Art Gallery Business Valuation Benchmarks

Business owners, prospective buyers, and industry investors rely on a diverse set of financial benchmarks to assess the value of a business. We have compiled data from current BizBuySell listings and businesses sold over the past five years to provide insight into the business for sale market and important benchmarks for pricing and evaluating art gallery businesses relative to industry standards.

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Highlights of Art Gallery Businesses Sold on BizBuySell

Art gallery businesses listed and sold on BizBuySell typically include independent and boutique galleries that showcase and sell fine art, contemporary pieces, and collectibles. These businesses often operate in high-traffic cultural or tourist areas and may feature rotating exhibitions, consignment arrangements with artists, and retail components such as framing services or art supplies. These art gallery businesses often include established clientele, online sales platforms, and event-hosting capabilities, appealing to buyers interested in both creative entrepreneurship and investment in the arts.

Art Gallery Business Transaction Trends

Like many in the entertainment and recreation industry, art gallery businesses took a hit in 2020 as tourism and group activities ground to a halt. Many art galleries had to close up shop, and many more liquidated in asset sales, bringing median prices down. In the years since, art gallery sale prices have recovered, and in 2024, a combination of favorable valuation multiples and strong financials brought art gallery prices to a new high.

Art Gallery Business Valuation Multiples

Valuation, or pricing, multiples are financial tools that allow for comparisons between businesses that have different levels of revenue and earnings. They represent the sales price of a business relative to its financial performance, and given enough individual business sales data, they represent what the market is willing to pay for a business given its revenue and earnings.

Valuation Trends

Business values and associated multiples fluctuate over time, influenced by a variety of macroeconomic factors such as interest rates, inflation, consumer spending, and overall economic growth. Average valuation multiples of art galleries sold fell during and following the Covid-19 pandemic as many of the sales were of struggling or distressed businesses. In 2023, valuation multiples surged, as those more resilient, financially sound art gallery businesses sold. 2024 saw a return to more typical averages, on par with pre-pandemic revenue and earnings multiples.

Earnings Multiples

Earnings multiples represent the value of a business relative to its owner’s discretionary earnings or "cash flow". Arguably the most important valuation metric - as the seller's discretionary earnings will often dictate how much a buyer is able to borrow to finance the business acquisition - most valuations will hinge on a reasonable earnings multiple.

Revenue Multiples

Revenue multiples represent the value of a business relative to its overall sales or revenue. In conjunction with an earnings analysis, revenue multiples are commonly used to value a business based on its overall sales.

How to Interpret These Multiples

Recent Listings vs. Sold Businesses

We calculate and provide valuation multiples from two sources: Current and recent listings of art galleries for sale, and our database of "comparable" businesses sold on BizBuySell. Multiples based on listing data are always higher due to owners setting asking prices above what their businesses might typically sell for. This occurs either intentionally as a negotiation strategy, or incidentally due to business owners including real estate, or the common tendency to overvalue their own businesses.

Multiples based on comparable businesses - "comps" in business broker parlance - are much more useful as they represent the prices at which businesses ultimately get sold. Business brokers and valuation professionals will always turn to local comps when pricing businesses for sale or evaluating businesses for acquisition. We provide both sets of data at the national level to offer general context. Local business sale comps by sales class suitable for pricing and negotiations are available in BizBuySell's Business Valuation Report.

Quartiles, Median, and Average

No two businesses are identical, and as such, valuation multiples exist in a range. We have carved out four common values within this range: Lower quartile represents the value under which the lowest 25% of valuation multiples fell. Upper quartile represents the value above which the highest 25% of multiples fell. Median is the middle of the range, and average is the mean of the set. Mean is almost always higher than the median, driven by a minority of high volume, high value businesses sold at multiples above the upper quartile.

Businesses with consistent financial performance, above average revenue and earnings, demonstrable growth potential, low owner involvement, unique competitive advantages, and a seller willing to finance will command a multiple at or above the upper quartile. Lower volume businesses with thin profit margins, full-time owner involvement, and many direct competitors will trade at or below the lower quartile. Most businesses will fall somewhere in the middle.

Based on this data, half of art gallery businesses are worth between 1.4 and 2.1 times their annual seller discretionary earnings, with 25% of high performing, larger businesses trading above this range, and 25% of the smaller, less desirable galleries trading below.

Financial Benchmarks

To determine how a business compares in terms of revenue and earnings relative to industry peers, it’s necessary to have some insight into industry standards. "Benchmarking" describes the practice of comparing a business’s financial performance to typical industry standards to determine where a business falls relative to other businesses in the same industry. These benchmarks can help guide owners and investors towards appropriate valuation multiples from the range above.

To that end, we have aggregated financial ranges of art galleries useful for comparing an individual business to the broader industry.

Art Gallery Revenue and Earnings Trends

Median revenue and discretionary earnings of art galleries has been volatile as distressed businesses brought down values in 2020, then stronger, surviving businesses looking to exit drove them back up in 2021. In the years since, median financials have gradually grown to healthy, pre-pandemic levels.

Earnings Ranges

Discretionary earnings (used interchangeably with the terms "cash flow" and seller's discretionary earnings or SDE) is often the crux of business valuations, so it is important to benchmark it relative to other art gallery businesses traded on the market. Below you will find discretionary earnings ranges of art gallery businesses sold over the past five years, as well as recent for sale listings.

Revenue Ranges

Sales volume plays a large role in business valuation, as it measures the size of the potential income opportunity for new ownership. It's not uncommon for buyers to select an earnings multiple range based on overall revenue. The table below includes revenue ranges of art galleries sold over the past five years and recent businesses listed for sale.

How Revenue and Earnings Level Affects Business Values

Clearly higher levels of earnings lead to higher valuations, even given the same multiple. However, valuation multiples also tend to rise with business sales volume. Well run, popular art galleries that generate higher sales (and maintain reasonable profit margins) tend to sell for earnings multiples on the higher end. So, an art gallery with annual sales close to $800k may sell for an earnings multiple over 2, where a less popular gallery with sales of $200k may trade closer to 1.3 times earnings.

This tendency for higher sales volumes to fetch higher valuation multiples is largely driven by the economics of business acquisition financing. Higher volume businesses give buyers more cushion to cover debt service obligations and still have enough left over to pay the new owner a reasonable income.

Sector Comparisons

For a more complete understanding of the market and valuation standards, consider comparisons within the broader entertainment and recreation sector when benchmarking art gallery businesses. The chart and table below includes key metrics from sales of entertainment and recreation businesses on BizBuySell between 2020 and 2024.

Art galleries tend to be small, boutique businesses with low revenue, compared to other entertainment and leisure businesses. The result is art gallery business values skew towards the lower end of the valuation multiple range. However, there are a material number of art galleries sold with above average sales that saw valuations of 3-5 times earnings, so scaling up an art gallery business has potential outsized impact on it's value. Additionally, these businesses enjoy greater profit margins than many others in the sector, so represent an excellent business opportunity.

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