• Wag!, an on-demand pet care services provider, has entered into an agreement to merge with CHW Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), in a transaction that sets Wag!’s enterprise value at ~USD 350 million. Upon the completion of the transaction, the SPAC is expected to be renamed as Wag! Group Co. and listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker “PET”. 

• Additionally, the company intends to raise an equity placement of USD 10 per share from existing investors (Battery Ventures, ACME Capital, General Catalyst, and Tenaya Capital) as well as USD 30 million in debt funding from Blue Torch Capital. The company intends to use the fresh funds to support its expansion strategy. 

• Wag! currently operates across 4,600 cities nationwide. The firm also expects to achieve a revenue target of more than USD 70 million by 2023 and to reach a positive adjusted EBITDA by Q2 2024. 

<ul><li> Analyst QuickTake: Wag! is the highest privately funded company operating in the on-demand pet care industry, with USD 361.5 million raised as of February 2022. In January 2018, the company raised USD 300 million from Softbank Vision Fund; however, soon after that, it struggled to keep pace with its competitor Rover and went through a period of layoffs, management changes, and failure to execute its global expansion plan. As a result, Softbank abandoned its investment in Wag! and sold its entire stake in the company by December 2019. Wag!’s enterprise value being set at ~USD 350 million (compared with Rover’s valuation of USD 1.63 billion at the time of its listing) - no more than the firm’s total funding raised to date, may reflect continued challenges facing the firm. </ul>