It is time to go back to the subject of valuation. What is a yearling worth? Compared to the 2-year old sales, we have one less piece of information since there are obviously no workout times.
We start with the subject of New York breds because the first half of the first day at the 2020 Fasig-Tipton September yearling sale is exclusively NY breds. This replaces the usual Saratoga sale which did not occur for COVID reasons. This is an unusual group of NY breds because 80% seem to be sired by non-NY stallions (it is a NY bred if the foal drops in NY). It is a select group.
I went back and looked at the first 100 yearlings sold last year at Saratoga, which was also a similar select group. Here is what I found:
30-35% sell for more than 5x the current stud fee
30-35% sell for between 3x and 5x the current stud fee
30-35% sell for less than 3x the current stud fee
In general, studs fees near $10,000 have more horses that sell for more that 5x the stud fee, while sires in the $40,000 range have more horses the sell for less than 3x the fee.
I am going to start with that as my beginning “model” and see if needs to tweaked as the sale goes on.
The Model:
- the median horse will sell for 4x the current stud fee
- outstanding horses will sell for more than 5x
- ugly horses will sell for less than 3x
- these multiples will be higher for $10,000 sires and lower for $50,000 sires
- the multiples will be higher for precocious sire and lower for plodding sires
- the multiples will be higher with black type in the dam, and lower for slower dams
- the multiple will be higher for producing dams, and lower for newer dams
Buying A Race Horse 