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Selling a veterinary practice

You will be dealing with buyers who have done this hundreds of times and have your sector's financial data in front of them. The work worth doing is knowing what your practice earns normalised, what a buyer will examine, and what the tax on the proceeds actually is now that Business Asset Disposal Relief has moved twice in two years.

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Corporate ownership: Over 60%of practices, wholly or partly, held by six groups
BADR: 18%from 6 April 2026 — 14% for the year before
Merger notification: Voluntaryno new duty, but the CMA says it is watching the sector

60%+of UK practices owned wholly or partly by six groups, from 10% in 2013

900+first opinion practices at IVC; the largest business outside the six owns 38

11%weighted average EBIT margin across the CMA's 36 independent practices

9%the mid-point of the CMA's pre-tax cost of capital range for the sector

An approach has arrived, or you have decided this is the year

The consolidation numbers are the context for every conversation you are about to have. Over 60% of UK veterinary practices are now owned wholly or partly by six large groups — CVS, IVC Evidensia, Linnaeus, Medivet, Pets at Home and VetPartners — against 10% in 2013. The expansion came mainly from a large number of acquisitions over a relatively short period, and five of the six grew that way; Pets at Home expanded by opening new practices instead.

The scale gap is worth holding in mind. IVC has over 900 first opinion practices in the UK. The smallest of the six, Linnaeus, has around 180. The next largest veterinary business after the six owns 38, and 76% of veterinary businesses own just one. If you own one practice you are the typical seller, and you are negotiating with an organisation that has completed more deals in your sector than you will read about.

Their ownership shapes their behaviour: CVS and Pets at Home are listed companies; IVC, VetPartners and Medivet are private-equity owned; Linnaeus is owned by Mars Petcare. Only Medivet and Pets at Home brand all or most of their practices UK-wide. Pets at Home uses a joint venture structure with most practices co-owned by local vets, and Medivet operates a partnership model for a number of its practices — so "selling to a corporate" covers several genuinely different propositions, and which one is on the table changes what you are agreeing to.

Say this plainly

There are no published valuation multiples, and we will not invent one

No primary source publishes 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 — which obtained detailed financial information from all six large groups and from a sample of independent firms, and which published a great deal of margin and return-on-capital analysis — deliberately does not publish valuation multiples either.

So any multiple you have been quoted, in trade press or in broker material or by a buyer, is unverifiable. That does not automatically make it wrong. It does mean it cannot be tested, and a number that cannot be tested is a poor thing to anchor a life's work to. Our position is that we would rather tell you what the evidence supports than dress up a rule of thumb as analysis.

What the CMA's own financial work does establish

Appendix C of the final report examined a sample of 36 small independent veterinary firms. This is the only published distribution of independent practice profitability that exists, and it is genuinely useful for locating yourself:

Measure, 2021–2023	Figure
EBIT margin range across the sample	−9% to +34%
Weighted average EBIT margin	11%
2021	15%
2022	12%
2023	9%
Top sextile	28%
Bottom sextile	0%
Firms with declining margins across the period	24 of 36
Firms with rising margins	12 of 36
Firms staying in the same sextile all three years	9
Average EBIT margin across the six large groups	14%

Read the trend as well as the average. The weighted average fell from 15% to 9% over three years and two thirds of the sample had declining margins. Excluding the two firms with large animal services made no difference to the weighted averages. The report also notes a wide distribution of performance among independent businesses, with some making significantly higher margins than others — and the sextile persistence data shows only half the top-sextile firms stayed there.

Two further verified figures give you the buyer's frame of reference. The CMA assessed a pre-tax cost of capital of 7.5% to 10.5% a year with a mid-point of 9% over the five years to 2024. And the aggregate return on capital employed across all large-group local clinics was 19% a year in its base case — sensitive to fit-out cost assumptions, rising to 28% at independent-firm fit-out levels and falling to 15% if fit-out costs are 25% higher. Paragraph 35 records that four of the six groups — CVS, IVC, Pets at Home and VetPartners — made profits which materially exceeded the cost of capital over a sustained period. Group-specific profit and return figures in that appendix are redacted in the published version, so nobody can reconstruct them and we do not try.

Work out where your own margin sits with the profitability calculator, and use what drives a practice's value to see what a buyer examines. Neither returns a valuation, deliberately.

Six groups own more than 60% of UK practices. If you own one, you are negotiating with somebody who has done this hundreds of times.

Selling a veterinary practice

Tax on the proceeds

Business Asset Disposal Relief has moved twice

Disposal date	BADR rate
On or before 5 April 2025	10%
6 April 2025 to 5 April 2026	14%
From 6 April 2026	18%

The qualifying conditions all look back at least two years before the disposal. As a sole trader or partner: you are one, and you have owned the business at least two years. As a shareholder: you are an employee or office holder of the company, and the company's main activities are in trading rather than non-trading activities like investment. For non-EMI shares there is also the personal company test — at least 5% of shares and voting rights, plus entitlement to 5% of either profits and assets on winding up or of disposal proceeds.

Why the timing argument has largely gone

Illustrative only, and ignoring the annual exempt amount and any other gains. Take a qualifying gain of £600,000. At the old 10% rate the tax was £60,000. At 14% it is £84,000. At 18% from 6 April 2026 it is £108,000. The same gain taxed at the 24% main higher rate would be £144,000 — so the relief is now worth £36,000 on a £600,000 gain, where at 10% it was worth £84,000.

That changes the advice. At 10% the relief was worth building a deal around. At 18% it sits within six points of the main higher rate, so the incentive to accelerate a sale to catch a rate, or to contort a structure to qualify, has narrowed a long way. The two-year conditions still matter and still need planning for — but selling to the right buyer at the right price now outweighs the tax tail comfortably.

One to confirm

Take specific advice on the lifetime limit that applies to your own position. It is a real constraint and the figure most commonly quoted for it is not stated on the gov.uk Business Asset Disposal Relief page, so we are not going to publish a number for it here that you might rely on. It is a straightforward thing to confirm for your circumstances before you commit to a structure.

Competition law

Voluntary notification, and a regulator that has said it is watching

UK merger notification is voluntary. There is no mandatory pre-notification obligation, and the CMA's final report created no new notification duty for veterinary transactions. The thresholds, as amended by the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 with effect from 1 January 2025, are a target UK turnover exceeding £100 million, or a share-of-supply test creating or enhancing a 25% share of supply in the UK or a substantial part of it, with a £10 million UK turnover safe harbour where the share-of-supply route is relied on. A separate acquirer-focused threshold catches an acquirer with a 33% share of supply and UK turnover of £350 million or more.

A single independent practice sale will not come close to a turnover threshold. What matters is what the CMA said at paragraph 136: previous merger investigations in the veterinary sector have led to divestments of first opinion practices to address competition concerns, and in line with its current practice the CMA will continue actively monitoring merger activity in the sector for relevant acquisitions that may harm competition, taking account of the analysis in the market investigation. Footnote 13 adds that it may assess future mergers using share of full-time-equivalent vets in specific local areas, as it has in previous veterinary cases.

So the honest position for a seller: there is no filing obligation, and there is genuine call-in risk where a buyer already holds a substantial share of the vets in your local area. That is a question about your postcode rather than about your turnover, and a buyer with a local concentration problem is a buyer whose deal may take longer or may need conditions.

The CMA remedies and your sale

What a buyer will now ask that they did not ask two years ago

The remedies change diligence. A buyer is now pricing a business whose written prescription fee will be capped, whose price lists become public by weight band, and whose dispensing income sits next to a published link to the register of online retailers. Expect to be asked:

How much of your margin depends on dispensing, and what the prescription fee line is worth today. If you have not modelled it, the buyer will — and their number will be the one on the table. The prescription fee modeller gets you there first.
Whether your pet care plan makes money once each component's standalone price is published, as draft Article 9 will require.
What state your complaint process and log are in. Six months from the Order for Large and Small businesses alike, with no concession for size — and the log is a revealing document.
Your premises registration, site by site, and five years of medicines records with the annual audit.
Your out-of-hours contract, whose notice period and termination terms change on the day the Order is made.

Preparing those answers is the highest-return work available to a seller, because every one of them is a discount if the buyer finds it and a non-issue if you did. The CMA compliance page is the full picture, and selling to a corporate group covers what an approach and a set of heads of terms actually commit you to.

What you get

Sale-ready, then supported through the deal

Accounts a buyer can rely on

Two or three years presented consistently, owner's remuneration normalised to a market rate, one-off items identified, and the dispensing margin separated from clinical margin.

The value drivers, honestly

What a buyer examines and how your practice reads against it — with no multiple, because none is publishable.

The drivers

The tax modelled before you sign

BADR at 18% from 6 April 2026, the two-year conditions, the personal company test, and what deferred consideration or an earn-out does to the timing of the charge.

Heads of terms reviewed

What the document actually commits you to — exclusivity, the tie-in, how the price adjusts, and what happens to the premises.

Selling to a corporate

Diligence prepared, not endured

Premises registration, medicines records, the annual audit and the CMA position assembled before a buyer asks, so nothing becomes a price adjustment.

What happens afterwards

The proceeds, the property if you are keeping it, and what you do next — including whether you stay on clinically and how that is taxed.

Step by step

Seller questions

Common questions about selling a practice

What is my practice worth?

We will not put a multiple on this page, and it is worth explaining why rather than being coy. No primary source publishes 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, which obtained detailed financial data from six large groups and a sample of independents, deliberately does not publish them either. Any multiple you have seen in trade press or in broker material cannot be traced to a verifiable source, which means it cannot be tested and should not anchor your expectations. What can be evidenced is what a buyer examines, and that is what we work on.

How much of the UK market do the corporate groups own?

Over 60% of veterinary practices are owned wholly or partly by six large groups — CVS, IVC Evidensia, Linnaeus, Medivet, Pets at Home and VetPartners — against just 10% in 2013. The scale difference between them is considerable: IVC has over 900 first opinion practices in the UK and Linnaeus around 180, while the next largest veterinary business after the six owns 38 and 76% of veterinary businesses own only one. CVS and Pets at Home are listed companies; IVC, VetPartners and Medivet are private-equity owned; Linnaeus is owned by Mars Petcare. Five of the six grew mainly by acquisition.

What rate of capital gains tax will I pay on a sale?

Business Asset Disposal Relief gives 18% on qualifying gains for disposals from 6 April 2026, having been 14% for disposals between 6 April 2025 and 5 April 2026 and 10% before that. The qualifying conditions all require at least two years before disposal: as a sole trader or partner, owning the business for two years; as a shareholder, being an employee or office holder of a company whose main activities are trading rather than investment, and meeting the personal company test of at least 5% of shares and voting rights plus entitlement to 5% of profits or proceeds. Take advice on the lifetime limit that applies to you.

Has BADR stopped being a reason to time a sale?

Largely, yes, and that is a genuine change in the planning landscape. At 10% the relief was worth structuring a sale around. At 18% from 6 April 2026 it sits within six points of the 24% main higher rate of capital gains tax on the same gain, so the value of qualifying has narrowed considerably. That does not make the relief worthless and the two-year conditions still need meeting, but it does mean the tax tail should no longer wag the commercial dog. Selling at the right time to the right buyer at the right price is now worth much more than accelerating a deal to catch a rate.

Does a sale to a corporate group have to be notified to the CMA?

No. UK merger notification is voluntary, there is no mandatory pre-notification obligation, and the final report created no new notification duty for the veterinary sector. But the CMA said in terms at paragraph 136 that previous merger investigations in the sector have led to divestments of practices, and that it will continue actively monitoring merger activity for acquisitions that may harm competition, taking account of the analysis in the market investigation. Footnote 13 adds that it may use share of full-time-equivalent vets in specific local areas. So the honest position is call-in risk in concentrated local markets, not a filing obligation.

What does the CMA data tell me about my own profitability?

It gives you the only published distribution for independent practices, from a sample of 36 small independent firms in Appendix C of the final report. EBIT margins ranged from minus 9% to plus 34% over 2021 to 2023, with an 11% weighted average — 15% in 2021, 12% in 2022 and 9% in 2023. The top sextile was 28% and the bottom 0%, and 24 of the 36 firms had declining margins across the period. The average across the large groups was 14%. That is a distribution to locate yourself in, not a benchmark anybody is holding you to, and the direction of travel in it is the interesting part.

Ready when you are

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