Chewy CEO says the online pet retailer isn’t planning to sell CBD

CBD has become a popular fix for pet owners looking to treat their animals’ anxiety and epilepsy.

But they won’t be able to shop the cannabis compound at Chewy, the online pet product retailer owned by PetSmart, anytime soon.

“CBD is not something that I’m thinking about immediately,” Chewy CEO Sumit Singh said Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street ” ahead of the e-commerce pet food retailer’s market debut.

Singh said that the company would consider CBD “when it’s legal,” adding that the primary focus is expanding its assortment of products. The Food and Drug Administration hasn’t approved cannabis products for human or animal consumption yet, and there is little data to prove that its use benefits pets.

Even without the FDA’s go-ahead, sales of CBD pet products quadrupled last year to $32 million from $8 million in 2017, according to the Brightfield Group, a cannabis-focused research firm. And the group estimates that number could skyrocket to $1.16 billion in the U.S. alone by 2022.

Other mainstream retailers have begun selling CBD products in their stores. Major chains like Walgreens and Kroger have started selling topical products that contain the cannabis compound. Topical products like creams and oils carry less legal risk.

Even without CBD products, Chewy reported $3.5 billion in sales for fiscal 2018. The company has not turned a profit yet, joining a host of other unprofitable companies like Uber and Pinterest that are going public this year.

Shares of Chewy soared 77% Friday morning after pricing its IPO at $22 per share. The offering raised just over $1 billion, valuing the retailer at $8.8 billion. Following the offering, PetSmart will still own roughly 70% of the company’s common stock and hold about 77% of its voting power.