Dr James, 0s:

is now the right time to buy a dental practice. That creates two more questions when might be the right time if it's not now? And the other question is is there ever a wrong time to buy a dental practice? So that's another question we need to have a think about. The short answer from my perspective is yes, this is a good time to buy. But we need to think about that and we need to ask the big question if you're thinking about buying a dental practice is why is this a good time to buy? Now? I'm going to talk a little bit later on about people selling a dental practice, because that is also something about why you should be buying, why now is a time to go. But let's have a look at this in the buying process now. Now, anybody buying a dental practice at any time has got to be clear about what it is they're buying and why they want to buy it. The first thing to look at is are you going to buy something which is owner managed for you to operate and run, or are you looking to buy something which is associate led and I'm going to have a few comments to talk about that as time goes on as well, if it's the owner managed type of thing. Looking at the practice, you've got to be clear about what it is. Have you got enough space to work in? Have you got a surgery? What's your surgery like? Are there other surgeries? What are they like? To buy a practice, to buy a job, is one thing, and I don't think we're talking about this here now. We're talking about buying a business that you can work in and also something you can expand. So you need to know where that room for expansion is, where the surgery space is, whether you can make better use of the surgery space, whether there's the mileage for more patients in that particular area. So, from that perspective, being clear of what type of things you want to do is quite important. So if you're going into a practice where it's in the middle of a new housing estate where there's lots of young families, their little kids and so on from that, is that the right place to go if what you really want to do is do Invisalign from morning till night or vice versa? So those sorts of demographics are important and having a grip on the type of the patient that you have. Are they young families, are they aging, are they big spenders? And that's an interesting thing, actually, because you would sometimes think that big spenders are in wealthy areas. In my experience, that is absolutely not true. Oftentimes, some of the big spenders are in more deprived areas, but they choose to spend their money on certain other types of dental treatment Whitening, straightening, these sorts of things. It's a choice that they're there and since COVID, people have been more appreciative of some of the things that we see within the demographics and really looking at what is available to buy. Buying a dental practice. You're buying something. You're buying the ability to make money from people's teeth. You've got to count up the number of teeth that are available for you, both in the patient base of that practice or in the patient base and the area, and really look at whether those are the sorts of teeth that you want to work on going forward. When you're looking at a dental practice to buy, one good way you can try and gauge that without looking at the patients, because the sellers probably won't show you the patients or what they do with the patients is having a look at the lab fees and the types of the lab fees and the type of materials that they've got on there. That gives you an idea of what sort of treatments are there? Would you agree with that, James?

Johnny, 5m 7s:

1000%. I never thought about it, it before, but it's so true you can, even you can tell a little bit about someone, about the sort of density that someone offers by the the brand names of the materials that they have. One thousand percent, I never thought of it, but it is true, and dentists will know what I mean. They'll be able to discern, and I won't name names. I won't name brand names, obviously today, but we know what, the ones which are more, how can we say, well, they're so they're, they're more expensive and they're associated with more high-end treatments. Yeah, I never thought about it like that before, but it is true but certainly, uh, for an owner-managed purchase.

Dr James, 5m 43s:

The value of what you're buying is determined by what you can do with what you get. And if you buy a practice and everybody's already had an implant, you're not going to be able to sell a lot more implants into that. So it's what you can do with. It is they is the crucial thing. If you were looking to buy as an associate lead practice, the one way to look at that is is the overheads and yes, you're going to look at the clinicians as well, but you look very, very closely at the overheads. You need to strip out any clinical time. You know the hygiene costs and so on, gross up the other clinical costs, the associates and what have you. If you've got associates and you pay an associate 100,000, you know then you should expect that associate to be generating 230, 250, something like that, maybe a little bit more, but minimum that and you can work out where what sort of profit levels can be made by the clinicians and find out if what's left is going to be enough to pay all the overheads. The bad news on some of that is probably 50% 60% of all the practices that I look at and analyze that are ostensibly marketed as potentially associate-led or not. Because once you assuming you retain all the clinicians when you take the profits that are made from those clinicians, if you don't do anything as the owner yourself, there's nothing left after you've paid the overheads. The costs of those practices are generally reasonably high because they've got a high multiple on them because of the nature of it. So if you're borrowing money for that, the cost of the repayments have to be taken off that and, as they say, probably 50-60% don't cut the mustard.

Johnny, 8m 12s:

And when you say that sorry to jump in that 50-60% you mean that once the finance is factored in, it's no longer profitable.

Dr James, 8m 21s:

Right? No, it's not. Now there are still practices being bought um with own money or money from an existing practice or family money. Uh, I'm not sure that just because you're doing that and the figures don't work out if you were borrowing to buy it, I'm not sure it makes the practice any more profitable. Just because you've already got the money, you might well go and use the money on something else, some other sort of investment, because if you're not making a return on it for the risk that you're taking, I'm not sure it's the right thing to do. But buying a dental practice like that, it still makes sense to do it. But buying it with it being priced as an owner managed practice, that's the different thing. It's probably still purchasable, but not as an owner managed practice can you?

Johnny, 9m 23s:

can you give us a ballpark? So it's like let's say, okay, cool, we're looking where you're assessing an associate-led practice, right, and I'm gonna say it's a little bit like, uh, when the bank lends to you with regards to a buy to let or something like that, and what I mean by that is it's like they'll have their, they'll have their yield, then they'll have the, the interest and the debt, yeah, and then they always look for this little margin of safety, don't they? Are you with me? Can you give us a ballpark figure, as in some, somewhere between something that's realistic plus also something that will give us that little margin of safety that we were talking about just before, a ballpark figure in terms of how much profitability we should be looking for before we make the purchase? Maybe like 10, 20, I don't know, something like that.

Dr James, 10m 5s:

It should certainly be 10% because I know, James people, taking some of the things that you do, you'll be able to make the high figures 10%, 12% or more on some of the other aspects that can be done. So if you're not doing that in a risky investment like a dental practice, it's the wrong dental practice. It's the wrong dental practice. You should still use those same views if you are buying it with a view to moving it towards an associate-led practice, and probably most practices. That is something that the Holy Grail were trying to move towards, some sort of an associate-led practice. That often takes a lot longer, a number more years, than the buyer feels that it should do, but the reality is it does take some time. If you could simply go in and buy a dental practice and make 20% on it, everybody would do it. Jeremy Clarkson wouldn't be a farmer anymore, he'd be a dentist. So from that perspective it's not as straightforward. The bad news is that a lot of practices are marketed almost as available as associate-led, when the reality I'm not sure that they are. One of the biggest areas where I see most disappointment with dentists is that people they buy a dental practice with the intention simply to do less work, and if that's the reason for buying a dental practice, it's probably not the right practice to do, or not the right step to take. Yes, you want to do less work in due course, but it's not going to happen straight away. Oftentimes that's not your primary goal. You've got to create something. Excuse me. So there's a few things when you're looking to buy. I'm not going to go into those anymore because some of those types of things are probably a different podcast than that. One of the more interesting things we're looking at at the moment is why are people selling? And again, when you're a buyer, it's always good to dig deeply into why people are selling, because that gives you an idea of the nature of the practice that you're buying once you've determined that. But it also shows you where the risk areas are, and that's something which is really important. When you're doing it, because you're borrowing money, you're possibly putting your house on the line. This sort of risk is something that's important to do it. So look at it from the seller. What would make somebody sell? Age, obviously, if they think they're getting a good deal. So if a purchaser, a buyer, comes along and says I'll give you a good deal on this practice, that would make them sell, that they want to do something else. That happens Not often, but it happens or just life circumstances. Now, all of those sorts of things will prompt someone to sell. There's one other overriding reason and that's people are just jaded and worn out and fed up. Okay, that overrides a lot of these different things, whether it's your age or whatever it might be. That's good to know, because that often comes with problems within the practice. Because if somebody has been fed up for a couple of years comes with problems within the practice. Because if somebody has been fed up for a couple of years, they're maybe not looking into the dentistry as much as they might do. They may well be just being lackadaisical with their patients, whatever it might be. So you may be buying a dental practice and you may end up with a lot of problems within that. That's good to know in beforehand. Again, we're not looking at what you can do to buy a dental practice in this podcast, but if we were, there are things that you can try and dig into within the practice, within the due diligence, to try and give you some sort of an idea of uh, what, what you should be looking at I like this.

Johnny, 15m 40s:

This is like looking beyond the numbers and reading between the lines a little bit.

Dr James, 15m 44s:

100 you're absolutely right, James um. The other place that that people can cause problems when they're jaded and worn out is the actual running of the dental practice as well. Not not so much clinically with their uh, with the patients, but they just don't bother with things. So they don't bother with repairs in the building, they don't bother with some of the things that a CQC says you have to do. They don't bother with the staff, so you can end up with a team who don't care either, and you end up with a whole bunch of people that you've taken responsibility for as employees who don't really care what's going on or what's happening. What's going on or what's happening now with the changes in the law that's getting more and more difficult to back out of or more and more expensive to back out of. But those are little things I think that you should be aware of when looking to buy a dental practice just the circumstances of the seller. And of course we have our old friends that were laid on us a couple of weeks ago in the budget with the capital gains tax, people deciding you know, I'm getting out now before it gets any worse, it gets any worse. That's an interesting reason to buy, because somebody selling for that reason there's generally something else behind it, rather than just for the capital gains tax. Capital gains I can understand, but that tends to push the timing forward of something else that's behind. So this analysis of your target, I think, is more and more important. And we also got issues with looking at the target of the other clinicians, the associates, what they're being paid. That's likely to be going up because costs are going up for associates, certainly with the rest of the team with the national insurance that is going up, rest of the team with the national insurance that is going up. And if the practice has, if the seller has been stretched, say if struggling with NHS or struggling with edas, there may well be some corners that are being uh cut in there as well. But again, that's probably a different podcast to to look into because we could. We could discuss that sort of thing for quite some time and there's always two sides to every story. I think it was the situation. But the staff issues are something since the budget that we really got a thing to look at when you analyze where a seller is coming from. So the features of if you're looking at a good practice for sale, looking at what you get for sale, looking at what you get for that. This practice should be priced accordingly, whether it's associate-led or quasi-associate-led or owner-managed. Some of the multiples that we're seeing on the marketplace at the moment are very strange. Multiples that we're seeing on the marketplace at the moment are very strange. I'm not talking about the mainstream selling agents, but there are some strange multiples out there and when people are desperate to sell, as we are sort of seeing from time to time, sort of seeing from time to time somehow they've got an amount in their mind and they will create the profit levels and they multiple accordingly to get to what that figure is. So it's sort of the wrong way around. It doesn't sort of follow, because there are multiple ways to measure the profitability and the EBITDA and the seller obviously is going to include as many expenses or take out as many expenses as they possibly can to make the profits look higher. The profits look higher and again, it's that sort of analysis of uh for practice for sale, which which is important when you're trying to analyze whether is this a good deal or not a good deal makes sense.

Johnny, 20m 59s:

Well, this is the thing, because there's always like that was actually one thing I was hoping we could touch on tonight. It's like there can be how can we say this? I don't want to say creative accounting, because that kind of suggests that there's, you know, not necessarily being honest, but you know you can James you gotta you gotta say it how it is yeah, you reckon we could go yeah, 100, yeah 100 yeah, because you can. There is scope. It's like you know you can, uh, you can, you can. How can I say this? You can put something on you know a previous tax return, and not necessarily on this one, and then that that boosts the profit, and if the multiple is the same, well, that's gonna mean that the practice looks like it's worth more. So I guess what I'm getting at is how can you cut through that, or what can you do in terms of making sure that the figures that they're giving you are standardized across each and every practice? Is there a way of doing that? Do you just have to get an accountant involved at that stage? Is there anything you and dentists can do?

Dr James, 21m 57s:

Well, if the accountant that is producing the accounts is dentally aware, that makes sense. If they're a member of NASDAQ or ASPD, the Association of Specialist Providers to Dentists, that gives you a fair amount of comfort that they're not completely made up, which is always a good thing. It's what's added back in the valuation, which is the crucial thing, and what we have seen is things that should be added back, like motor expenses. Well, it depends whether the guy runs a Ford Fiesta or a Ferrari. Yeah, they shouldn't have any part of it, but we've often seen things where there are no repairs to the building or machinery at all. Now, I'm sorry that doesn't exist. You're going to have some repairs to it. So there are certain rules of thumb that you might do, depending on the number of surgeries that you have. Things like bank charges, credit card charges. With the best will in the world, you can't run a practice without credit card charges, so you've got to expect to see some of that in it. There are certain things that you can add back, but there are some valuers who will add back way, way more than ever they should. There are also. There's one particular value who will remain nameless, not on the mainstream, who doesn't value the gross based on what happened last year. They value the gross based on what might happen next year if we had three or four extra associates, or if the fairies came down and worked these things through and if the materials were only 4% of the gross instead of 7% of the gross. So it's a completely made up set of accounts, frankly, and there are people that buy based on that, based on those multiples. Fortunately, the banks are getting wise to a lot of these things and oftentimes it's the banks who will look into this and help a buyer to decide whether this makes sense or not and make the buyer really think very hard about the affordability. Because the banks, with interest rates now being what they are, rather than being 1%, suddenly it's the bank manager who spends his Sunday afternoons worrying about his practices, about his customers. So it's very much in their views that they will look very closely at whether a practice is affordable or not, and so they should, and I think most good bank managers already have. They already do that. That's fine, but it's just looking forward into the future, because the future is changing.

Johnny, 25m 36s:

Understood, and bearing in mind all of that, what we just said, we still think that it's a good time to buy a practice right here, right now. These are just some ways that we can be diligent and ensure we're getting a good deal. So if we were to bring it back, to bring it back to that and the current market, so to speak, I mean here's, here's the thing, the logical thing, you know, or one might presume, right here, right now, after the budget the other week and obviously capital gains going up, that everybody's looking to shift to practice before april time, where it goes up, it'll go up even further still so. Is that what you're seeing out there? Do you reckon there's bargains to be had on that front? What's your perspective?

Dr James, 26m 18s:

I think there are um, the, there is a, the nasdaq good statistics. Now it's not a valuation at all, but those of us who are NASDAQ members, we throw a lot of our deals and transactions into the hat every quarter and average things out. So every quarter we produce something which gives an idea of where the market is at this stage. Now, the last quarter that we have I don't think is actually released yet, but it will be possibly tomorrow or the day after oh wow, after oh wow. But but where that is coming is is is a lowering of the average price and we're seeing that coming down. Now. That only comes in probably. Well, the figures only go up to the end of july for deals, but for valuations it's uh, it's, it's more recent than that. We are seeing that reduction because it's really a slacking off of a bit of a bulge that we had at the end of mid-2023. End of 2024, it started coming down and we also got to bear in mind that with transactions, when you get a transaction, say, today, that transaction and that pricing probably started six or nine months ago. So by its nature, you, you are rolling behind, but we are seeing that little slack. There are a number of people, my colleagues, who believe we've got to the bottom of the trough and it will start coming up again now. There are a number of others who don't always believe that. They think that they're still going to be patchy and the reality is, from the data that we have and the data that I have in DJH and in my practice, it is patchy. There are a lot of geographical oddities going on here and to try and measure the value of a practice or the sales of practices that are happening in, let's say, a small market town in Lancashire and compare that with an average in central Birmingham or Brighton is way different. It's difficult to do and there are some little uh, I think just local oddities that are going on there which throw things out. And you're always going to have a practice which which looks good and it's in the right place and it's at the right time and the person buying it has got the funding from the bank and so on, and that suddenly pushes the average price up, or apparently up, and allows it to run through. That's always going to throw things out. We're always going to have good practices. There's always going to be interest in good, solid practices. There's no question on that at all. Not going to sell as much are probably practices which haven't prepared themselves or prepared their accounts and so on for sale. But that I don't mean manipulating the figures and so on. But there, if you ask some of our legal colleagues or indeed the selling agents our legal colleagues or indeed the selling agents they will say it's staggering how many people will come to the market and say I want to put in practice in the market, thank you very much, and actually think they don't have to do anything more. They don't have to provide all this raft of information, all the due diligence which the buyer and the bank and their advisors are all going to want and that's something which the lawyers would say holds things up more than anything else in any sort of a deal, because the buyer can't see what it is they're buying now. If you can get all your ducks in a row beforehand, then that is something which I think helps the sale process. It makes it a lot more transparent for a buyer and it's a lot more transparent for a valuer on a bank to have a look at Something. I'm connected with an organization called the Association of Specialist Providers, aspd, and we're just generating at the moment, a little list that we can put in the marketplace and say these are the standard stuff, the standard documents which, if you're thinking about selling, get this list. A short list There'll be, but it's short list, up and running, straight away, before you go to the selling agent, before you go to the bank, because you're going to save a lot more, a lot of time later on. But, more importantly, you're going to look a bit more attractive. You're going to make it easier for a buyer to say yes. Now, if you're a buyer, on the other hand, if you've got these guys coming up and they've got all these things and it looks nice and it's ordered and everything's in place, it is easier for you to say yes, it's easier for you to look at and examine it. And that's, I think, where you can start to find an easy bargain, shall we say Now, I don't mean a bargain that you're taking somebody for a ride, but the price of a practice is the price of a practice and you can spend if you're putting your practice on the market. You can spend a year finding out that you priced it too high, or you can go in there straight away and you know where you've got the right sort of pricing. Similarly, when you're selling it sorry, when you're buying it if everything is there for you, you can see where the price is right and where the price is not right. But of course, as you said, James, before, it's not about where the numbers are, it's about the practice, the demographics. If it gives you the number of surgeries you want, if it gives you the potential for expansion that you want, if it gives you something upstairs that your spouse can do a physiotherapy room in, or something like that, those are the sorts of things that will make it work for a buyer, and you can see that from the outset.

Johnny, 33m 45s:

Understood. Well, I think that list sounds like it would be very useful. So what you're saying is, in addition to having all those documents together, it's good to have those records going back as far as possible. Really, is that fair to say? I think it is.

Dr James, 34m 0s:

And just have them tidy. Yeah, have your affairs tidy. It's sad. Some practices, I would say, remain on the market, and this is from a buyer's point of view. Some practices, I would say, remain on the market, and this is from a buyer's point of view, for reasons of geography, practices in metro areas will tend to sell quickly because there are people wanting to buy and live in those areas, particularly areas around a dental school well, it's recruitment as well, isn't it?

Johnny, 34m 37s:

it's like getting getting the right staff in those areas. It's going to be harder and that's like one of the big cornerstone issues in running a practice right now. Well, I'm going to guess it. I agree, so I've heard. Would you say that's right?

Dr James, 34m 49s:

yeah, I would, I would agree, I would agree, but depending on the lifestyle that you want. Some people may have a lifestyle in a small coastal village or a market town or something like that, and if you're looking for those sorts of areas, the practices that are on the market are often priced more cheaply compared to the profit levels. So the big risk on those, as you just pointed out, is to do with the staffing, getting the team together and getting into the community from that. But if that's something that you are looking for and there are a lot of people looking for that, you can get practices which are a lot more profitable than the city ones in those sorts of areas, if that's what you want.

Johnny, 35m 50s:

Yes, I remember back in the day seeing I can't remember where this report came from. Perhaps it was that christie's report that they do every year, yeah, but it had um, ebitda by uh, county or what was it. Yeah, even ebitda by county, yeah, I'm pretty sure it was that and how much it varied up and down the country. And I guess it's kind of obvious now that I said I lied, obviously it would be the case. There's other factors there. I just never really thought about it before how it could be. I don't know six in one place and five in another or something along those lines. But yes, anyway, yeah, that that is. That is totally a thing for the reasons that you mentioned just then. What about NHS practices?

Dr James, 36m 31s:

Interesting at the moment when we are just right now after the budget, that NHS practices have been hammered from both sides on the budget. Because of the national insurance increases. Because when you run the figures, insurance increases. Because when you run the figures, the lowering of the thresholds and the raising of the rates gives you a lot more problems as an employer with national insurance, particularly if you're working in an area where many of your staff are part-time because in days gone by they wouldn't have maybe paid any or very little employers national insurance, whereas now they're paying a lot. There's an allowance which has been more or less doubled, which, as an employer, you can claim this allowance against your PAYE that you pay unless you are a big practice with over 200, I think it's 100,000 pounds with a PAYE. So that's a big practice with a lot of staff. So if you're not NHS, you can claim that allowance, which actually is okay. It sort of claws back most of the extra cost, but NHS practices are not allowed to claim that. So NHS practices have been absolutely hammered on this.

Johnny, 38m 11s:

And can I just ask a question, just to jump in on that for a second Do we define NHS as a practice? Who even does like 1% NHS treatment?

Dr James, 38m 22s:

No, it would be 50% or the more amount that you've got, so it only goes against the NHS portion of it. But this is something we had a problem with during the COVID for different reasons. At that stage, and to be fair, jason Wong, the chief dental officer, has actually really picked this up and is running very, very hard with it and something will get sorted sorted, I have no doubt, because there is no way this current government and West Streeting can say everything he said about supporting NHS dentistry and let this run through without having some sort of compensation against it. The GPs doctors are in the same boat, by the way, so if the GPs get it, the dentists will get it, and everybody likes GPs. So I think West Street is probably trying to find a way to how shall I put this? Because they never make mistakes in government, do they? I think West Streeting is probably trying to find a way to how shall I put this? Because they never make mistakes in government, do they?

Johnny, 39m 42s:

But it comes to a point where they simply clarify what happened before.

Dr James, 39m 45s:

Yes, we are awaiting that clarification.

Johnny, 39m 47s:

Understood. That's their way of backtracking right, Something along those lines.

Dr James, 39m 59s:

I didn't say that, understood. Well, yeah, I mean. But then NHS is the other interesting thing about NHS, and this is before the budget. I'm sorry about jumping in on this, James, but there are some things going on where, within NHS dentistry, they are trying to change how the contracts are delivered, bringing in some of the ways that the contracts are paid, not necessarily on a capitation basis, but actually looking at, rather than simply here's a UDA, here's what you get paid. So they are looking at this and it is something that they're trying to bring in relatively quickly, so not in like three years time or something, but more early next year, middle of next year. There's also some talk about whether or not certain areas, access areas can be compensated for being on those access areas, being of the low NHS access. So that might also be interesting. So those things might be positive. But we've got this issue with the national insurance, employers, national insurance to resolve first. So these things are all going to get tangled up over the next few months. But there may well be some some, some some benefits to having an NHS practice. Certainly, before the budget there was a feeling of, of relative. I should want a relative positivity that it might change for the better, but we haven't seen it yet.

Johnny, 41m 58s:

Yes, understood. And what's that? Bearing in mind everything that we just said, what are you seeing out there with regards to the appetite for NHS practices at the minute?

Dr James, 42m 12s:

It's dropped in the last month that I would see. Having said that, early part of this year and back end of last year there were people looking to buy NHS practices because, again, looking at the statistics that NASDAQ produces, again once a year we put a number of our accounts anonymously into a pot and average things out just to see what the profitability is, you know, per principal, per associate and so on. And pretty much for the last X years, mixed practices have outperformed either wholly private or wholly NHS, which you would probably expect. So that model of a mixed practice where you can move things around and whether that's moving your team around, depending on the time of year and you've got your NHS contract, which is more steady, and then the private stuff, you've got some maybe some bigger, bigger things, bigger items coming into there. The mixed practice generally performs pretty well. So I said, early part of this year we were seeing people looking. In fact we have people looking to buy quite a large NHS practice to sit alongside quite a local private practice, you know. So the two would run together, um, rather than all in the one building. So there are people modeling this. Quite. Recently I've also heard of someone doing a community practice, almost based on the old UDC type of thing, but very much setting it up and running it on, running it on um, running it without a view to to to having high level treatments or high ticket items. So just concentrating on on the main stuff, the main things that need to happen the community and basically going for volume on that. And from that point of view you need a certain type of team to run that. But that was their model and it seems that sort of thing might well work. And then they would simply refer anybody looking for you know, root canals or so on somewhere else.

Johnny, 45m 16s:

Interesting model is that interesting model? Because generally, you know, if we're going to talk about money, well, the high ticket treatments are the money spinners, so to speak. You know, and yeah, dentistry isn't all about profitability, but certainly we've got to think about the pennies and pounds. Uh, so, uh, yeah, um, interesting model. Let's see. I guess is. Is that have you ever come across? Yeah, I don't think. I think you said earlier that's a new one on you. Is it? It or is?

Dr James, 45m 49s:

there yeah okay, I haven't seen that one, but I think the previous chief dental officer has also been organizing a couple of her models in different parts of the country to try and look at this and provide something else to a particular demographic, rather than what a normal GDC practice would be, where you've got scales and polishes at one hand and you've got something very, very high level at the other end, at plants, or something high level at the other end at Blancs or something.

Johnny, 46m 31s:

Understood.

Dr James, 46m 32s:

Well, guys.

Johnny, 46m 33s:

I should mention that there will be some opportunities to ask questions. Oh wow, jonny, we've done a good job of talking because we've absorbed 50 minutes. I'm sorry. No, it was me and you. It was me and you, to be fair, but anyway, that's what everybody came. They came for the knowledge, they came for the wisdom and that's what everybody came. They came for the knowledge, they came for the wisdom and that's what they got. So usually these webinars, we conduct them over the course of 60 minutes and we're coming up to the 50-minute mark, well, the 49-minute mark, to be precise. So, guys, we've got precisely 11 minutes for some questions. Should anybody fancy it before this evening is over, any specific questions relative to their circumstances now is a really good opportunity. And just while everybody's thinking of their questions, Johnny, something popped into my head. We were talking, so you were saying hey, you know what? Generally it's positive if you're a buyer, right, there's some opportunities out there. And I'm wondering would does it differ in what you say if you were speaking to somebody who is buying a practice for the first time, or somebody who's already adding to the practices that they already have they've already got a dental practice or is it pretty much exactly the same is at a good time.

Dr James, 47m 57s:

It's the same if you're buying the first time or if you're buying your third or fourth or tenth practice. From that you can find something. That's what you want. That's what you want. The marketplace is a lot more of independent buyers and first-timers at the moment. The banks are happy to support that as well. Some banks are not really geared up for the first-time buyer or somebody buying one or two practices, but maybe geared up for small groups. But the opportunities are there either which way. I think at the moment just anecdotally from my own practice and what I know that if you were a first-time buyer, I think I think the stuff out there, because of the nature, because of the capital gains tax things, because of the being jaded after kovat, after the, the feeling of some of the GDC rulings and the defensive dentistry, the people feeling defensive about the dentistry I think there are people who are wanting to get out and those are the sorts of things. But bear in mind the risks that I was saying, that are in attendance with someone desperate to sell.

Johnny, 49m 35s:

Understood. Yeah, okay, fair enough. Well, listen, here's the thing I mean. If there's one thing learning about finance and investing has taught me, it's precisely the point where everybody's trying to exit and sell. That can sometimes represent the really good buying opportunities. And when everybody gets caught away, caught up, caught up jumping on the bandwagon, well, that's the time when there's peak how can we say, uh, peak, peak excitement or peak euphoria in the market, but obviously at that stage that's gonna push prices higher. So we're definitely not in that. In the second place for the moment, more akin to the first place. Short term will it go lower still, who really knows? But if you're in that vicinity of that ballpark, well, historically, if everything that, uh, you know, if observations invert, you know, every single market and and when it comes to money is the same, whether it's dental practices, whether it's the stock, same whether it's dental practices, whether it's the stock market, whether it's property, everything like that, well, those are often where the opportunities are found. So, certainly food for thought. We will say that. And you know what today has been really useful? Because it's given everybody a really good summary of the things that they can look out for whenever it comes to purchasing that practice. And then also, in addition to that, some calls for optimism and a little bit of invigoration to think to ourselves right, let's get out there, let's see what we can do. Interest rates interest rates everybody's favorite question, because they're, they're, and well, this is the thing, right? Interest rates well, most people think they've peaked Most.

Dr James, 51m 12s:

I think they have peaked. For businesses, I think they're coming down, but not as fast as we expected. Strangely, for residential and for mortgages they're actually going up. They've actually hardened and that's an interesting thing because they were just lagging a little bit behind on that. We will see how the Bank of England flows through after Christmas. At the moment, the markets have swallowed Rachel Reeve's budget. Just moment. The markets have swallowed rachel reeves budget, just so. Nothing's going to fall over the edge the way it did with liz trusts, but there are still are some concerns of instability in there. So that will that will work its way out over the next few months. But will it come down enough to make a decision to buy or not to buy? I don't think so. I think if it's a good practice, I think the bank will lend on it and I think it makes sense to borrow, whether the interest rates you know, 5% or 6% or 4%. It will work its way through those sorts of things. At the end of the day they are an issue, but if it's the right practice, it's the right practice. One thing I would say, James, for anybody looking to buy at this stage keep looking. The one that you look at first may not be the right one. The chances are it won't, but keep looking. There is the right one out there somewhere. It's just finding it.