I wanted to buy my pharmacy. I needed to know whether the price made sense.
I've spent ten years behind the counter. Now I want the pharmacy to be mine.
That is exactly what Marta told us.
Marta, 36. Pharmacist. Ten years as an employed pharmacist.
After a decade working for others, the opportunity of a lifetime came up: the owner of the pharmacy where she had trained was retiring and offered to hand the business over to her. The dream was obvious. So was the problem: she had never taken on a loan of that size and didn't know whether the price she was being asked was fair.
The figure they were asking was several years' worth of her savings. If she overpaid, she would start her project with a debt that would suffocate her from the very first month.
Her situation when she came to Quality Finance:
- A purchase offer on the table, with no idea whether the price was reasonable
- Limited personal savings against the size of the deal
- A need to finance most of the purchase
- Zero experience with business debt or self-employed taxation
- The fear of putting her personal peace of mind at risk for the business
Her accountant handled the VAT returns, but no one had helped her look at the whole operation:
“I needed someone to tell me the truth about the numbers, not to sell me the loan.”
What did we do together?
1. Valuing the pharmacy properlyBefore talking about financing, we analysed whether the price made sense: recent turnover, real margins, declared net profit, staff costs and the pharmacy's capacity to generate enough cash. The goal was not to close the deal at any price, but to confirm the business could service its own debt and still leave her a decent income.
2. Structuring the financingWe designed the deal drawing on Bankinter's specialist financing for pharmacy purchases: covering most of the price, over a long term and with a monthly payment sized so that, after paying the loan each month, Marta was left with a comfortable cushion to live on. We coordinated the goodwill valuation and the required guarantees.
3. Tax and how to operateIn Spain a pharmacy must always be owned by the pharmacist as an individual, so we planned her taxation as a self-employed professional: income tax brackets, amortisation of goodwill, deducting the loan's financial costs and budgeting for social-security contributions. Getting this right from day one avoids nasty surprises at the first tax return.
4. A plan beyond the counterOnce up and running, the risk is that her whole life —income, wealth and debt— ends up concentrated in a single asset. We designed a plan to gradually build wealth outside the pharmacy, with provision for retirement and a first outline for succession of the business.
Marta bought her pharmacy knowing the price was right, with a payment that doesn't keep her up at night and a plan that looks beyond the business. She went from a dream filled with fear to a project backed by numbers.
All details of this case have been modified to protect privacy. It is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or a financing offer.