An Australian veterinary practice is typically worth 4 to 7 times its annual EBITDA — earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. For a suburban small animal clinic in Perth or Sydney generating $400,000 to $600,000 in EBITDA, that puts the sale price somewhere between $1.6 million and $4.2 million. Revenue multiples of 0.8x to 1.5x serve as a cross-check, especially for smaller or mixed practices where profit can be hard to normalise. Where you land in that range depends almost entirely on factors that have nothing to do with how good a vet you are.
How Vet Practices Are Actually Valued
Buyers — whether a corporate roll-up, a young associate vet looking for their first practice, or a private investor — use one of two methods, often both as a cross-check.
EBITDA multiple. The main approach for any practice generating meaningful profit. Take three years of financials, calculate normalised EBITDA by adding back the owner’s salary above market-rate locum cost, personal expenses run through the P&L, and any genuine one-off items, then apply a multiple. That multiple reflects how transferable the earnings are — how likely a buyer is to retain them once you’re gone.
Most Australian vet practices sell at 4x–6x normalised EBITDA. The strongest clinics — multi-vet, strong associate base, diversified revenue — can reach 7x or higher when corporate buyers compete for them.
Revenue multiple. Used as a sanity check, particularly where EBITDA margins have been suppressed by an owner drawing a generous salary or investing ahead of growth. A range of 0.8x to 1.5x gross annual fees is typical. A practice billing $2M at 1x revenue should be worth roughly $2M — if the EBITDA multiple gives a similar answer, the model is consistent. If they diverge significantly, something unusual is happening in the cost structure, and a buyer’s due diligence team will find it.
For a broader view of how EBITDA multiples compare across Australian industries, see our EBITDA multiples by industry guide.
The Corporate Consolidator Effect
This is the part of the conversation most vet owners aren’t expecting — and it changes the calculus significantly.
Since around 2015, Australian vet practices have been a target for large-scale consolidation. VetPartners, Greencross Vets (now backed by TPG Capital), National Veterinary Care, and Mars Petcare’s various arms have been systematically acquiring independent clinics from Broome to Hobart. The effect on multiples has been real. Where a private buyer might pay 4x EBITDA, a motivated corporate acquirer building geographic density may pay 6x to 8x for a clinic that fits their footprint.
I saw this play out with a practice owner in the southern suburbs of Perth. She’d received an unsolicited approach from one of the major groups — 5.5x EBITDA, which looked reasonable on the surface. When we sat down and actually normalised the financials (she’d been drawing a principal salary about $90,000 below what a locum replacement would cost, plus there were several personal items flowing through the P&L), the real EBITDA was around 22% higher than the corporate group had used. The revised offer came in $420,000 higher than the opening number. Not a bad outcome from two hours of analysis.
The corporate groups aren’t doing this out of generosity. They’re paying premium multiples because they have procurement scale, specialist referral networks, and marketing platforms that let them extract more value from the same clinic you’ve been running for fifteen years. That’s fine — you can benefit from that dynamic. You just need to know the multiple they’re applying is based on your numbers, not theirs.
What Drives Your Multiple Up — or Down
Not all EBITDA is equal in the eyes of a buyer. These are the factors that will materially move where you land in the 4x–7x range.
Associate structure. The single biggest variable. A practice where 60–70% of clinical revenue flows through associates rather than the principal is a transferable asset. A practice where the owner does 80% of the billings is closer to a job than a business (and buyers price it accordingly). If you’re planning to sell in the next three to five years, building and retaining a solid associate team is the highest-return investment you can make.
Lease quality. Buyers need certainty of tenure. A lease with fewer than three years remaining, or no meaningful renewal option, introduces deal risk that either kills a transaction or forces a price reduction. A five-to-ten year lease with options and a reasonable rent-to-revenue ratio — generally under 7–8% of gross fees — is what a buyer wants to see.
Owner working hours. How many clinical days a week are you still doing? If you’re working five days as a clinician plus managing the business, the practice depends on your skills to function. If you’ve stepped back to two or three clinical days and revenue hasn’t fallen, that’s a meaningful signal to a buyer — they can see a clear transition path.
Specialty and revenue mix. Pure small animal general practice is the most liquid asset in this market. Mixed practices with equine or bovine work can attract buyers who value the mix, but the buyer pool shrinks sharply. Emergency and specialist referral centres are a different category entirely — higher multiples, but far fewer qualified buyers exist who can actually run them.
Fee structure. If your consultation fee is sitting below the local market average, a buyer sees upside potential. If you’re already at the top of the range, there’s less headroom. Fee adequacy matters not just for revenue, but as a signal that the practice is positioned as a professional service, not a discount provider.
The Goodwill Question
Goodwill in a vet practice has two distinct components, and buyers think about them very differently.
Personal goodwill is attached to you specifically — clients who return because they trust you. This erodes when you leave. A practice where 60% of clients are personally loyal to the departing principal is carrying meaningful transition risk, and buyers price that risk into their offer.
Practice goodwill is the value of systems, staff, client database, location, and brand that survives an ownership change. This is what buyers pay for. A well-managed practice with experienced nurses, stable reception staff, a clean CRM with active recall systems, and consistent clinical protocols has high transferable goodwill — and a buyer will pay accordingly.
The more you’ve built a practice that doesn’t depend on you personally, the more of your goodwill a buyer will actually pay for.
Most vet practice sales include a structured handover — typically three to six months of continued involvement by the departing vet. Corporate groups often build this into the deal structure explicitly, sometimes with an earn-out component tied to retained revenue. That’s worth negotiating carefully.
Should the Property Be in the Deal?
If you own the building your practice operates from, you have a decision to make: sell it with the practice, or hold it and lease it back to the buyer.
Including the property simplifies the transaction and can attract buyers who want the security of tenure without negotiating a lease from scratch. But it mixes two quite different assets — a business and a commercial property — in a way that can complicate valuation and due diligence, and may reduce your pool of buyers (not everyone can fund both).
The more common approach for mid-sized practices is a leaseback: sell the business at a business multiple, and either retain the property for passive income or sell it separately to a commercial property investor. This lets you extract value from both assets independently and often produces a better total outcome. It also means the buyer isn’t tying up capital in real estate when they want to invest in growing the clinic.
The right answer depends on the property’s characteristics, your capital needs, and what you’re doing post-sale. Worth working through with both your accountant and your M&A advisor before you commit to either path.
What Realistic Numbers Look Like
These are illustrative ranges, not guarantees. Every practice is different, and the market moves.
| Annual EBITDA | 4x Multiple | 6x Multiple | 7.5x (Corporate premium) |
|---|---|---|---|
| $200,000 | $800K | $1.2M | $1.5M |
| $400,000 | $1.6M | $2.4M | $3M |
| $600,000 | $2.4M | $3.6M | $4.5M |
| $1,000,000 | $4M | $6M | $7.5M |
A suburban metro small animal practice billing $1.5M–$2.5M with typical margins would generally fall into the $300,000–$600,000 EBITDA range after normalisation — meaning a realistic sale value of $1.2M–$4.5M depending on practice quality, location, and who the buyer is.
Tax: What You Actually Keep
The sale price is the number you’ll quote at dinner. The after-tax proceeds are what you retire on.
Australian vet practice owners selling their business may be eligible for some or all of the small business CGT concessions — including the 15-year exemption (which can eliminate CGT entirely), the retirement exemption (up to $500,000 lifetime), and the active asset reduction (which halves the capital gain). Whether you access them depends on how the practice is structured, how long you’ve held it, and how the sale is structured.
Whether you sell via asset sale or share sale matters too — asset sales are more common for vet practices and are generally preferred by buyers, but sellers often prefer a share sale for the tax treatment. Getting those structures right is not a question for a general accountant. It’s a question for a specialist who lives in business sales.
Preparing Your Practice for a Sale
The best time to start thinking about sale preparation is three to five years out. That’s enough time to address the things buyers penalise: excessive owner-dependency, an underfunded associate team, a lease due for renewal, fee structures running below market, or financial records that tell a muddled story.
The worst time to think about it is six months before you want to be out. By then you’re managing what you have, and a buyer’s due diligence team will find everything that needs finding.
If you’re in the planning stage — or if you’ve just received an unsolicited approach and want to know whether the number on the table is credible — use our business valuation calculator to get a rough sense of where you stand, or get in touch directly for a confidential conversation about your practice specifically.
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