Veterinary Practices

We have 24 year’s experience selling and appraising veterinary practices. We are familiar with the unique operating and financial characteristics of veterinary practices as related to sales and valuations. Small animal, mixed animal, large animal, ER, specialty referral, performance and pleasure equine, and mobile practices.

What do Veterinary Practices Sell For?

There is no single magic formula to a veterinary practice. Professional practices are often more difficult to value than other businesses because such a wide value range. Veterinarians often want to know a simple rule-of-thumb for valuing their practice. Here are a some rules-of-thumb:

Smaller Veterinary practices: average 60% to 70% of annual gross income.
Larger Veterinary practices (3+ DVMs): often sell for 100% to 120% of annual gross income.

Simplistic valuation formulas and averages often don’t apply very well to practices. We often see veterinary practices sell for 2 standard deviations above or below the average sales price. Occasionally, we see practice values even outside this range. Is your practice average, or above or below the average? By how much?

Numerous factors influence value. Some examples are shown below:

Profitability.
Location.
Equipment and age.
Average weekly owner DVM hours and number of patient encounters per day.
Support staffing ratios and expense
Income trends
Practice type. Small animal, Large animal, mixed animal, ER, Equine, specialty
Demographics and Competition.
Ancillary profit centers such as grooming, boarding, retail sales, or acupuncture or VOM

The graphs below show the wide range of values for veterinary practices nationwide.

Where would your practice fall on this spectrum?

The VetBroker Brokerage and Appraisal Services

We can help sellers with selling a practice, or buyers buying a practice, getting a formal practice valuation or just an informal 2nd value opinion, equipment appraisals, buyer representation, and finding a practice.