Online pet product retailer Chewy is having a stellar first day on the stock market

Chewy's IPO day has been a total nailbiter for its competitors.

On Friday, the online pet product retailer debuted on the New York Stock ExchangeY with a $22 initial public offering. That was above the $19-21 range Chewy's IPO was expected to debut at, but its shares still surged another 85 percent upon opening before stabilizing around $34 for the rest of the day.

Chewy was founded in 2011 and acquired by PetSmart six years later for $3.35 billion. It has yet to turn a profit, losing $268 million from 2017 to 2018. Still, its $22 IPO put its valuation at $8.8 billion at the end of Thursday. And when those shares' prices rocketed up 60 percent to open at $36, its valuation shot to $14.3 billion, CNN notes. Stocks even hit a peak of $41.06 at 11:25 a.m. before steadying.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Experts credit Chewy's successful IPO base to its $3.5 billion in sales last year, which were up 68 percent from the year before, CNBC reports. Chewy will likely continue to capitalize on the growing pet product market, which expanded by $3 billion from 2017 to 2018 and is expected to do the same in 2019, hitting an estimated $75.38 billion, per the American Pet Products Association. Chewy still faces competition from General Mills, which recently bought pet food brand Blue Buffalo, and from Amazon.

If the markets aren't your thing, you'd probably still like to know that Chewy brought dogs on the New York Stock Exchange floor Friday morning. Kathryn Krawczyk