When people picture the Portugal–Scandinavia corridor, they usually picture it running one way: Nordic capital flowing south into Iberian solar farms, data centres and green-hydrogen plants. The most under-told half of the story is the reverse — and there is no cleaner example than this. Sonae, the Maia-based Portuguese retail group, controls Musti Group, the largest specialty pet-care retailer in the Nordics. And in its most recent quarter, that bet kept compounding: Musti reported net sales up 15.6% year-on-year to €138.5 million for the quarter ended 31 March 2026, with Norway surging 25.5%.
How a Portuguese retailer ended up owning the Nordics’ pet leader
Sonae did not build Musti from scratch — it bought it, and took it private. In a deal first announced in late 2023, a consortium led by Sonae alongside executives Jeffrey David, Johan Dettel and David Rönnberg launched a recommended public tender offer for all shares in Musti through the bid vehicle Flybird Holding Oy, valuing the company at roughly €868 million in equity at €26 per share. The acquisition completed in 2024, cleared by the European Commission, and Musti was subsequently delisted from Nasdaq Helsinki. It remains one of the most significant outbound acquisitions a Portuguese company has ever made in the Nordic region.
A genuine Nordic market leader
Musti is not a minor holding. It is the category leader across Finland, Sweden and Norway, running an omnichannel model that pairs a large store estate with e-commerce and subscription auto-replenishment. As of 31 December 2025 the group operated 497 stores — including 138 in Sweden and 91 in Norway, with the balance in its home market of Finland. The company has built a loyal, high-frequency customer base in a category that proves resilient through economic cycles: pet owners keep buying food and vet services when they cut back elsewhere.
Norway is the growth engine
The standout in the latest numbers is Norway, where net sales rose 25.5% year-on-year to roughly €24 million, with like-for-like growth of 12.6% on top of new-store ramp-up. During the quarter Musti acquired Petco Retail, which operates three locations in Norway, and opened two further directly operated stores. It is also pushing into the Norwegian veterinary market, extending from retail into higher-margin services. Group-wide, the active customer base grew 2.8% — a reversal from the slight decline a year earlier.
Sweden is the scale opportunity
If Norway is the growth story, Sweden is the scale story. With 138 stores, it is Musti’s largest market by footprint, and management’s stated priority there is to lift penetration of own and exclusive brands toward the levels long established in Finland — the lever that does the most for margin. Converging the Swedish operation onto the group’s most profitable playbook is where a chunk of the value-creation case for the take-private ultimately sits.
The honest caveat: still investing for growth
This is not a finished turnaround. Musti posted a net loss of €3.8 million in the quarter, slightly wider than the €3.5 million loss a year earlier — the cost of acquisitions, store openings and integration. The advantage of private ownership under Sonae is patience: free of the quarterly scrutiny of a public listing, the group can fund expansion and absorb near-term losses while it chases a Nordic pet market growing at an estimated 6% a year through 2028.
Why it matters for the corridor
This is Direction B in its purest form: not a Portuguese firm exporting a container of product to Stockholm, but a Portuguese group owning and operating a Nordic market leader — setting strategy, allocating capital and running hundreds of stores across three countries from a parent in northern Portugal. It is proof that the corridor is not a one-way street of Nordic money heading to Lisbon. For Portuguese corporates weighing the Nordics, Musti is the reference case: the region is not only a place to sell into, but a place to build a durable operating platform. The signals to watch from here are the margin inflection in Sweden, the pace of bolt-on deals like Petco, and whether the Norwegian vet push becomes a template for the rest of the group.