Future looks bright for pet healthcare THERE can be few more faithful friends than a dog, cat or other companion animal. And that devotion goes two ways, with pet owners happy to shell out money to make their companion as happy and healthy as possible. For this reason one of the most anticipated company floats for next year is Nexvet. The company has just raised $7 million in an oversubscribed capital raising and together with around $3 million in grants this leaves it in a great position to float, although chief executive Dr Mark Heffernan confirms he is still weighing up the benefits of an ASX listing compared to a US Nasdaq listing. Hopefully the benefits of home overcome the attractions of higher offshore valuations because Nexvet's PETisation platform is throwing off some potentially very lucrative pet drugs that repurpose blockbuster human antibody drugs. Its lead products target chronic pain in dogs and cats and atopic dermatitis in dogs, although the platform allows for the fast development of other drugs including treatments for horses and cancer drugs. That leaves at least six new drugs in the pipeline with the ability to add to that roster quite quickly, given shorter trials for animal usage. So far trials on the injected pain drugs have been very successful with owners reporting their dog can resume jumping into a car, running or other activities that were previously avoided due to arthritic pain, greatly improving quality of life. "The great thing about our process is that you can see if you have a success or a failure very quickly and from there the path to market is about six or seven years with much cheaper development costs that human drugs," said Dr Heffernan. Given the high safety, effectiveness and sales of monoclonal antibody drugs in humans, there is no reason why that sort of blockbuster success can't be repeated in the animal space. Nexvet has been stocking its executive and board ranks with some heavy hitters so keep your eyes peeled for a 2014 float. In the interim, Greencross Vets is a great way to get some listed pet exposure. Originally a vet consolidator, Greencross last month closed a big $330 million scrip deal to buy the private Mammoth Pet Holdings, which owns the Petbarn chain in Australia and Animates in New Zealand. In one fell swoop that tripled revenue with the 120 large format Petbarn stores in Australia a nice fit with the vet practices, with plenty of opportunities to cross sell products and services through an expanded loyalty program. There is also potential to open one-stop shops combining a vet practice and Petbarn store. Normally I would be cautious after a big acquisition like this but with some common board and ownership links, a fast growing pet market and forecasts of double digit earnings growth on 2014/15, Greencross is a buy that hopefully will not turn into a dog. A LOT of value has been appearing the listed oil and gas space and Senex's now aborted scrip merger with AWE won't be the last opportunistic attempt to snap up an undervalued target. While there doesn't seem to be much synergy between Senex's Cooper Basin oil and gas and east coast gas assets and AWE's shale gas in Western Australia and Indonesian project, the approach shows companies are prepared to grab cheap reserves when they become available. Watch for more mergers and acquisitions in the oil and gas space in 2014. Senex and AWE move to buy in the dips.