Goodwill value

Alan Suggett, a partner in specialist dental accountants UNW LLP and a member of the NASDAL technical committee carries out the quarterly survey.

He said that the average goodwill value secured for a practice with an NHS contract was 144 per cent of gross fee income and for a mixed practice it was 116 per cent of turnover.  Valuations prepared by professional valuers were on average more than 10 per cent higher than the sale price, reflecting active negotiation. Private practices were on average 86 per cent of turnover so are still less attractive to purchasers than mixed or NHS practices.

Alan commented that there were a number of transactions which varied significantly from the averages, so the survey figures should solely be regarded as an average for benchmarking purposes.