Veterinary Practice
Market Pulse
Backed by extensive research and data exclusively from Ackerman Group.
Rich Lester
(207) 450-8800
rlester@ackerman-group.com
Gary Ackerman
(804) 334-7387
Letter to Our Readers
Ackerman Group is proud to bring you this latest edition of our quarterly research report. Backed by our extensive practice sales dataset and our team’s decades of experience advising on transactions, this report is intended to provide veterinary practice owners, as well as the broader profession, with insights and analyses found nowhere else in the industry.
While not a detailed guide to selling your hospital, this report highlights real-time trends we are observing in the market to help position you and our clients for the best outcomes possible during a sale process.
Should you find yourself thinking about selling your practice and wish to take advantage of our unmatched market experience and extensive dataset, Ackerman Group is ready to assist you from beginning to end. Hundreds of veterinarians have entrusted us with advising them on the sales of their practices, and during the increasingly important time post-sale, when incremental value is frequently earned in transactions today. Our goal is to align with your personal, professional, and financial goals.
We wish you and your practice continued success. Don’t hesitate to reach out with your questions!
Executive Summary
A Tale of Two Markets Emerges
Strong Economy, Sticky Inflation
The Visit Recovery Question
The Average Is Misleading
Cash at Close Remains Strong
GP Has Overtaken Specialty
Our View
“Valuations of veterinary practices grew in the first half of 2026” is a plausible headline for this report, and it would be misleading. Most practices are seeing multiples remain stable.
What’s rising is a subset: large, highly profitable practices where a shortage of opportunities has buyers competing aggressively for the few that come to market. That competition is pulling the market average up.
Growth Without Relief
The U.S. economy is sending mixed signals, with an interest rate cut looking increasingly unlikely.
The U.S. economy has outperformed on paper during 2026, but consumer sentiment tells a different story. Q2 GDP growth is forecasted to be a healthy 2.6% and job creation from March to June has been surprisingly strong. However, when the U.S. and Israel launched an attack on Iran in late February, supplies of oil, fertilizer, and other important commodities were disrupted. The effects have been sharpest in Asia, with U.S. inflation accelerating materially as well.
This has put the Federal Reserve in a difficult position. President Trump’s newly-appointed Fed Chairman, Kevin Warsh, signaled eagerness to cut interest rates in the lead up to his confirmation. Though, with inflation climbing above 4% and the strength of recent employment data and expected GDP growth, a rate increase has become more probable than a cut.
Adding to the Fed’s challenge are the volatile peace talks with Iran. By flexing its control over the Strait of Hormuz during the hostilities, the Iranian regime demonstrated its power to disrupt the global economy. With midterm elections four months away, the Trump administration has every incentive to finalize a peace accord.
Through all of this, financial markets have continued to rise. As of this writing, the S&P 500 is up over 8% year-to-date. The IPO market is also finally showing signs of life. Our view is that Mission Pet Health, Veterinary Emergency Group (VEG), NVA/Ethos, and their peers won’t test those waters until 2027 or 2028.
Rates Stay Complicated
The economy is strong enough to keep inflation pressure alive, but unsettled enough to make relief uncertain.
For buyers, that means capital is unlikely to get meaningfully cheaper in the near term.
The Recovery Assumption is Changing
Industry headwinds have a new variable: puppy adoptions have been declining.
Veterinary invoice volume has now declined for four and one-quarter years, contracting 2–3% annually, an unprecedented multi-year run in an industry with no prior history of sustained decline. The prevailing explanation has centered on higher prices suppressing visit frequency, compounded by weak consumer confidence.
What may be flying under the radar for many practice owners is the broad underperformance of the industry’s public bellwethers. Zoetis reported disappointing Q1 earnings and its share price has fallen roughly 25% as investors question its growth trajectory. IDEXX is down approximately 15% year-to-date. Elanco is slightly positive on the year but trailing the broader market.
A June 2026 study from the CATalyst Council, co-authored by former IDEXX CEO John Ayers, documents a decline in puppy adoption rates from 2022 through 2026 relative to pre-COVID baselines. Cat adoptions have grown over the same period, but cats generate fewer visits per animal than dogs.
Many in the profession have been counting on the COVID-era adoption cohort to drive a visit recovery in 2027/2028. That recovery may still come. But the CATalyst study suggests the demographic pipeline behind it is thinner than assumed, which means the recovery may be shorter and shallower than investors and buyers have been modeling.
Buyer Appetite Watch
We are in active conversations across the industry to understand whether the CATalyst findings are affecting buyer appetite, and to what degree.
We will share what we learn as the picture becomes clearer.
%
Consecutive Quarters of Invoice Declines
The Call from the Cafeteria: Dr. Jim Carlson’s Road to the Right Exit
Lifetime Pet Wellness · Columbus, Ohio
Over the course of his career, Jim and his wife Laurie built Lifetime Pet Wellness into a three-doctor small animal practice in Columbus, Ohio, with $2.7 million in annual revenue.
The Carlsons initially engaged a brokerage firm, but the process seemed off as discussions kept circling back to one corporate buyer. They suspected, correctly, that a referral incentive was driving the broker’s recommendation. They stopped the process.
The initial profitability analysis with Ackerman Group was presented in-person at a cafeteria table at the Midwest Veterinary Conference in early 2025. The analysis showed EBITDA below what it should be for a practice of this size — and what a correction to the staffing cost structure would mean for the potential sale price.
Over the next twelve months, Jim and Laurie addressed the staffing cost structure while keeping the team and culture intact. When the financials reflected that work, the practice went to market. Eight buyer groups expressed serious interest, with offers ranging from 11x to 13x EBITDA. The Carlsons chose Mission Pet Health.
The Market is No Longer Moving as One
The weighted average GP valuation multiple for H1 2026 was 13.4x EBITDA, up from 12.4x in H2 2025. It would be a mistake to infer the market is universally healthy from that metric in isolation.
%
Weighted Average EBITDA (H1 2026)
%
EBITDA Market Range
%
Avg Multiple (Large Practices)
%
Avg Multiple (Other GP Practices)
%
Hospitals Transacted (H1 2026)
Inventory Scarcity
Buyer Performance
General Practice Has Overtaken Specialty
The GP-to-Specialty valuation relationship has inverted over the past 24 months. Through much of the 2010s and early 2020s, Specialty and Emergency hospitals commanded a premium based on their perceived superior revenue growth. That premium is gone, and in most cases the relationship has flipped.
The active buyer pool for Specialty and ER has contracted sharply. About a half-dozen major pre-COVID acquirers have exited the market. For Specialty and ER sellers, that means fewer bidders and less tension in the process.
Cash At Closing Has Followed Multiples Up
What Should A Practice Owner Take Away?
The market is stronger than the headlines suggest for some owners and weaker than the average implies for others. Where you sit in that divide should shape how you think about timing.
60>
Owners 60 and Older
Life-stage math should override market timing. With cash-at-closing near historical highs, the window is open to realize the equivalent of your EBITDA today all the way into your 70s.
60< / 5+
Owners Under 60, Large Practices
This cohort has options. If you’re confident in sustaining performance, holding is defensible — but the demographic tailwind may be thinner than assumed.
60< / -5
Owners Under 60, Smaller Practices
Joint venture deal structures provide optionality — shifting some performance burden onto a corporate partner while pocketing a decade’s worth of future EBITDA in cash at close now.
Conclusion
This is a tricky market to navigate, even for the most financially-astute practice owners. Between macroeconomic uncertainty, geopolitical risks, industry headwinds, and now surprising long-term demographic forecasts, there is simply a lot to consider.
The current valuation multiples are high by any historical measure. The COVID era peak multiples when interest rates were near 0% are not coming back — but we are hopeful the current acquisition environment holds for the rest of the year and into 2027.
Getting A Second Opinion
With the market’s bifurcation becoming more apparent, the benefit of discussing your personal ownership situation with an advisor has never been higher — particularly for owners under 60, where optionality can be both a blessing and a curse.
Ackerman Group
Dr. Roger Redman · (330) 466-0103
Michael Kemp · (416) 569-8597
Ryan Lester · (415) 653-6131
Ryan Barlow · (214) 490-1804
Win Lippincott · (610) 247-4737
Guncha Singh · (818) 587-6164