The deals and the reported processes share a common thread, and it is not just "pet companies." The buyer's checklist has gotten extremely specific.

Carol Frank put it bluntly in her March 2026 commentary for ION Analytics.

"The days of general wellness positioning alone commanding premium valuations are largely behind us."

Cat-focused brands are at the top of the list. Tyler Frances at Alpine Investors noted a specific focus on cat food within the Antelope Pets platform.

The data supports this.

Dog ownership has declined from 41% to 38% of U.S. households since 2019 according to Cascadia, while cat-only households have risen from 14.1M to 16M.

Every deal chasing the cat category is chasing the growth.

Supplements are drawing serious institutional attention. Aarti Kapoor at Cascadia Capital told ION Analytics that Pet Honesty, Native Pet, and Wuffes are "among those closely watched by institutional investors."

She cited the category's "robust growth trajectory, multiple long-term drivers, and the 'incremental' value they can offer large-cap strategics who could be eventual acquirers."

Circana data shows dog supplements grew 9.2% to $633 million and cat supplements surged 27.9%.

When the manufacturing deals (like Icelandirect/SOMA Labs) start happening alongside the brand deals, it means the category is transitioning from "emerging" to "infrastructure."

Pet services remain resilient. Walter Florence at Frontenac, whose Digs Dog Care platform closed 15 add-on acquisitions in 2025, described services as a "$16B-plus market with approximately 96% independent operators."

That fragmentation is catnip for roll-up strategies.

What is not attracting interest?

Ekta Sharma at Topspin said the market was "muted, especially on the durables side." Hard goods, commoditized treats, undifferentiated accessories.

If you cannot explain why your product is defensible, differentiated, and growing in a market where consumers are reporting they plan to cut spending, buyers are not interested.

Anna Skaya of pet-focused VC fund AniVC told GlobalPETS that strategic buyers "are doing smaller deals and paying attention to profitability and very specific capabilities or brands."

She highlighted diagnostics, longevity, and preventive care as areas where "real science" plus strong consumer branding can stand out.

The multiples have come down and they are not going back to where they were.

Frank's assessment is that the best pet consumables companies are now transacting in the mid-teens to low-20s EBITDA range, down from mid-20s or higher at the peak.

Capstone Partners reported that average EBITDA multiples across the pet sector ran 14.5x from 2022 through 2025, up from 13.4x in 2018-2021, which suggests the floor has not fallen out but the ceiling has definitely come down for all but the most exceptional assets.

The bid-ask spread remains a real obstacle.

Capstone noted that it has been "partially attributable to PE-backed assets and businesses acquired during the pandemic at elevated multiples boosting seller valuation expectations."

Translation: sellers who bought high still want to sell high, and buyers are not playing along.

Harrison Seeman at Central Garden & Pet was direct about it. "The returns that sellers want should come from fundamental growth, not just hoping for a really high multiple."

The optimism in the market is real but conditional. Aarti Kapoor at Cascadia described "the powerful combination of dry powder, more favorable macroeconomic conditions, easing margin pressures, increased operational visibility, and robust long-term tailwinds" as setting up an active year for M&A and capital raising.

Harrison Seeman reinforced that there is "a lot of cash out there and a shortage of good companies." Central Garden & Pet CEO Nicholas Lahanas signaled on the company's fiscal Q4 2025 earnings call that deal flow in core categories "remains somewhat limited" but that the company "expects activity to accelerate as market conditions continue to improve."

But conditional means conditional.

Aliya Khaydarova at Inverness Graham was clear. "Unless you have an A asset that's profitable and growing, and not impacted by macro trends, I'd imagine most people will wait." David Cunningham at VisioCap echoed the point.

"Today's pet M&A market rewards preparation and focus. The capital is there, but only for businesses that can clearly articulate why they will endure and grow in any environment."

Carol Frank summed it up best. "For founders, now is the time to focus, prepare, and differentiate. Whether 2026 will be your exit year depends less on the market and more on your company's readiness."

The deals getting done in Q1 prove the market is moving again.

Fresh formats, cat brands, functional supplements, science-backed claims, and demonstrated profitability. That is what is clearing. Everything else is still waiting.