Dentists Who Invest Podcast

What's New When Selling A Dental Practice In 2026? with Oliver Snowden [CPD Available]

• Dr. James Martin • Season 4 • Episode 427

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The rules of dental practice value are changing, and we’re pulling back the curtain on what matters now. After a decade of corporate consolidation and a pandemic‑fuelled private boom, the market has cooled to a healthier balance: fewer bidding frenzies, more scrutiny on profit, and a meaningful opening for independent buyers who know their numbers. We’re joined by Oliver Snowden, an ex‑corporate M&A director now co‑leading a bespoke brokerage, to decode how associate‑led EBITDA works, when to use principal‑led assumptions instead, and why multiples peaked in 2022 before settling into a more sustainable range.

We walk through the levers that move price: sustainable profit margins, lease quality, lender sentiment, and the real impact of interest rates. Oliver shares candid benchmarks—why 17 to 22 percent is the sweet spot for associate‑led margins—and what buyers expect to see in management accounts and compliance files before they take a deal seriously. If you’re planning to sell, you’ll hear exactly how to prepare: engage a dental specialist accountant and solicitor early, build a complete due diligence pack, and get ahead of landlord consents that can quietly add months. If you’re buying, learn to compare valuations under both models, challenge costs that don’t scale, and test whether the business stacks up without the current owner’s clinical time.

We also dig into marketing spend, where many practices now invest three to five percent of turnover without clear measurement. The buyers who win ask simple questions: what’s the cost per enquiry, how many convert, and which channels actually generate profitable cases? A solid CRM, a disciplined recall and reactivation plan, and a habit of recording “How did you hear about us?” can move growth from guesswork to proof—and that proof supports value.

Whether you’re eyeing an exit in 2026 or gearing up to acquire your first site, this conversation gives you a grounded playbook for price, process, and performance. Enjoy the episode, then subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a quick review to tell us what topic you want next.

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Disclaimer: All content on this channel is for education purposes only and does not constitute an investment recommendation or individual financial advice. For that, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional. The value of investments and the income from them can go down as well as up, so you may get back less than you invest. The views expressed on this channel may no longer be current. The information provided is not a personal recommendation for any particular investment. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and all tax rules may change in the future. If you are unsure about the suitability of an investment, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional. Investment figures quoted refer to simulated past performance and that past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results/performance.

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Dr James:

Down practice sales and valuations have been around for a long long time, but what we want to know is how it is in 2026 and what our students need to know prospectively rather than retrospectively because it's always all things. That's why I'm joined today by Mr. Oliver Snowden. We're here to talk everything that I just mentioned on that specific subject. Looking forward to this episode. As ever, use this episode to get equipped with all of the knowledge that you need to start practice successfully in 2026 and also going forwards. As ever, you can claim your CPD for this episode within the official Dentists Who Invest Smart Money Members Club. Smart Money Members Club also includes multiple mini courses and webinar series on finance for dentists, including how to become as tax efficient as possible, as well as understanding investing. All of this content counts as verifiable CPD, and you can download your certificates there and then on the Passon. In addition to this, we also include a whopping 10% discount on your dental indemnity and a 5% discount on lab bills for dental principals, amongst other perks and discounts for members. Please use the link in the description to claim your verifiable CPD for this episode. Oliver, how are you today? Thanks for joining us today on the Dentists Who Invest podcast. I suppose a good place to begin would be a little bit of background about yourself because you're not your typical practice valuer uh slash broker. You've got a little bit of experience in MA and some cool stuff as well.

Oliver:

Yeah, hi. Thanks for having me, James. Uh nice to be here. Uh yeah, I've been in the dental industry for about 13 years, um, and I've seen both sides of the sales and valuation market. So started my career in sales and valuations uh with a large brokerage firm and surveying firm. Uh, moved over into the MA field and was the director of mergers and acquisitions for a large dental corporate in the UK for six years. Uh, left that business in August of 2025 and joined my business partner Heather Meakin at the Dental Brokers, uh, which is a new and fresh bespoke dental brokerage firm. Um, we're looking at basically advising clients who are looking to sell their practices, but but a little bit more of a bespoke hands-on uh service where we get really into the the detail of the practice, work with our clients, not on a transactional basis, but more on a relationship basis to help them exit from the industry when they're ready. Um, the business was founded by Heather. Uh well, the current business was founded by Heather a year ago, but Heather's business has been around for 10 years. Um, and it was a rebrand that happened in October 2024 to the dental brokers, uh, and I came on board in October 2025. So, yeah, really excited to chat to you about my experience in the industry uh and uh give you a a bit of insight into practice, sales, and valuations.

Dr James:

Nice. Well, on that topic, where's a good place to begin? Because we could just jump straight in and talk about how things have evolved with time. I guess we could, and maybe we will. What do you think?

Oliver:

Yeah, I think you know, like my time in the industry, I mean, the the evolution's been huge just in the last decade. And uh, you know, that's been driven predominantly since what 20, 2006, 2007, was really dominated by the expansion of corporate groups. Um, you know, your original corporate groups, IDH as they were back then, and uh ADP and OASIS Dental Group. Um, they were Southern Dental Group, they were the sort of at the forefront of corporate expansion in the in the mid-2000s and into the early 2000s, and then on the back of that, you've seen a whole host of new groups emerge um and grow, and all of them would have slightly different takes on the types of practices they wanted to buy. But I think that corporate model has dominated um the sales market for at least a decade, if if not longer. And I think that the big change that we've seen in the last two years has been a shift back to more independent buyers coming back into the market. Not that they weren't around, they were absolutely in the industry before, but I think that they are probably more active now than they than they have been in the last 10 years. And we'll talk a little bit about why I think that is. Um, but it's all really interlinked with what the corporates have done. And I and I use that that term broadly because it defines lots of different types of dental groups. But there has definitely been a pause in M ⁇ A activity from some of the larger groups over the last two years, uh, as they have got to a certain size and scale where they need to look at their operational efficiencies, they need to make sure that their business is trading effectively. And obviously, the increase in interest rates, the difficulty with debt, um, has meant that a lot of the a lot of the corporate groups, but again, not all of them, so I don't want to put all of them in a in the same bucket, but what they've done is they've spent a bit more time recently just getting on top of their own businesses. And because of that, valuations and the prices that are being paid for practices has come back a little bit when you look at the multiple of the profit that's being applied to a valuation. So, and that that again has led to independents probably having a chance to come back into the market to practice have become maybe a little bit more affordable for them, um, and they're taking advantage of the the pause from some of the the bigger players who were maybe gobbling up uh a lot more of the practices that were on the market.

Dr James:

Interesting. And maybe now is a good time to segue into what you just said, which is to talk about why you think that that evolution has transpired. Why why do you think that's happening?

Oliver:

Yeah, I think that you know the the the corporate groups out there, and they range in size from 30 sites to uh the biggest would be still my dentist with circa 550, 600 sites. Um, they have had a rapid growth over 10 years. Um, and you know, with that growth, you've got to put infrastructure, you've got to put support mechanisms, you've got to put all the things in the background. And sometimes as you're growing at pace, some of those things can probably be missed. And so couple that with interest rate changes that that came in two years ago, cost of living crisis, all those sorts of things, um, they've paused. Multiples were driven predominantly by corporates. And when we talk about multiples, just uh you know, people use eBit DAR and multiples a lot. What we're talking about there is the multiplier that you apply to the sustainable profit on an associate-led basis. So an associate-led basis is when you take a practice and you fully cost it, so you've got a principal potentially doing you know huge amounts of income in the practice, but not taking an associate pay uh because they own the practice, they'll just take a dividend at the end of the year. An associate-led model would include putting a cost back in for the principal's dentistry, so paying the principal dentist or whoever would replace them uh a normal market associate rate, similar to what the current other associates receive, putting in rent if the if the freehold's owned by the owner, making sure the rest of the costs are reasonable for an ongoing operator. And that's what we class as an associate-led profit, or as referred to as eBITDA. Um, and then you apply a multiple to that number. And multiples peaked for that profit in 2022, uh, maybe pushing into 2023, where you know you would see multiples in the eight to eight and a half range quite regularly. And for some very large practices or unique practices, you might see it pushing towards a nine. Uh, and that was you know, the height of the market of that type of sale. Um, and then that's that's evolved now and moved back because of the things I've just discussed, you know, cost of debt, cost of interest rates, um, a little bit of uncertainty around the ongoing um growth because post-COVID, and this was huge, and I was working in corporate dentistry during the COVID pandemic. I don't think anybody could quite predict when we went into that first lockdown the demand that there would be for private dentistry coming out the other side of the lockdown. Um and that was coupled, I think, with restrictions on NHS access. So NHS practices were by government rule, were told to only see a certain number of patients a day and fallow time and air changes, and I don't think we want to go back into that time. But the private market absolutely exploded. You had a lot of patients who hadn't seen the dentist. Um, you had a lot of pent-up um demand. You also had a lot of people weirdly, you wouldn't have predicted this when we went into lockdown, but we had a lot of people with disposable income that they weren't spending in other places. So, you know, they weren't able to go on holiday, they weren't able to go out and socialize. Um, you know, if they were furloughed, they were, you know, saving money, they weren't going out. And so you saw a big, big uptick in cosmetic dentistry in 2021, late 2020, 2021, into 2022. Um, you've you've probably heard this, James, millions of times, but you know, the Zoom smile, and we're doing a Zoom call right now, but a lot of people suddenly went on to, you know, video calls and became more conscious of their teeth and their smile, and everybody wanted uh to sort that out. So you saw this huge boom in in revenue in private practice. Um, and then I think that that stabilized and in some cases started to drop down in 2023 and 2024. So, you know, that caused a bit of concern for some of the operators, independent and corporate alike, uh, and all of that confident feeds valuation. Um, and so what we've seen now is that there's been a stabilization of the multiple, there's been a stabilization of revenue. Um, and what we're now seeing is practices are still very valuable, they're still selling at fast rates, there's still plenty of active buyers, um, but the prices have just stabilized a little bit. And we've seen that now for 12 months, where practice prices seem to be at quite a stable position. So it's a good a good time. Interest rates are still higher than they have been, but they're not, you know, if you look at interest rates over the last 25 years, they're they're not horrendously high. They are just very high that we've seen for the last 10 years. So um, yeah, I think that's fueled it really.

Dr James:

Interesting. So, you know that methodology you just described where you basically take the principle out of the equation whenever it comes to figuring out the eBIT data?

Oliver:

We put well, no, we put the principal into the equation because we apply a cost to the dentistry that the principal is delivering. So if the if the principal dentist, if it's a million pound turnover practice and the principal is turning over, he's generating, say, 250,000 of that million pounds, we have to put in a cost for the delivery of that 250,000 that he's doing or she's doing. Um, because uh in their ownership model, they won't take an associate pay, or rarely would they take an associate pay, they'll just simply take a dividend from the profits. So we put a cost in.

Dr James:

Sorry, I think we're I think we're using possibly two slightly different ways to describe exactly the same thing. Because by taking the principal out, I meant that there's a lot of practices out there that wouldn't be making money if the principal wasn't in there, right? So if you take them out and then replace them with someone who's there in associate terms, then you have a little bit more of an idea as to how the business is functioning as a business. Effectively, the practices function as a business. So I think yeah, I think we were where I was going with that was actually to come back to what you were about to say there, but I think we were just saying we were kind of slicing and dicing it in different ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. But anyway, um, what was I gonna say? That methodology where you're basically, yeah, as I was saying, it's kind of like an associate-led practice in a way, but you're kind of you know moving the figures around just to figure out how that might look. Is that only used for corporates whenever they're acquiring, or is that used for independence as well, as in dentists who are purchasing but planning to come into the practice and work? UK dentists, Dentists Who Invest now has an official platform where you can learn about finance and obtain UK compliant, verifiable CVD at the same time. The only platform that exists on which you can do both. The Smart Money Members Club has hundreds of hours of mini courses, webinar series, and live day recordings on all things finance slash tax efficiency for UK dentists. This includes complete courses on how tax works for UK dentists, finance so that you can invest and grow your own money, business so you can improve your profitability as an associate or principal, and for those out there that want it, there's also a mini course and how you can responsibly enter the crypto space using measured amounts of capital. I've gathered this content from the best of the best I could find in each respective area so that you know that this is how people at the forefront of each field advise their clients. The Smart Money Members Club also contains discounts on common things that UK dentists need to pay for on a regular basis. This includes a whopping 10% discount on dental indemnity, the offer to beat your income protection deal no matter what you're paying, and for the principals out there, 5% discount on lab bills and 10% discount on practice insurance. These are designed to offer hundreds, if not thousands, in annual savings. The purpose of this members club is to not only boost your monthly income but also manage your outgoings as much as possible and therefore create more profit. To celebrate the launch of the Smart Money Members Club, and given that the CPD deadline is coming up soon, I've decided to offer the first month of this platform entirely for free. This offer will end in the coming weeks as soon as the current CPD cycle is up. To collect your CPD for this podcast episode using the Smart Money Members Club, feel free to use the link in the description of this podcast.

Oliver:

Good question. And I think there's been a standardization of the valuation process in the market again over the last 10 years, whereas the the sort of tried and tested way for the last decade has been to do the associate-costed practice EBITDA with a cost for the principal or a replaced associate. However, it is irrelevant to an independent buyer who's coming in and taking the surgery of the principal. They don't really care about that profit level because they're going to continue to run the business the same way as the outgoing principal was. They're going to come into that surgery, they're going to do the dentistry that the principal was doing, and they want to know what the profit's going to be and what dividend they can pay. So there are absolutely two ways that you would value a practice. And if it is clearly a practice that would never be of interest to an associate-led corporate model, you would value it based on principal, new principal coming in and look at the profitability without paying the incoming principal and associate rate. And what you would do in that situation is you would apply a lower multiple. So the multiple that you apply because that profit will be higher, you'll apply a lower multiple to it. And that's more relevant to the independent.

Dr James:

Interesting. Yes. I was just curious what the common doctrine is on that one. And then I was interested to know as well. You know, whenever it comes to the dental practice, whenever it comes to the sale, when you take the I I know I described it like this, and you described putting the principal in the equation, but we both know what I mean, right? Yes. When you switch the associate for the principal, as we were saying a second ago, how many practices are profitable after you do that?

Oliver:

That's a very good question. Most are profitable. In fact, you know, very rarely would you see an unprofitable practice, and I and I do mean rarely. The question is how profitable? And that is the big, big question. So I very, very rarely see a loss-making practice on an associate-led basis, unless it's really small. Like, and I not really small, but smaller than you would normally do. Um, but the level of profitability that can vary hugely. And just as a very broad rule of thumb for um the you know, the listeners out there, you would an associate-led practice, you would hope that the profitability, once you've fully costed it, so everybody's paid an associate rate, you've got a rent in there, you've got all the staff costs are covered, everything is in. You would hope that the percentage profitability would be somewhere in the region of 17 to 22%. If it's below 17%, it's it's on the low side. And if it's above 22%, it's probably just being on the high side. Not to say that you don't see that. You see practices producing profit at 25%. I think that's getting rarer in the last 18 months, two years as costs have risen. Um, but you still do see it occasionally. But the sweet spot is is 17, 18 to 22%. And if you're converting at that rate, you're going to be of interest to a whole multitude of different buyers.

Dr James:

Nice. And just to confirm, you might have said this and may have missed it, that's on the associate-led commerce. Yeah. Yeah. And and then if we were to do uh what would it, what would your typical margin be in a principal-led practice then?

Oliver:

Yeah, so that will depend massively on how much income the principal's delivering. So to give you a definitive on that would be very, very difficult because if the principal's, you know, if it's a two-surgery practice with a principal and a hygienist, well, that profit margins are going to be huge. It's probably going to be up in the 40% bracket because they are doing all of the dentistry bar the hygiene work. If it's a bigger practice and the principal's maybe only doing 20, 25% of the total practice revenue, then that number might be more like 30, 31%, 32%. So I would say it ranges from anywhere from sort of 25% at the low to 40, 42% at the absolute high, depending on how much the principal's delivering.

Dr James:

Interesting. And I I get what you're saying, it varies massively. Even a ballpark is valuable to the audience, right? Because they can be like, oh, right, okay, this is what I'm looking for, or something along those lines. So, no, that's that's super useful. Okay, cool. So we've got a little bit of an idea as to what's happening out there in the market. And I want to know, I'm curious to know how has deal flow been for you guys over the last few months? Has it ebbed? Has it flowed?

Oliver:

How does that look like it's definitely it's definitely ebbed and it's definitely flowed. And so I I've come into this fresh in in October 2024, um 2025. Heather's been doing this for a lot long, a lot longer than I have in the business. And we have definitely seen a little bit of a stall in timing. Um, and we funnily enough, we were literally talking about this this. Morning, Heather and I on a deal that we've got going through at the moment that we thought was going to complete prior to Christmas. Um, it now looks like it's going to complete into January. And when we sat down, we tried to work out what the reason was. It wasn't one particular thing, it was a whole host of different smaller issues, not issues, but just challenges that had just delayed things. So, you know, if I've got one massive piece of advice to clients out there who are going through a transaction, you use a broker that obviously I'm going to say that, but uh it is important to have somebody that's on your side that is looking after your best interests and is holding your hand through the process. But in the due diligence, make sure you've advised your accountant ahead of time that you're going you're going to put the practice on the market because having an engaged accountant who is working with you is going to be very, very beneficial. Use a dental specialist lawyer and prep that before you go to market. So speak to the lawyers that you might think you want to use. They can guide you with regards to the due diligence process. So a lot of the painful process of putting paperwork together, finding reports, finding certificates, getting stuff sorted, you can actually do that ahead of launching the practice to sale so that you could do it in your own time. Um, but even then, challenges will come up. Uh, we had one, the one that we were talking about this morning is uh is a third-party landlord. So the practice building isn't owned by the principal of the practice, they are a tenant paying rent, and so you've got a process of an assignment of a lease to the new buyer. And the truth is the landlord doesn't care. Um, the landlord of the building um has no reasonable right to refuse the assignment, but they also don't have any incentive to do anything fast. So, again, that one has delayed things through no fault of the buyer, through no fault really of the seller. I guess the learning for us and in the lawyers in that process is we've got to engage uh with the landlord's lawyers and the landlord at an earlier point. We look back on that one, we actually did. We just didn't get a response. Uh, and what we didn't do is maybe chase as quickly as we should have done. Um, but all these things, yeah, learning and um it will get there in the end.

Dr James:

It's all good, it's all good. Let's talk about marketing in practice, because it's something that I guess, well, if we go way back in time, I don't know if you you know this or not, perhaps you're aware. I believe there was once upon a time a rule that was upheld by the GDC that you weren't allowed to market your practice.

Oliver:

Yes, that's going back a while, yeah.

Dr James:

Cul culture has shifted, I think it's fair to say, because not only is marketing something that is, well, optional, I mean, a lot would argue that you really have to become a fair with these things, especially in 2025, coming into 2026. Uh, and uh again, not something that's taught in dental school at all, but a lot of people see understanding Google ads, understanding meta ads, having some sort of marketer as essential uh to your practice nowadays. And I'm just wondering as well, how much does that play into the valuation? So, say for example, you is it are we at a stage now where someone would look at a practice who is a prospective buyer and say, hmm, how much have they or haven't they built out the marketing side of things? Because they want to know whether or not there is going to be sustainable lead flow. I mean, I'm gonna I'm gonna guess, right? You you'll know the answer to this one. They'll want to know, okay, is there gonna be sustainable lead flow when I buy this thing? Yeah. And or they might say to themselves, hmm, well, if this practice doesn't have the marketing side of things built out, I can come in there and build it out, and that's a very quick value add to the practice.

Oliver:

Definitely, definitely. And we have seen, yeah, 100% there's been an uptick in the spend on marketing in particularly private practices, obviously, uh, over the last few years. And it's now becoming the norm that you'll see a sizable, I don't mean ridiculous, but a sizable marketing spend in most private practices. Um, that's great. And I'm an advocate for marketing. I think it's absolutely something that that practices should be doing. Where I guess I've seen a bit of concern is whether the owners really truly understand where the money that they're spending is going and what results they are actually getting back. And that's been something that I've seen over the last few years, where you sit down and you know, as a as an agent broker trying to sell the practice, what we're trying to work out is do you need to spend that amount of marketing every year just to keep the status quo of the income the same and grow it by, you know, inflationary rates? Or is that marketing spend actually giving you exponential growth? Is it giving you growth well above inflationary rates? You're talking double-digit growth because you've started to spend money on marketing. And some practices that we've met absolutely are all over it. They know what they're spending, they know the results they're getting, they work with an agency in most cases that are giving them that feedback and they're very happy with it. But an awful lot of them that we're seeing actually don't know if their growth is being driven by the marketing spend, or is it just organic growth that they would have got irrespective of a marketing spend? And so, yeah, we're speaking to a lot of clients and saying, you know, go back to your marketing team, your agency, whoever you're using, and and really get into the detail because it's important. These spends can be considerable. Um, they can be three, four, five percent of the total revenue that is being generated, you could be spending on marketing. And the question is, did you could you have got the same growth and spent half a percent? Um, you know, actually is is do you need to park the outward marketing and actually reflect on your current patient base? You know, these practices that we see will have historic patient bases in you know, the thousands, tens of thousands. And are they doing a good recall process? Are they actually going back to the information of patients they already have and marketing to those people that have already attended the practice in the last few years? And actually, that could be a much, much quicker win in terms of generating new patients than spending huge money on marketing agencies. And again, it's not to say that that's not a good thing, it's just everything in moderation and in equal measure, but most importantly, understanding what you're spending the money on and what results you're getting.

Dr James:

And how to measure that is probably a podcast for another day, but it probably involves a good give or take a good marketing team, uh, give or take a good CRM. Well, probably you probably do need a good CRM, uh, and a real good idea of how to, in the example of meta, I guess go into the ad side of things and measure what's going on, or even just even just asking the patient, where did you hear about us? You know, that works too. That works too.

Oliver:

Just getting some, just getting patient feedback. Yeah, where did where you know if it's a new patient, particularly, or a patient hasn't been in for a couple of years, what you know, why did you come to the practice today? You know, did you get a recall from us and you've just said, Yeah, I need to come back, or was it something else? Um, but yeah, understanding where your patients are coming from is is really, really important. Thanks, James. Um, obviously I'll finish here with just saying if anybody is interested in speaking to Heather or I, uh please do get in touch. Um, you can visit our website, thedentalbrokers.co.uk. Uh our contact details are there, and we'd love to speak to uh dentists who are looking for some advice or potentially thinking of selling.

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Dr. James Martin

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