The sale of a pharmacy license is once again a good business in Spain. After years of crisis, where the price of this administrative concession had fallen to 300,000 euros in 2013, the latest data suggests that this amount has doubled since then and the average price of a license this year stands at 560,000 and 600,000 euros. The figure is up to 22% higher than what was paid just a year ago, when the sale among pharmacists of this concession ranged between 450,000 and 490,000 euros.
This is stated in the annual report carried out by the Madrid Association of Pharmacy Advisors (AMAF), made up of the main pharmacy advisory firms in the Community of Madrid, who also highlights that “the sale of licenses boomed during 2016 and last year, although the number of operations decreased, their prices increased”.
“Banking entities grant loans more easily and under very advantageous conditions. Savings have flourished and what better investment than that of your own business that today continues to be profitable. Confidence in the sector has been recovered, to all levels, causing the purchase and sale of pharmacies to increase significantly,” says Carlos García-Mauriño, founding partner of Asefarma, one of the entities that are part of the association.
And, why is there interest in buying only the license and not the rest of the elements that make up the pharmacy that is already open and operating in a specific location? According to Rosa Gómez Soto, founding partner of Gómez Córdoba Abogados de Farmacia, “because in the current location the billing of the pharmacy is very low and it is not profitable. This means that the buyer is interested in moving the pharmacy to a location where it is assumed that billing will be higher. The main advantage is that the price of a pharmacy license is lower than that of a working pharmacy,” he says.
Time without being able to sell
The Departments of Health of each autonomy are responsible from time to time for issuing a number of pharmacy licences, which can be accessed according to a merit contest. Subsequently, the regional pharmaceutical management laws establish a minimum permanence period before being able to sell this newly opened license which, to date, ranges between three and ten years, depending on the autonomous community.
The other option is to buy the entire pharmacy, including the license, but also the stock, premises and staff. In this case, the price of a sale is governed more by the current billing of that pharmacy. Here prices have also risen, even more than in the case of licences. “While in 2016 we were talking about price ratios of around 1.6 of sales, even reaching 1.8 of annual sales at the end of the year, 2017 ended with a ratio of double sales to end of the year. We can anticipate, based on the data already recorded for 2018, that the multiplying factor seems to have stabilized at a maximum of 2,” the pharmacy advisors say. These data confirm that the price of the sale of pharmacies has skyrocketed by up to 25% in the last year.
According to data from the General Council of Official Colleges of Pharmacists, in Spain there were a total of 22,046 pharmacies in 2017, 78 more than in 2016, since there were 104 openings and 26 closings.
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