This tool returns no valuation and no multiple, on purpose: no primary source publishes veterinary practice valuation multiples, so any figure quoted elsewhere is unverifiable. What it does is work out your adjusted EBIT and set out exactly what a buyer will examine.
From your last full year.
Earnings before interest and tax, exactly as your last accounts show it — including whatever the business currently pays you.
Salary, benefits and anything else charged to the practice for your own work. Exclude dividends, which come out of post-tax profit rather than sitting in EBIT.
What it would cost to employ a vet to do your clinical hours and a manager to do your management hours, including employer National Insurance at 15% and pension. This is the number a buyer uses.
Medicine and product sales as a percentage of total turnover. The remedies press directly on this line.
Plan income as a percentage of turnover. Draft Article 9 will require each component's standalone price, the savings methodology and the cancellation terms to be published.
If the practice occupies premises it does not pay a market rent for, its reported margin is overstated by the rent it is not paying.
Six groups own over 60% of UK practices. Local concentration affects both who will bid and whether their bid carries CMA call-in risk.
In a clinical business the practice is the team, and this is the most direct evidence a buyer has about what they are buying.
Accreditation is voluntary and its absence is not a defect. But a PSS-accredited premises is exempt from a separate VMD inspection, because the assessment includes a medicines module.
Illustrative figures on 2026/27 rates and simplified assumptions. This is information, not advice, and it is no substitute for a proper calculation on your practice's real numbers. Ask us for the accurate version — it's free.
We will send the figures exactly as they appear on the right, so you have them when you sit down with your partners, your practice manager or your bank. We use your address for that and for the monthly veterinary practice finance email, nothing else, and you can unsubscribe from the first one you get.
There is no published source for veterinary practice valuation multiples. Not EBITDA multiples. Not a price per full-time-equivalent vet. Not a percentage of turnover. The CMA's final report of 24 March 2026 obtained detailed financial information from all six large veterinary groups and from a sample of independent firms, published a great deal of margin and return-on-capital analysis, and deliberately does not publish valuation multiples.
So any multiple you have been quoted — in trade press, in broker material, or by a buyer — cannot be traced to a primary source. That does not automatically make it wrong. It means it cannot be tested, and a number that cannot be tested is a poor thing to anchor a life's work to. A tool that returned one would be inventing it, and we would rather tell you what a buyer will actually examine.
The adjustment above is the one that matters most in an owner-managed practice, and it is the one most often done badly. Your reported EBIT includes whatever you happen to pay yourself, which in a practice can be anything from a token salary topped up with dividends to a full commercial salary. A buyer does not care what you took. They care what it will cost to replace you — the market-rate cost of employing a vet to do your clinical hours and a manager to do your management hours.
So the arithmetic is: reported EBIT, add back what the business currently pays you, deduct the market-rate cost of replacing you. If that produces a materially better figure than your accounts show, you have been under-paying yourself and your margin was flattering. If it produces a worse one, you have been subsidising the practice with your own labour, and the buyer will find that out.
The adjusted EBIT margin is then comparable — to your own history, and to the only published distribution that exists. Appendix C of the CMA's final report examined 36 small independent veterinary firms over 2021 to 2023: EBIT margins from minus 9% to plus 34%, a weighted average of 11% across the period, 15% in 2021, 12% in 2022 and 9% in 2023, a top sextile of 28% and a bottom sextile of 0%, with 24 of the 36 firms on declining margins. The average across the six large groups was 14%. The CMA also assessed a pre-tax cost of capital for the sector of 7.5% to 10.5% a year with a mid-point of 9%, and recorded at paragraph 35 that four of the six groups made profits materially exceeding the cost of capital over a sustained period.
What that tells you is where you sit and which direction the market has been moving. What it does not tell you is what anybody will pay, and it is not a benchmark you are being held to.
Premises. Whether the building comes with the business, stays with you as an investment let to the buyer, or belongs to somebody else changes the deal fundamentally — and it changes your adjusted EBIT, because a practice occupying premises it does not pay a market rent for has an overstated margin. If you own the building personally and charge nothing, put a market rent into your overheads before comparing anything.
Income mix. The proportion of turnover from dispensing and from pet care plans is now a risk question as well as a revenue one. Draft Article 18 of the CMA's Order caps the written prescription fee, Article 8 publishes your parasiticide prices alongside a link to the VMD's Register of Online Retailers, and Article 9 requires each pet care plan component's standalone price, the savings methodology and the cancellation terms to be published. A buyer is pricing that exposure. The prescription fee modeller sizes the fee half of it.
Local corporate concentration. Over 60% of UK practices are owned wholly or partly by six groups — CVS, IVC Evidensia, Linnaeus, Medivet, Pets at Home and VetPartners — against 10% in 2013, and IVC alone has over 900 first opinion practices. Locally that cuts both ways. A trade buyer without local presence may value entry highly. A buyer who already holds a large share of the vets nearby carries CMA call-in risk: merger notification is voluntary and the final report created no new duty, but the CMA said at paragraph 136 that it will continue actively monitoring merger activity in the sector, and footnote 13 says it may use share of full-time-equivalent vets in specific local areas.
Staff retention. In a clinical business the practice is the team. Departures in the two years before a sale are the most direct evidence a buyer has about what they are actually buying, and they are the hardest thing to fix quickly.
Practice Standards Scheme status. Accreditation is voluntary — in the RCVS's own words, a voluntary accreditation, with accredited practices assessed every four years. Its absence is not a defect and nobody can be criticised for it. But it carries one concrete benefit: because the PSS assessment includes a medicines module meeting VMD requirements, a PSS-accredited premises is exempt from a separate VMD inspection. That is a demonstrable medicines review a buyer does not have to take on trust.
Whatever the price conversation, expect these to be examined, and expect anything missing to become a price adjustment rather than a question: premises registration site by site on the Register of Veterinary Practice Premises, at £38 per premises a year in England and Wales renewing 1 April, every branch separately; five years of POM-V and POM-VPS receipt and supply records, the reason recorded where a medicine was prescribed without a written prescription, antibiotic prescribing records, and the annual audit; and the CMA position — what has actually been done on the four publication duties, whether the practice management system can produce a written estimate at £500 and update it on a 20% or £500 rise, whether it can produce an itemised bill, and whether there is a complaint process and a log.
Those obligations transfer with the business. There is no purchaser's grace period, so a gap you leave is a project the buyer prices. CMA compliance and pricing is the full list, and selling a veterinary practice covers the tax on the proceeds — Business Asset Disposal Relief at 18% from 6 April 2026, within six points of the 24% main higher rate, which is why timing a sale around the relief is no longer the argument it was.
Print it or email it to yourself, and treat it as the agenda for the twelve months before you go to market rather than as a score. The items it flags are the ones a buyer will raise, and every one of them is cheaper to fix before the conversation than to concede during it. When you want the adjusted figure built from your own ledgers rather than typed in from memory, a free conversation will do it — and we will tell you if the answer is that you are not ready.
These tools use sensible simplifications. A free conversation gets you the accurate version — and usually two or three things worth fixing before your year end.
One short email: what has moved on the CMA remedies, the dates coming up, and one number worth checking in your practice. No spam, unsubscribe any time.