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Up 43% this year, shares of small-cap stock Pet Valu (TSX: $PET ) are staging a comeback.

Pet Valu is a Canadian pet food and supply company based in Toronto that has been a going concern since 1976.

The company first went public in 2009, was taken private again by a consortium of private equity firms after running into financial problems and then went public again in 2021.

Pet Valu ran into trouble after a costly 2010 acquisition of Bosley's Pet Foods Plus, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based pet supply store chain.

However, in recent years, Pet Valu has restructured, closing all of its stores in the U.S. so that it can focus on its home market of Canada.

Today, Pet Valu has 824 store locations and around 2,000 employees coast-to-coast in Canada. In 2024, it generated revenue of $1.1 billion and a net profit of $87.4 million.

The majority of the company's stores today are franchised to local owner-operators.

Analysts are applauding the turnaround at Pet Valu and the stock is responding, having grown substantially year-to-date.

Trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange with a market capitalization of only $2.49 billion makes PET a small-cap stock, defined as any security with a market value below $10 billion.

The stock also pays shareholders a quarterly dividend of $0.12, giving it a yield of 1.32%.

With Canadians spending $9.3 billion on pet services and $7.4 billion on pet food and supplies a year, a figure that has grown sharply since the Covid-19 pandemic, PET stock might be worth consideration.