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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 Coomera, a shopping centre store in Robina or a tourist-strip pharmacy in Surfers Paradise: each measured against what comparable pharmacies have sold for, with the buyer's eligibility, PBS approval and the lease counted as part of the deal.
A community pharmacy on the Gold Coast is valued chiefly against sales of comparable pharmacies, because only eligible pharmacists can buy one and stores change hands regularly among them. The multiple from those sales is applied to maintainable earnings after the pharmacist owner is paid a market salary, and the result is tested against script numbers, the split between PBS, retail and professional services income, and the lease.
Requests usually follow a change in ownership. An owner in Burleigh Heads wants to bring a long-serving employed pharmacist in as a partner. A banner group member in Nerang has an offer from a pharmacist who already owns several stores. Two partners in a Southport pharmacy cannot settle on an exit price. A property settlement needs the business valued at a set date, or a restructure needs a figure the ATO will accept. Executors of a pharmacist's estate need one too, since the business can pass only to an eligible pharmacist.
In every case the seller faces the same imbalance. Pharmacies are bought by pharmacists, often people who own a store already and have seen the numbers of many more. An owner relying on a broker's rule of thumb is dealing with a buyer who knows exactly which figures to mark down. A valuation in hand before the first offer evens that up.
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
The Market Approach leads. Ownership restrictions and federal approval rules leave a closed market of buyers who know the industry well and trade stores often, so recent sales are the best evidence of value.
The main check is capitalised earnings, which earns real weight where dispensing income is stable. The adjustment that most often changes the answer is replacing the owner's drawings with a market salary for the hours they actually work in the dispensary, because in many pharmacies part of what looks like profit is really a wage.
We apply the guideline transaction method. Comparable sales are grouped first by type of site, whether a medical centre, a shopping centre anchored by a supermarket, a street strip or a tourist precinct. Within each group they are matched on script volume, income mix, trading hours and lease, and the multiple is applied to maintainable earnings.
Before capitalising, we charge the pharmacist owner at a market professional salary. Where the owner is in the dispensary every weekday, that single change can remove a large part of the profit the accounts appear to show.
Stock at what it would actually realise, once short-dated, slow-moving and discontinued lines are written down, plus fit-out, dispensing robots and equipment at market value. Stock is often one of the biggest numbers in a pharmacy sale and is seldom worth its cost.
When valuers disagree about a pharmacy, the cause is usually in the normalisation, so every adjustment is listed in the main body of our report with the reason for it. In pharmacies these are the ones we see most:
A buyer of a Gold Coast pharmacy is acquiring something shaped by two layers of rules. Queensland restricts who may own a pharmacy business, mainly to registered pharmacists, under the Pharmacy Business Ownership Act 2024 (Qld), so the buyer must satisfy those requirements before settling. On the Commonwealth side, a pharmacy needs approval as a PBS supplier before it can dispense under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (Source: Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, PBS approved suppliers). Together they shrink the pool of buyers and make it hard for a rival to open close by, and that protection holds value up.
On the coast, the type of site splits the comparable set more sharply than the suburb. A pharmacy inside a medical centre in the northern growth corridor, around Coomera, Pimpama or Helensvale, lives on prescriptions from the doctors in the building and on that one tenancy. A store in a large centre such as Pacific Fair at Broadbeach, Robina Town Centre or Australia Fair in Southport pays a percentage rent and trades to the centre's hours. Pharmacies in Surfers Paradise, Broadbeach and Coolangatta sell heavily to visitors, so front-of-shop income rises and falls with school holidays, major events and the tourist seasons, which we read over a full year. Each site type has its own scripts per hour, rent structure and risk, and since most of these tenancies come under the Retail Shop Leases Act 1994 (Qld), we read the lease as carefully as the accounts.
A pharmacy sits across two very different trends in the national business count. In 2025 to 2026, health care and social assistance businesses rose 6.7 per cent to 227,702, while retail trade businesses barely moved, up 0.1 per cent (Source: ABS, Counts of Australian Businesses, July 2022 to June 2026, released 18 August 2026). A store weighted towards dispensing and professional services follows the first; one that depends on retail and tourist sales follows the second.
The report records why it was prepared, the standard of value, the valuation date and the material relied on, dispensing system reports included, and is candid about anything missing. It then takes each approach in turn, names the method applied, sets out every adjustment with its reason, and reconciles the results into a range, describing in words how they were weighted.
Those reasons are what come under attack when partners fall out or a sale is litigated. If the report cannot show why comparable sales outweighed capitalised earnings, or why stock was written down by the chosen amount, an opposing expert will exploit the gap, whether the case runs in the District Court of Queensland at Southport or the Supreme Court of Queensland, or turns on the Partnership Act 1891 (Qld) because the partners never put an agreement in writing. Every report is prepared under APESB, APES 225 Valuation Services and signed by a credentialed certified valuer who will explain and defend the conclusion.
Which figure in my pharmacy's valuation is easiest to challenge, and how would you defend it? A valuer who needs to go away and work that out is not ready to sign.
An Indicative valuation suits an owner weighing an approach from another pharmacist, 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 new partner coming in or finance for a purchase. A Detailed report is required for a family law property settlement, a dispute between partners, an estate where beneficiaries are at odds (including a family provision claim under section 41 of the Succession Act 1981 (Qld)), or any matter in which another expert will examine the opinion.
Let the audience decide. The more likely the report is to land in front of a court, a bank, the ATO or a second expert, the more complete it should 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.