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From a medical-centre pharmacy in Cranbourne to a late-night strip pharmacy in Brunswick: priced on what similar pharmacies have sold for, with the licence, the PBS approval and the lease treated as part of what is being bought.
A Melbourne community pharmacy is valued mainly on comparable pharmacy sales, because only pharmacists can buy one and those buyers trade regularly. The comparable multiple is applied to maintainable earnings after the owner-pharmacist is paid a market salary, then checked against script volume, the split between PBS, front-of-shop and professional services revenue, and the lease.
The trigger is usually a change in who will hold the licence. A pharmacist in Box Hill wants to bring an employed pharmacist in as a partner. A banner group member in Werribee has been approached by a buyer with several stores. Two partners in a Frankston pharmacy cannot agree an exit price. A property settlement needs the business valued at a set date, or a restructure needs a market value the ATO will accept. Executors of a pharmacist's estate need a figure too, since only another pharmacist can take the business over.
Behind each of those sits the same imbalance. Pharmacy buyers are pharmacists, many of whom already own a store and have studied the numbers on dozens of others. A seller who arrives with only a broker's rule of thumb is negotiating against someone who knows exactly which metrics to discount. A valuation evens that out before the first offer is made.
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
The Market Approach leads. Restricted ownership and federal location approval create a closed, well-informed market in which pharmacies sell regularly, so actual transactions are the most reliable evidence of value.
The guideline transaction method starts by sorting comparable sales by site: medical centre, supermarket-anchored shopping centre, strip or country town. Within that group, sales are matched on script volume, revenue mix, trading hours and lease, and the multiple is applied to maintainable earnings.
Capitalised earnings are the main check, and they carry real weight where dispensary volume is steady. The adjustment that most often moves the answer is replacing the owner's drawings with a market salary for the hours the owner actually works as a pharmacist, because in many stores part of the reported profit is really a wage.
The owner-pharmacist is costed at a market professional salary before earnings are capitalised. In a store where the owner works every weekday in the dispensary, that single change can remove a large part of the apparent profit.
Stock at what it would realise, after writing down slow-moving, short-dated and discontinued lines, plus fit-out, dispensing robots and equipment at market value. Stock is usually one of the biggest numbers in the sale and seldom worth its cost price.
Disagreements between valuers usually trace back to normalisation, so the report lists every adjustment with its reason in the main text. For a pharmacy the ones that keep appearing are:
Two layers of regulation shape what a Melbourne pharmacy buyer is paying for. In Victoria, the Pharmacy Regulation Act 2010 (Vic) limits ownership to registered pharmacists, and the Victorian Pharmacy Authority licenses each pharmacy business and registers its premises, so a new owner must hold its own licence. Federally, dispensing under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme requires approval as a PBS supplier (Source: Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, PBS approved suppliers). Together they narrow the pool of buyers and make it hard for a competitor to open next door, which supports value.
Site type separates the comparable set more than suburb does. A pharmacy inside a medical centre in a growth corridor such as Cranbourne, Pakenham or Point Cook runs on prescriptions from the GPs in the same building and depends on that tenancy. A pharmacy in a large shopping centre in Doncaster or Box Hill pays a percentage rent and lives with the centre's trading hours. A strip pharmacy in Fitzroy, Northcote or Port Melbourne serves a settled local catchment with more front-of-shop trade. Each has different scripts per hour, a different rent structure and a different risk.
The business count shows the two worlds a pharmacy straddles. In 2025 to 2026 health care and social assistance businesses grew 6.7 per cent nationally, to 227,702, while retail trade grew 0.1 per cent (Source: ABS, Counts of Australian Businesses, July 2022 to June 2026, released 18 August 2026). A pharmacy whose revenue leans to dispensing and professional services sits closer to the first trend; one that depends on front-of-shop sales sits closer to the second.
Each report sets out the purpose, the standard of value, the valuation date and the records relied on, including the dispensing system reports, and says plainly where those records fall short. It then takes each approach considered in turn, names the method used, lists every adjustment with its reason, and reconciles the results into a range with the weighting described in words.
That reasoning is what gets tested when partners fall out or a sale ends in litigation. If a report cannot explain why the comparable sales outweighed the capitalised earnings, or why stock was written down by the amount it was, an opposing expert will find the gap, whether the matter is before the Supreme Court of Victoria or a partnership dispute under the Partnership Act 1958 (Vic). Our reports follow APESB, APES 225 Valuation Services and are signed by a credentialed certified valuer who will explain and defend the conclusion.
Which figure in my pharmacy's valuation is the easiest to attack, and how would you defend it? A valuer who needs time to think about that has not finished.
An Indicative valuation suits an owner weighing an approach from a buyer, or an employed pharmacist working out what a partnership share might cost. It is for internal decision-making and is not written for third party reliance. A Summary report fits a sale, a partner coming in, or finance for an acquisition. A Detailed report is needed for a property settlement, a partner dispute, an estate where beneficiaries disagree, or any matter where another expert will review the opinion.
Choose by audience. The more likely the report is to land in front of a court, a lender, the ATO or a second expert, the more complete it has to be.
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.