Ideeller Wert is the part of a pharmacy's price that is not accounted for by anything you can point at. The fittings, the shelving, the laboratory equipment and the stock can be listed and valued item by item. What is left over once that list is complete is the ideeller Wert, and it stands for the location, the established customer relationships, the trained team, the supplier arrangements and the simple fact that the business is running and earning on the day it changes hands.
It usually dominates the price, and for a structural reason. A pharmacy is not a capital intensive business. Its physical assets are modest against its turnover, and much of the stock is financed rather than owned outright. A buyer is therefore paying mainly for a position that already produces a Betriebsergebnis, which is why the Ertragswertverfahren starts from earnings rather than from an asset list. The asset value functions as a floor under the price, not as the price.
This is also the hardest part of a price to defend in a negotiation, and a seller should expect it to be attacked. The whole figure rests on one assumption, namely that the earnings carry on after the person who produced them has walked out of the door. Where much of the goodwill actually sits with the departing owner, in personal relationships with prescribers and with long standing customers, the buyer is being asked to pay for something that may leave with the seller. A buyer will therefore look for evidence that the earnings belong to the location and to the team rather than to one person, and a seller who can produce that evidence is in a much stronger position. Stable Kundenfrequenz over several years, prescriptions spread across several practices, and staff who are staying all point the same way.
Sellers should also be careful with the figures that circulate. Surveys of pharmacy purchase prices are quoted years after the data was collected, as though the market had stood still, and the same is true of any Kaufpreisfaktor offered as a shortcut. What the ideeller Wert of a particular pharmacy is worth depends on that pharmacy and on the adviser who values it.
How the price is split between assets and ideeller Wert in the contract has consequences for both sides that depend on the legal form and on the individual situation, and that split belongs with the Steuerberater before anything is signed.
This glossary entry is general information about German pharmacy law and practice. It is not legal advice. For binding guidance on your own pharmacy, contact your Landesapothekerkammer.
