A pharmacy can't go to the open market. The Pharmacy Business Ownership Act 2024 (QLD), in force from 1 November 2025, restricts ownership to practising pharmacists or their close adult relatives, capped at five pharmacies per pharmacist. Equivalent rules apply in every state. Your buyer pool is your junior partner, another practising pharmacist, or a pharmacist-controlled group. A private equity buyer can't have you.

That's why most senior-to-junior exits become a staged buyout. Banks lend pharmacy buyers at 60-80% LVR, so the junior needs 20-40% of their own capital. Trading continuity usually matters more to the deal than the headline price.

Where advice earns its keep

If your business sits in a discretionary trust drafted before 2024, the deed almost certainly lists beneficiaries who aren't practising pharmacists. Section 218 of the new Act gives you until 1 November 2027 to amend it. Eligible restructures may attract a duty exemption under QRO Public Ruling DA000.19.1. Start that now.

Staged share or unit transfer. The junior buys in tranches over five to ten years. Each tranche is a separate CGT event.

Vendor finance. You finance part of the buyer's purchase, secured against the equity they're acquiring. This is how most partner buy-ins get over the line. You're now both seller and financier of the same asset, so concentration risk is real.

Earn-out. Final price partly tied to script growth or EBIT. Useful when senior and junior can't agree on goodwill.

Insurance-funded buy/sell agreement. Life and TPD sized to current equity, so death or disability triggers a funded buyout instead of a fire sale.

Where advice earns its keep

You finance part of the buyer's purchase, secured against the equity they're acquiring. This is how most partner buy-ins get over the line. You're now both seller and financier of the same asset, so concentration risk is real.

Australian pharmacy valuations use a capitalisation rate on adjusted EBIT, after market salary for the owner. Lower cap rate, higher price.

The Eighth Community Pharmacy Agreement (2024-29) adds $26.5 billion over five years with CPI indexation on dispensing fees and the Additional Community Supply Support payment offsetting 60-day dispensing. Well-run pharmacies are getting more predictable forward revenue, which generally supports tighter cap rates.

Where advice earns its keep

Don't anchor to what you paid in 2008 or to a friend-of-a-friend rule of thumb. Get a current valuation from a specialist (Medici, Practice4Sale, AP Group).

Anchor legislation: Division 152 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997. Four small business CGT concessions, applied in this order.

The super lever: the CGT cap for 2025-26 is $1,865,000 lifetime per person, indexed to AWOTE and rising to $1,935,000 from 1 July 2026. Amounts from the 15-year exemption or retirement exemption use this cap instead of your non-concessional cap. Used right, you can move very significant capital into super without burning your non-concessional headroom. The same deal with the wrong structure, missed timing, or a share-versus-asset error costs six or seven figures of avoidable CGT.

Where advice earns its keep

Gatekeepers: the $2m aggregated turnover test or $6m maximum net asset value test, and the active asset test. For a share or unit sale, the 80% active asset test and significant individual rules catch a lot of deals if the structure isn't right.

• Signing a Heads of Agreement before any modelling
• No written buy/sell agreement, so death, TPD, divorce, or dispute forces a distressed exit
• Underinsured against current equity value
• Anchoring goodwill to what was paid decades ago
• Lawyer, accountant, broker, and adviser working in parallel with no one quarterbacking the order

Steps two through five are the financial planning piece. They're the constraints the deal should be built around, not the cleanup at the end.