Pharmacy Valuation: How to Value a Pharmacy and What Independent Pharmacies Sell For
Enter the store's revenue and owner earnings and read a range benchmarked to what pharmacies actually closed at, whether you are pricing your own store or checking a listing before you make an offer.
Estimated business value
Method breakdown
What moves this number
Estimate, not a certified appraisal. Your figures are not stored.
Pharmacies sold in the US across the five years to 2025 went for a median of 2.45x seller discretionary earnings, or 0.29x annual revenue, with a lower quartile of 1.69x and an upper quartile of 3.75x. The median pharmacy sale price was $325,000, on median revenue of $1,334,270 and median owner earnings of $150,000, after a median 163 days on the market. Divide the median price by the median earnings and the multiple that clears the market is 2.17x.
The number that explains the rest of this page: the median pharmacy pays its owner $150,000, and the BLS median annual wage for a pharmacist was $140,910 in May 2025. A buyer who has to replace their own salary out of that earnings figure has almost nothing left to service a loan, which is why pharmacies close at 0.89 of asking price, the second weakest ratio of thirteen retail categories. This is a benchmark and an estimator, not a certified appraisal.
Closed transactions
01What pharmacies actually sold for
These are sale prices, not asking prices, from pharmacies sold across the five years 2021 to 2025. Most pharmacy valuation guides quote a band of two to three times cash flow and stop there. The shape of the distribution is more useful, and for pharmacies the shape is unusual: the median store turns over $1.33 million of revenue and hands its owner $150,000 of it. That is an 11.2 percent owner margin, the thinnest of the thirteen retail categories in this dataset, and it is the fact that drives every other number here.
Median sale price
$325,000
What the middle pharmacy actually closed at
Median asking price
$399,000
What the same sold pharmacies were listed at
Median revenue
$1,334,270
Annual sales of the middle pharmacy sold
Median owner earnings (SDE)
$150,000
Seller discretionary earnings of the middle pharmacy sold
| Pharmacies sold, 2021 to 2025 | Lower quartile | Median | Average | Upper quartile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seller discretionary earnings multiple | 1.69x | 2.45x | 2.79x | 3.75x |
| Revenue multiple (multiple of annual sales) | 0.20x | 0.29x | 0.42x | 0.45x |
| Revenue | $578,120 | $1,334,270 | $2,047,294 | $2,550,517 |
| Owner earnings (SDE) | $100,000 | $150,000 | $253,422 | $275,686 |
Source: BizBuySell pharmacy business valuation benchmarks, pharmacies sold on the platform 2021 to 2025, retrieved September 2026. Benchmarks, not quotes. The multiple rows and the dollar rows describe the same population but not the same store, so multiplying a median by a median will not exactly reproduce a quartile. Business value only, before inventory and before any real estate.
One consequence is worth stating plainly, because it is where most pharmacy pricing advice goes wrong. The gap between the lower and upper quartile of owner earnings is $175,686 a year, which is more than the median store earns in total. A pharmacy producing $400,000 of owner earnings is not a typical independent with a typical multiple; it is well above the upper quartile and it is being bought by a different kind of buyer, on different arithmetic. If you are working out how to calculate SDE for the store in front of you, do that first, then find its row.
Our calculation
02Why a pharmacy is worth less than its earnings suggest
Every other retail business in this dataset can be bought by anyone with the down payment. A pharmacy cannot. A licensed pharmacist has to be in the building, which means the buyer is either a pharmacist, a group backed by one, or a chain that will close the store and move the script file. That single rule is the best available explanation for the two numbers that make pharmacies stand out: a 0.89 sale-to-ask ratio and a median 163 days on the market.
Here is the arithmetic behind it. A pharmacist buying a store gives up a salary to do it. The BLS median annual wage for pharmacists was $140,910 in May 2025. The median pharmacy that sold produced $150,000 of seller discretionary earnings. The table below runs an SBA 7(a) loan at 10 years, 10.5 percent, 1.25x debt service coverage and a 10 percent injection against that $150,000, at each level of owner draw. Everything in it is computed here, not quoted.
| Owner draw the buyer takes | Left for debt service | Supportable purchase price | As a multiple of $150,000 SDE |
|---|---|---|---|
| $0 (buyer takes no salary) | $150,000 | $823,452 | 5.49x |
| $50,000 | $100,000 | $548,968 | 3.66x |
| $80,000 | $70,000 | $384,278 | 2.56x |
| $100,000 | $50,000 | $274,484 | 1.83x |
| $140,910 (BLS median pharmacist wage) | $9,090 | $49,901 | 0.33x |
Computed here. Annual loan constant 0.16192 for a 10 year loan at 10.5 percent, so the supportable price is (SDE minus draw) divided by 1.25, divided by 0.16192, divided by 0.90. Wage figure: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, median annual wage for pharmacists, May 2025. Illustrative arithmetic, not a loan offer or a credit decision.
The crossover
$254,000
The seller discretionary earnings a pharmacy needs before a buyer paying the median 2.45x multiple can both service the SBA debt and pay themselves a full market pharmacist wage. Below that figure, something has to give: the buyer takes a reduced draw, the seller carries part of the price, or the deal does not happen. The upper quartile of pharmacies that sold earned $275,686, so roughly the top quarter clears the bar.
What the median buyer can actually draw
$91,000
At the median sold price of $325,000 against $150,000 of owner earnings, financed the same way, the buyer is left with about $91,000 a year after debt service at 1.25x coverage. That is a working pharmacist accepting roughly 64 percent of the median wage in exchange for ownership. It is a real trade people make, and it is also why the offers a seller receives feel low relative to the earnings statement.
This is not an argument that pharmacies are bad businesses. It is an argument about who is at the table. Once a store is large enough to pay a market wage to a pharmacist-in-charge and still show separable earnings, the metric changes from SDE to EBITDA, the buyer pool widens to groups and consolidators, and the EBITDA multiples pharmacy M&A advisers publish for that segment, 2.5x to 6x for community stores above $500,000 of EBITDA, start to apply. The median independent is not in that segment. Pricing it as though it were is the most expensive mistake a seller can make, and the reason a listing sits for six months.
Our calculation
03Where the money goes between the listing and the closing
Pharmacies currently listed ask a median 3.02x owner earnings. Pharmacies that sold went for 2.45x. The 18.9 percent gap between those two numbers is made of two different things, and separating them tells a seller something useful. Some of it is selection: listings that ask too much never close at all, so they leave the sold set entirely. The rest is negotiation: the discount a store takes off its own asking price at the table. Dividing the sold multiple by the sale-to-ask ratio recovers what the sellers who actually closed had been asking, which splits the gap.
| Reading of the sale-to-ask ratio | All listings ask | Closers asked | Selection | Sold at | Negotiation | Total gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Published average sale to ask, 0.89 | 3.02x | 2.75x | -8.8% | 2.45x | -11.0% | -18.9% |
| Ratio of five-year pooled medians, 0.81 | 3.02x | 3.01x | -0.4% | 2.45x | -18.5% | -18.9% |
| Average of the five yearly ratios, 0.90 | 3.02x | 2.73x | -9.5% | 2.45x | -10.4% | -18.9% |
Computed here from the published listing multiples, sold multiples and sale-to-ask ratios. The three rows show how sensitive the split is to which reading of the ratio you use. The total gap is the same 18.9 percent in all three, because it depends only on the two multiples.
Set against the other sectors measured on this site, pharmacies are the mirror image of laundromats. Laundromat sellers list at multiples the market does not pay and most of their gap is selection, which means the unrealistic listings simply never sell. Pharmacy sellers price close to the market and then lose the money at the table: an 11.0 percent negotiation discount on the published ratio, the largest of the five sectors in the table below. That fits the buyer-pool problem above. When a handful of qualified buyers exist for your store, each of them knows it.
| Sector | All listings ask | Closers asked | Selection | Sold at | Negotiation | Total gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pharmacies | 3.02x | 2.75x | -8.8% | 2.45x | -11.0% | -18.9% |
| Laundromats | 4.80x | 3.80x | -20.7% | 3.50x | -8.0% | -27.1% |
| Restaurants | 2.50x | 2.06x | -17.8% | 1.85x | -10.0% | -26.0% |
| Accounting and tax practices | 2.32x | 2.10x | -9.3% | 2.04x | -3.0% | -12.1% |
| Gas stations | 2.89x | 3.00x | +3.8% | 3.00x | 0.0% | +3.8% |
Same calculation applied to each sector's published figures on the corresponding benchmark pages, using the published average sale-to-ask ratio in each case. Gas stations are the one sector measured where closers asked more than the listing median, which is why their gap is positive.
Listings against reality
04What pharmacies on the market are asking
If you are looking at pharmacies for sale right now, you are looking at a different population from the one that sold. The listed pool is bigger and more profitable at every quartile, and the multiples it asks are higher at every quartile. Both differences matter when you use a listing as a comparable.
| Quartile | Listed SDE multiple | Sold SDE multiple | Difference | Listed revenue multiple | Sold revenue multiple | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lower quartile | 2.35x | 1.69x | -28.1% | 0.24x | 0.20x | -16.7% |
| Median | 3.02x | 2.45x | -18.9% | 0.34x | 0.29x | -14.7% |
| Average | 4.96x | 2.79x | -43.8% | 0.74x | 0.42x | -43.2% |
| Upper quartile | 4.32x | 3.75x | -13.2% | 0.74x | 0.45x | -39.2% |
Listed and sold multiples are published. The difference columns are computed here. Note the shape of the listing data: the average listed SDE multiple of 4.96x sits above the listed upper quartile of 4.32x, and the average listed revenue multiple of 0.74x equals the upper quartile. A mean above the 75th percentile means a small number of very expensive listings is dragging the average, so the listing average is the least useful number on this page.
| Financials | Pharmacies listed now | Pharmacies that sold | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median revenue | $1,916,226 | $1,334,270 | +43.6% |
| Median owner earnings (SDE) | $260,000 | $150,000 | +73.3% |
| Upper quartile owner earnings | $535,150 | $275,686 | +94.1% |
| Lower quartile owner earnings | $130,000 | $100,000 | +30.0% |
| Average owner earnings | $494,149 | $253,422 | +95.0% |
| Implied owner margin (computed here) | 13.6% | 11.2% | +2.4 points |
The +73.3 percent gap in median owner earnings is the number to sit with. It is larger than the 49.6 percent gap we measured for laundromats, and it does not mean the listed stores are lying. It means the pharmacies that come to market are systematically larger and more profitable than the ones that close, which is consistent with the wage arithmetic above: bigger stores clear the financing bar, so they get listed, and the ones that actually transact are drawn from across the whole distribution. Use the sold column when you price. Use the listed column only to understand what you are competing against.
Five-year record
05Pharmacy sale prices year by year
The median pharmacy sale price more than doubled between 2021 and 2025, from $262,500 to $600,000, and the sale-to-ask ratio climbed to 0.97. Read alone, that is a strong seller's market. Read with the revenue and margin columns next to it, it is a different story: the stores transacting in 2025 had a median revenue of $2.54 million against $675,000 in 2021, and their owner margin fell to 7.3 percent, the lowest of the five years.
| Year | Median revenue | Median SDE | Owner margin | Avg SDE multiple | Avg revenue multiple | Median sale | Median ask | Sale/ask | Effective SDE multiple | Effective revenue multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | $675,000 | $116,413 | 17.2% | 2.24x | 0.46x | $262,500 | $275,000 | 0.93 | 2.25x | 0.39x |
| 2022 | $1,184,216 | $149,325 | 12.6% | 3.06x | 0.30x | $272,500 | $314,900 | 0.87 | 1.82x | 0.23x |
| 2023 | $1,616,226 | $150,000 | 9.3% | 2.64x | 0.38x | $439,500 | $485,000 | 0.80 | 2.93x | 0.27x |
| 2024 | $1,013,348 | $186,020 | 18.4% | 2.79x | 0.51x | $382,500 | $378,500 | 0.91 | 2.06x | 0.38x |
| 2025 | $2,544,000 | $186,089 | 7.3% | 2.95x | 0.45x | $600,000 | $650,000 | 0.97 | 3.22x | 0.24x |
Revenue, SDE, margin, the two average multiples, sale price, asking price and the ratio are published. The two effective multiple columns are computed here as that year's median sale price divided by that year's median SDE and median revenue. They are ratios of medians and sit below the published averages of ratios, which is expected: an average of per-deal ratios is pulled up by high-multiple deals in a way a ratio of medians is not.
The two effective columns move in opposite directions across the five years, and that is the most useful thing in the table. Buyers paid 2.25x owner earnings in 2021 and 3.22x in 2025, up 43 percent per dollar of earnings. Over the same period they paid 0.39x revenue in 2021 and 0.24x in 2025, down 39 percent per dollar of sales. Bigger, thinner-margin stores are changing hands, and buyers are pricing them off earnings, exactly as the financing arithmetic says they must.
One caution about comparing years in this particular industry. Pharmacy DIR fees moved to the point of sale for contract year 2024 under a CMS rule finalized in 2022, replacing the retroactive clawbacks that used to land months after a prescription was dispensed. Reported profit before and after that change is not measuring the same thing, and the 2024 transition carried an unusual double charge as pharmacies paid 2023 fees while already being reimbursed at the new net rates. The dataset shows the margin moving from 18.4 percent in 2024 to 7.3 percent in 2025, but the composition of the stores selling changed at the same time, so that movement should not be read as a clean measure of the reform's effect. What it does mean in practice is concrete: any trailing twelve month figure that straddles January 2024 has to be normalized before a multiple goes near it.
Cross-check
06Every published multiple overstates the median pharmacy sale
A seller handed a multiple usually does the obvious thing with it and multiplies. For pharmacies, all four ways of doing that land above the price the market actually paid, and one of them lands 72 percent above it. That is not an error in the source. It is what happens when you apply an average of per-deal ratios to a median store, and it is worth seeing before you set an asking price on the strength of a single number.
| Method | Arithmetic | Implied value | Against the observed median sale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median earnings x median earnings multiple | $150,000 x 2.45 | $367,500 | +13.1% |
| Median earnings x average earnings multiple | $150,000 x 2.79 | $418,500 | +28.8% |
| Median revenue x median revenue multiple | $1,334,270 x 0.29 | $386,938 | +19.1% |
| Median revenue x average revenue multiple | $1,334,270 x 0.42 | $560,393 | +72.4% |
| Observed median sale price | reported directly | $325,000 | n/a |
Computed here from the published medians and multiples. The median multiple applied to median earnings gets closest, at 13.1 percent above. The average revenue multiple applied to median revenue is the furthest off and should not be used for pricing a single store.
The practical rule that falls out of this: for pharmacies, price off earnings and use revenue only as a sanity check. The median identity confirms it. Multiply the median SDE multiple of 2.45x by the 11.2 percent owner margin and you get 0.27x revenue against the published median of 0.29x, a 5 percent difference. Do the same with the averages, 2.79x times 11.2 percent, and you get 0.31x against a published 0.42x. The medians reconcile and the averages do not, which tells you the averages are carrying a minority of much higher margin stores. More on how these two metrics relate is in our note on the revenue multiple against the EBITDA multiple.
Sector comparison
07Pharmacies against the rest of retail
Two comparisons in this table do most of the work. The first is liquor stores: the median liquor store and the median pharmacy both hand their owner exactly $150,000 a year, and the liquor store sells for $425,000 against the pharmacy's $325,000. That is a 30.8 percent premium for identical owner earnings, and the clearest single price tag on the licence requirement, the payer risk and the narrower buyer pool. The second is the margin column, computed here: at 11.2 percent, pharmacies are the thinnest of the thirteen categories, while carrying nearly the highest revenue.
| Retail category | Median revenue | Avg revenue multiple | Median SDE | Avg SDE multiple | Owner margin | Median sale | Median ask | Sale/ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All retail businesses | $720,000 | 0.53x | $131,498 | 2.62x | 18.3% | $295,000 | $305,000 | 0.95 |
| Pharmacies | $1,334,270 | 0.42x | $150,000 | 2.79x | 11.2% | $325,000 | $399,000 | 0.89 |
| Grocery stores and supermarkets | $1,380,000 | 0.35x | $192,408 | 2.66x | 13.9% | $390,000 | $429,000 | 0.98 |
| Liquor stores | $1,047,000 | 0.50x | $150,000 | 3.33x | 14.3% | $425,000 | $444,500 | 0.97 |
| Nursery and garden centers | $1,021,316 | 0.68x | $204,361 | 3.11x | 20.0% | $560,000 | $537,500 | 1.05 |
| Furniture and furnishings stores | $1,072,815 | 0.57x | $200,000 | 2.72x | 18.6% | $465,000 | $450,000 | 1.03 |
| Convenience stores | $660,500 | 0.40x | $119,495 | 2.39x | 18.1% | $210,000 | $225,000 | 0.92 |
| Bike shops | $627,422 | 0.45x | $118,848 | 2.62x | 18.9% | $240,123 | $249,847 | 0.98 |
| Health food and nutrition businesses | $492,798 | 0.58x | $100,000 | 2.51x | 20.3% | $200,000 | $200,000 | 0.98 |
| Clothing and accessory stores | $500,000 | 0.52x | $103,668 | 2.30x | 20.7% | $200,000 | $249,000 | 0.95 |
| Flower shops | $478,290 | 0.47x | $106,066 | 2.01x | 22.2% | $189,000 | $219,000 | 0.91 |
| Jewelry stores | $463,061 | 0.61x | $131,207 | 2.05x | 28.3% | $214,757 | $292,000 | 0.88 |
| Smoke shops | $420,000 | 0.47x | $100,000 | 1.98x | 23.8% | $150,000 | $150,000 | 0.93 |
| Vending machine businesses | $71,000 | 1.16x | $39,601 | 2.35x | 55.8% | $83,500 | $88,498 | 0.93 |
Source: BizBuySell retail valuation benchmarks, businesses sold 2021 to 2025, retrieved September 2026. Every column except owner margin is published. Owner margin is computed here as median SDE divided by median revenue, so it describes the middle of each population rather than any single store.
Run the same logic across the whole table and the pattern holds: margin, not revenue, sets the revenue multiple. Jewelry stores turn 28.3 percent of sales into owner earnings and sell at 0.61x revenue. Grocery stores turn 13.9 percent into earnings and sell at 0.35x. Pharmacies at 11.2 percent sell at 0.42x, a little above where the pattern would put them, which is the front end and the cash-pay services doing their work. If you want the same comparison across the whole economy rather than retail alone, our SDE multiples by industry tables carry it.
Find your row
08What a pharmacy is worth at each level of owner earnings
The first three columns apply the sold lower quartile, median and upper quartile multiples to each earnings level. The fourth is the SBA-supportable price at a realistic $80,000 owner draw, which is what tells you whether a financed buyer can actually reach the market price for a store that size.
| Seller discretionary earnings | At 1.69x (lower quartile) | At 2.45x (median) | At 3.75x (upper quartile) | SBA capacity at an $80,000 draw |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $100,000 (lower quartile sold) | $169,000 | $245,000 | $375,000 | $109,794 |
| $150,000 (median sold) | $253,500 | $367,500 | $562,500 | $384,278 |
| $186,089 (2025 median sold) | $314,490 | $455,918 | $697,834 | $582,395 |
| $253,422 (average sold) | $428,283 | $620,884 | $950,333 | $952,031 |
| $275,686 (upper quartile sold) | $465,909 | $675,431 | $1,033,823 | $1,074,253 |
| $400,000 | $676,000 | $980,000 | $1,500,000 | $1,756,697 |
Computed here. Business value before inventory, which is counted and paid for separately at cost. SBA column on the same terms as section 02. Illustrative arithmetic, not a loan offer.
Read the last two columns against each other and the market makes sense. Below about $250,000 of owner earnings, financing capacity is lower than the median market price, so the binding constraint on what a seller can get is the buyer's loan rather than the comparable sales. Above it, the constraint flips and the market multiple binds instead. That crossover sits between the average and the upper quartile of pharmacies that sold, which is another way of saying that for most independent pharmacies the price is set by what a lender will advance, not by what similar stores fetched.
Methods
09The five ways a pharmacy gets valued
You will meet all five of these in a pharmacy sale, often in the same week, and they will not agree. Knowing which one your counterparty is using is most of the negotiation.
Seller discretionary earnings multiple
The primary method for an owner-operated store. Normalized SDE times a multiple between about 1.69x and 3.75x, which is where half of all pharmacy sales landed. This is the method a lender will check, because SDE is what services the acquisition debt.
Revenue multiple
A cross-check, not a pricing method, for pharmacies. Sold pharmacies traded at a median 0.29x revenue, and the quartiles are tight, 0.20x to 0.45x. It is unreliable on its own here because pharmacy margins vary so widely: the yearly owner margin in this dataset moved between 7.3 percent and 18.4 percent.
EBITDA multiple
Used once a store is large enough to carry a paid pharmacist-in-charge and a manager, so that earnings are genuinely separable from the owner. One pharmacy M&A adviser publishes 2.5x to 5x EBITDA for independent community pharmacies on deals above $500,000 of EBITDA, and 4x to 6x for strong stores with high script volume and a premium location. Below it, EBITDA is negative or near zero on stores that still support a family, which is why SDE is the working metric at the median.
Value per prescription
The pharmacy-specific rule of thumb. Buyers put a dollar figure on each annual prescription, and one pharmacy M&A adviser publishes $40 to $80 per annual prescription for community pharmacies. What a chain or consolidator buying on this basis wants is the script file rather than the store. It is a bid convention, not a valuation, and it ignores front-end and cash-pay revenue entirely.
Asset value plus inventory
The floor. Fixtures, equipment and the pharmacy system at depreciated value, plus inventory counted at cost on the closing date. A pharmacy whose earnings will not support a loan sells at or near this floor, which is the single most common outcome for stores below the lower quartile.
A quick consistency check on the per-script convention, computed here. At $40 to $80 per annual prescription, the median $325,000 sale corresponds to only about 4,100 to 8,100 prescriptions a year. The average independent pharmacy filled 67,601 prescriptions in 2024, according to the NCPA Digest, and at the same rates that store would be priced at $2.7 million to $5.4 million. The two conventions do not reconcile for a small store, and that is the useful finding: a per-script figure describes what a buyer pays for a script file it can absorb into its own operation, not what a small independent fetches as a going concern. Use it to understand a chain bid, not to price the median store, and confirm whether any quoted figure includes inventory.
Value drivers
10What moves a pharmacy between the quartiles
The distance between the lower and upper quartile multiple is 1.69x to 3.75x, which on $150,000 of earnings is the difference between $253,500 and $562,500. These are the factors that decide which end of that a specific store lands at.
Script count and payer mix
The script file is the asset. Volume matters, but mix matters more: the share of revenue coming from Medicare Part D, Medicaid, commercial plans and cash determines how exposed the store is to reimbursement changes it does not control. A buyer will want a twelve month script report broken out by payer before discussing a multiple.
The pharmacist-in-charge requirement
A licensed pharmacist has to be in the building. That single rule cuts the buyer pool to pharmacists, pharmacist-backed groups and consolidators, and it is the best explanation for the numbers on this page: pharmacies closed at 0.89 of asking price, the second weakest ratio of the thirteen retail categories measured, and took a median 163 days to sell.
How the reported profit was calculated
Pharmacy DIR fees moved to the point of sale for contract year 2024 under a CMS rule finalized in 2022, so a pre-2024 income statement and a post-2024 one are not describing the same thing. Anything spanning that change has to be normalized before a multiple goes anywhere near it, and the 2024 transition year carried an unusual double charge that distorts that year in particular.
Reimbursement concentration
A store where one PBM contract drives most of the gross margin is priced lower than the same earnings spread across many payers, for the same reason a single-customer business is. The buyer is underwriting the durability of the margin, not last year's figure.
Cash-pay and front-end revenue
Compounding, immunizations, durable medical equipment, long-term-care packaging and a real front end carry margins that PBMs do not set. Buyers pay more for these dollars than for dispensing dollars, and they are also the part of the business that a chain acquiring only the script file is not paying for at all.
Inventory
Pharmacy inventory is large relative to the business value and is normally counted and paid for separately at cost on the closing date. Confirm whether a quoted price includes it. On a store selling near the median it is a material second check to write, and slow-moving or short-dated stock is a negotiation item in its own right.
Lease, location and the prescriber base
Proximity to the clinics and prescribers that generate the scripts is the location value. A lender will not amortize a ten year loan against a short remaining lease, so remaining term plus options constrains the deal before it touches the price.
Questions
Pharmacy valuation questions, answered against the sold record
How much is a pharmacy worth?
The median US pharmacy sold over the five years to 2025 went for $325,000, on median revenue of $1,334,270 and median owner earnings of $150,000. That is 2.17 times owner earnings on the reported medians. The published median multiple is 2.45x and half of all pharmacies sold between 1.69x and 3.75x owner earnings, before inventory and before any real estate.
What multiple do pharmacies sell for?
Pharmacies sold at a median of 2.45 times seller discretionary earnings and an average of 2.79 times, with a lower quartile of 1.69x and an upper quartile of 3.75x. On revenue the median was 0.29x and the average 0.42x. The 2.5x to 6x EBITDA multiples pharmacy M&A advisers publish apply to stores with more than $500,000 of EBITDA, a different metric on a much larger store.
How do you value a pharmacy?
Start from normalized seller discretionary earnings: net profit plus owner salary, owner benefits, interest, depreciation and one-time costs, adjusted for the 2024 move of DIR fees to the point of sale. Apply a multiple between about 1.69x and 3.75x based on script volume, payer mix and cash-pay revenue. Add inventory at cost. On the median sold store, $150,000 of owner earnings at 2.17x gives $325,000.
How much is my pharmacy worth?
Work out your seller discretionary earnings first, then find your row. A store at the lower quartile of $100,000 of owner earnings is worth roughly $169,000 to $375,000 on the sold multiples; at the median $150,000, roughly $253,500 to $562,500; at the upper quartile of $275,686, roughly $466,000 to $1,034,000. Inventory is counted and paid for on top.
How much does a pharmacy sell for?
The median pharmacy sold for $325,000 across 2021 to 2025, and the yearly median rose from $262,500 in 2021 to $600,000 in 2025. Median asking prices went from $275,000 to $650,000 over the same years. The 2025 jump comes with a warning: median revenue of sold stores reached $2.54 million that year while the owner margin fell to 7.3 percent, the lowest of the five years.
How much does a pharmacy make a year?
The middle pharmacy that sold reported $150,000 of seller discretionary earnings on $1,334,270 of revenue, an 11.2 percent owner margin and the thinnest of the thirteen retail categories measured. The lower quartile earned $100,000 and the upper quartile $275,686. For comparison, the BLS median annual wage for pharmacists was $140,910 in May 2025.
Do pharmacies sell for the asking price?
Less often than most retail. The reported average sale to ask ratio is 0.89, the second weakest of thirteen retail categories, behind only jewelry stores at 0.88. Grocery stores close at 0.98 and nursery and garden centers above asking at 1.05. A pharmacy that sells typically closes about 11 percent under its asking price, and the median store took 163 days to get there.
How long does it take to sell a pharmacy?
The median pharmacy that sold spent 163 days on the market. That figure counts only stores that sold, so it describes a correctly priced pharmacy rather than every listing. The licence requirement narrows the buyer pool to pharmacists and consolidators, and lender review of the payer mix and DIR normalization are the two items that most often stretch a sale past six months.
How are pharmacies valued per prescription?
Buyers put a dollar amount on each annual prescription, and one pharmacy M&A adviser publishes $40 to $80 per annual prescription for community pharmacies. A chain or consolidator bidding this way is buying the script file to move into an existing store rather than buying a going concern. It is a bid convention rather than a valuation method, and it puts no value on front-end sales, cash-pay services or the location itself.
Can you get an SBA loan to buy a pharmacy?
Yes, and the arithmetic is the constraint worth checking first. At 10 years, 10.5 percent, 1.25x debt service coverage and a 10 percent injection, the median $150,000 of owner earnings supports about $384,000 if the buyer draws $80,000 a year, and about $50,000 if the buyer insists on a full market pharmacist wage of $140,910. The market pays about $325,000.
What is a good EBITDA multiple for a pharmacy?
One pharmacy M&A adviser publishes 2.5x to 5x EBITDA for independent community pharmacies, 4x to 6x for strong stores with high script volume and a premium location, and 6x to 10x for specialty pharmacies, on deals above $500,000 of EBITDA. That range only applies once the store is large enough to pay a market wage to a pharmacist-in-charge. At the median sold store it is not the relevant metric, because SDE is $150,000 and EBITDA after a market wage is close to zero.
How much does a pharmacy valuation cost?
A formal business valuation commonly runs $1,500 to $8,000 for a calculation engagement and $5,000 to $15,000 for a full conclusion of value. On a $325,000 pharmacy that is 0.5 to 2.5 percent of the sale price for a calculation and 1.5 to 4.6 percent for a full report. An estimate is enough to decide whether to list or whether a listing deserves an offer, and our cost breakdown compares the options by provider.
Asked another way
What pharmacy owners and buyers ask when they are deciding
These come up once the numbers are understood and the decision is the actual problem, whether that is making an offer, choosing between a chain and an independent buyer, or setting a price. Answered against the same closed-transaction data as the rest of this page.
Is a pharmacy listed at 4x cash flow overpriced?
On the transaction record, usually yes. Half of pharmacies that sold closed between 1.69x and 3.75x, and 4x sits above the upper quartile. The sellers who actually closed were asking about 2.75x. A 4x price needs something specific behind it: heavy cash-pay or compounding revenue, a diversified payer mix, or a buyer who is a consolidator paying for the script file rather than for the earnings.
Should I trust the cash flow in a pharmacy listing?
Check what period it covers before anything else. Pharmacies currently listed report a median $260,000 of owner earnings against $150,000 for stores that sold, 73.3 percent more. On top of that, DIR fees moved to the point of sale for contract year 2024, so a trailing figure straddling that change is not comparable year to year. Tie the numbers to tax returns and to a twelve month payer-mix report.
Should I sell my pharmacy to a chain or to an independent buyer?
They are buying different things and will price differently. A chain bids per prescription to move your file into its own store, which puts no value on your front end, your lease or your staff, but it does not depend on a buyer clearing a lender. An independent buyer is buying a going concern and can pay for the whole business, but has to clear an SBA lender, which is why those deals take a median 163 days. Price both before choosing.
Is now a good time to sell a pharmacy?
Prices are the highest in the five-year record, with a median sale of $600,000 in 2025 against $262,500 in 2021, and a sale to ask ratio of 0.97, the strongest of the five years. But the 2025 stores that sold were much larger, at $2.54 million of median revenue, and earned a 7.3 percent owner margin against 18.4 percent the year before. The price rise is mostly larger stores transacting, not better ones.
Why do independent pharmacies sell for so much less than their revenue?
Because dispensing revenue is mostly drug cost passed through at a reimbursement rate the store does not set. The median sold pharmacy turned $1,334,270 of revenue into $150,000 of owner earnings, an 11.2 percent margin and the thinnest of the thirteen retail categories in this dataset. Buyers and lenders price earnings, so a pharmacy sells at 0.29x revenue where a jewelry store at a 28.3 percent margin sells at 0.61x.
Do I need a formal appraisal or is an estimate enough?
An estimate is enough to decide whether to list, to set an asking range, or to decide whether a listing deserves an offer. A formal appraisal becomes necessary for an SBA loan above the lender threshold, a partner buyout, estate or gift tax filings and litigation. This page and the estimator on it are benchmarks against closed sales, not a certified appraisal.
Benchmarks behind the estimate
Find out where in the range a pharmacy sits
Enter revenue and owner earnings, for your own store or for a listing you are considering, and read a value range against real pharmacy sales. An educational estimate, not a certified appraisal.