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A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
A medical-centre pharmacy in Kingston and a strip pharmacy in North Hobart are different businesses with different buyers. We value each against sales of its own kind, and read the Tasmanian ownership rules, the PBS approval and the lease as closely as the accounts.
A Hobart pharmacy is valued mainly on comparable pharmacy sales, because ownership is restricted largely to pharmacists and pharmacies trade regularly. The multiple those sales support is applied to maintainable earnings after the owner-pharmacist is paid a market salary, then checked against script volume, the PBS and front-of-shop mix, stock and the lease.
Ownership changes drive most of these engagements. An owner in Sandy Bay wants to bring an employed pharmacist in as a partner. A banner group member in Glenorchy has an offer from a pharmacist who already owns several stores. Two partners in a Bellerive pharmacy cannot agree on an exit price.
Other requests come from outside the business: a family law property settlement that needs a value at a fixed date, a restructure the ATO will expect at market value, or the executors of a pharmacist's estate. Executors face a particular constraint, because the Pharmacy Control Act 2001 (Tas) limits who may hold an interest in the business, so the estate's eventual buyer has to be someone the Tasmanian Pharmacy Authority will accept.
Whoever buys will be a pharmacist, quite possibly one who owns a store already and reads pharmacy accounts every week. If your only reference point is a broker's rule of thumb, you start at a disadvantage across the table. A valuation done before the first offer arrives puts you on equal footing.
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
The Market Approach leads. Pharmacies are bought by a small, well-informed group of eligible pharmacists, and sales across Australia are frequent enough to give solid evidence of what those buyers pay.
Using the guideline transaction method, we sort comparable sales by site type first: medical centre, shopping centre, strip shop or country town. Within each group they are matched on script volume, revenue mix, trading hours and lease, and the resulting multiple is applied to maintainable earnings. Where Tasmanian sales are few, interstate evidence is used with care, because state ownership rules differ.
A capitalised earnings calculation runs beside the sales evidence and earns real weight when dispensing is stable. The biggest single adjustment is usually the owner's own time: when the owner works the dispensary, part of the profit is a pharmacist's wage, and it comes out before anything is capitalised.
We cost the owner-pharmacist at the salary a store would pay an employed pharmacist for the same hours. For an owner who works the dispensary five days a week, that line alone can remove a large share of the profit a buyer is really acquiring.
Fit-out, dispensing robots and equipment at market value, plus stock at what it would realise once short-dated, slow-moving and discontinued lines are written down. Stock is often one of the biggest numbers in a pharmacy sale, and it is seldom worth its cost.
When two valuers reach different figures for one pharmacy, the gap usually lies in the adjustments, so we show each one and the reasoning behind it in the body of the report. These are the adjustments pharmacies need most often:
A buyer of a Hobart pharmacy has to clear two separate gates. The first is Tasmanian: the Pharmacy Control Act 2001 (Tas) restricts who may own or hold an interest in a pharmacy business, and the Tasmanian Pharmacy Authority registers pharmacy premises and controls those interests, so a buyer must satisfy the Authority before settlement.
The second gate is federal. A pharmacist needs approval to supply PBS medicines at particular premises (Source: Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, PBS approved suppliers). Between them, the two gates keep the buyer pool small and make it harder for a new competitor to open nearby, and that protection is part of what the price pays for.
Site type splits the comparable set more than suburb does. A pharmacy inside a medical centre in Kingston or on the eastern shore depends on the GPs in the building and on that tenancy. A shopping centre pharmacy in Glenorchy or Rosny Park trades to the centre's hours and often pays a percentage rent, while a strip pharmacy in Sandy Bay, North Hobart or Moonah serves a settled local catchment with more front-of-shop sales.
Each has different scripts per hour, a different rent structure and a different risk, and pharmacies in the Huon Valley and the Derwent Valley form a regional group of their own. Many shopping centre and strip tenancies are covered by the Fair Trading (Code of Practice for Retail Tenancies) Regulations 1998 (Tas), so the lease is read as closely as the accounts.
A pharmacy sits between two parts of the economy that are moving at very different speeds. Nationally, health care and social assistance businesses grew 6.7 per cent in 2025 to 2026, to 227,702, while retail trade businesses grew 0.1 per cent (Source: ABS, Counts of Australian Businesses, July 2022 to June 2026, released 18 August 2026). Income weighted towards dispensing and professional services follows the first trend; a store that leans on front-of-shop sales follows the second.
We begin with why the valuation was prepared, the standard of value, the valuation date and the records we relied on, dispensing reports included, and we note where any of them were incomplete. Each approach considered follows, with the method chosen, every adjustment and its reason, and a reconciliation that explains how the final range was weighted.
When pharmacy partners fall out, the opposing expert goes straight to the reasoning. If the report cannot say why sales evidence outweighed capitalised earnings, or why stock was written down by the amount chosen, the gap will be found, whether the dispute runs in the Supreme Court of Tasmania under Part 19 of the Supreme Court Rules 2000 or turns on the Partnership Act 1891 (Tas) because the partners never signed an agreement.
Reports are prepared to APESB, APES 225 Valuation Services and carry the signature of a credentialed certified valuer, who will stand behind the conclusion if it is challenged.
Ask which figure in your pharmacy's valuation is easiest to attack, perhaps the stock write-down or the owner's salary, and how they would defend it. If the answer needs a follow-up email, the work is not done.
If you are an owner sizing up a buyer's approach, or an employed pharmacist wondering what a share would cost, an Indicative valuation gives you a working figure. It is for internal decision-making and is not written for third party reliance. A Summary report fits a sale, a partner's admission or acquisition finance. A Detailed report is needed for a family law settlement, a partner dispute, an estate where beneficiaries disagree (including a claim under the Testator's Family Maintenance Act 1912 (Tas)), or any matter another expert will review.
The audience settles it. A report heading for a court, a bank, the ATO or another expert needs the fuller treatment.
For internal decision-making. Useful for testing an offer, setting an expectation before a negotiation, or deciding whether to go to market. It is not written for third party reliance.
Sets out the approaches applied, the normalisation adjustments made and the reasoning behind the conclusion. The usual choice for a sale, an ownership change or a finance application.
Applies and reconciles all relevant approaches in full. The level required where a court, the ATO, a lender or another expert will review the opinion.
Talk your situation through with a certified valuer before you commit to anything, at no cost.