›› high-priced stallions that have joined the
European rosters in the past six years. Ten years ago only 13 of the top 30 stallions in Britain and Ireland assessed by book quality stood at £20,000/€20,000 or more. By 2019 that number had risen to 22 out of 30. Another way to explain it is that the cheapest fee of the top 30 stallions in 2009 was £15,000 and by 2019 it had risen to £30,000. With more expensively produced yearlings entering the market year on year, it had already put profitability under pressure, even before Covid further muddied the waters this year. Moreover, when you consider that the quality of the broodmare population has remained pretty stable in the period, it’s all too easy to understand that even in a rising market, sellers’ expectations haven’t always been met. To illustrate the point, we can use the core British and Irish sales listed above. In 2018, 2,517 yearlings were sold at these seven sales, but only 52% made enough to cover their sire’s advertised fee, plus £20,000 in production costs. A year later, the 2,543 yearlings sold included only
49% that were profitable by the same criteria. This year it is absolutely brilliant that as many as 2,336 found new homes from these seven sales, but the margins were squeezed so much that only 44% cleared the advertised-fee-plus-£20k hurdle. And, of course, not everyone shared the pain in equal measure. The sad truth of the matter is that breeders had a 50-50 chance of at least breaking even if they used a £20k-plus stallion, but for those using sub £20k stallions those odds tumbled to a 35% probability of making money and went even lower for the cheaper stallions. As always, the yearlings by proven sires sold at a premium, with Galileo, Dubawi, Kingman, Frankel, Sea The Stars and Lope De Vega the leaders by average price. Those with yearlings by Kingman (conception fee £55,000) and Lope De Vega (conception fee €60,000) did particularly well. Among the new sires so far this year with Arqana October not included, France has provided the top stallion for the second straight year as Almanzor followed Shalaa with the only
TATTERSALLS
Yearling market 2020
Profitability has dropped further this year
average above £100,000. The Coolmore pair Churchill and Caravaggio followed, while the best British first-season sire was Cheveley Park Stud’s Ulysses. The three stallions with the highest percentage of profitable yearlings – the only stallions scoring over 80% – were Wootton Bassett (93%), Night Of Thunder (88%) and Kingman (85%). The best three by fee multiples were Kingman (7.3 times his fee), Sir Percy (7.2) and Farhh (6.8).
STALLIONS RANKED BY 2020 AVERAGE YEARLING PRICE (European sales, 5+ sold) Sire
Galileo Dubawi Kingman Frankel Sea The Stars Lope De Vega Invincible Spirit Siyouni Teofilo Dark Angel Wootton Bassett No Nay Never Almanzor Fastnet Rock Churchill Camelot Oasis Dream Night Of Thunder Shalaa Caravaggio Kodiac New Bay Le Havre Sea The Moon Showcasing Golden Horn Pivotal Farhh Ribchester Ulysses Australia Starspangledbanner
To Stud
Off
Sold
(%)
2002 2006 2015 2013 2010 2011 2003 2011 2008 2008 2012 2015 2018 2005 2018 2014 2004 2016 2017 2018 2007 2017 2010 2015 2011 2016 1997 2014 2018 2018 2015 2011
25 25 31 40 52 78 26 59 10 97 55 65 45 19 73 35 32 47 32 71 122 35 32 37 71 16 15 17 78 39 65 57
22 20 26 28 47 65 20 41 7 76 45 57 37 18 59 31 25 40 26 55 108 29 24 34 57 14 13 12 62 32 56 50
88.0 80.0 83.9 70.0 90.4 83.3 76.9 69.5 70.0 78.4 81.8 87.7 82.2 94.7 80.8 88.6 78.1 85.1 81.3 77.5 88.5 82.9 75.0 91.9 80.3 87.5 86.7 70.6 79.5 82.1 86.2 87.7
44 THE OWNER BREEDER
High £
Avg £
Med £
Fee £
3,570,000 2,274,228 2,835,000 2,100,000 735,000 945,000 630,000 714,000 325,000 441,000 630,000 682,500 262,500 252,000 367,500 357,000 450,000 262,500 304,500 215,250 441,000 420,000 341,250 504,000 325,500 367,500 189,000 136,500 367,500 336,000 603,750 378,000
712,653 584,545 401,328 357,667 207,411 187,947 184,034 183,797 147,170 117,734 113,272 112,704 110,434 105,508 92,235 90,540 89,854 89,378 86,179 83,916 81,224 77,550 76,764 75,912 72,656 69,720 68,223 68,177 66,638 65,855 65,184 57,998
332,966 420,000 236,566 201,739 157,500 136,500 138,750 136,454 162,750 92,250 81,872 72,000 90,969 90,825 73,500 56,401 50,000 74,250 53,540 70,000 51,250 36,000 63,678 43,050 52,000 46,000 65,000 50,925 47,700 43,050 42,000 35,875
Private 250,000 55,000 175,000 119,813 53,250 106,500 66,563 35,500 75,438 17,750 22,187 31,062 62,125 31,062 26,625 30,000 15,000 24,406 31,062 39,937 17,750 53,250 15,000 35,000 60,000 40,000 10,000 26,625 30,000 31,062 13,312
Fee (+20k)
(%)
Private 12 22 14 26 49 10 30 4 36 42 43 29 9 35 18 12 35 17 40 49 14 9 20 26 2 8 8 31 15 23 28
- 60.0 84.6 50.0 55.3 75.4 50.0 73.2 57.1 47.4 93.3 75.4 78.4 50.0 59.3 58.1 48.0 87.5 65.4 72.7 45.4 48.3 37.5 58.8 45.6 14.3 61.5 66.7 50.0 46.9 41.1 56.0
AvgXFee MedXFee
- 2.3 7.3 2.0 1.7 3.5 1.7 2.8 4.1 1.6 6.4 5.1 3.6 1.7 3.0 3.4 3.0 6.0 3.5 2.7 2.0 4.4 1.4 5.1 2.1 1.2 1.7 6.8 2.5 2.2 2.1 4.4
1.0 2.6 0.8 1.3 1.8 0.6 1.4 1.3 0.9 3.1 2.7 2.5 1.3 1.6 1.9 1.0 4.6 1.9 1.9 1.1 1.8 0.9 2.5 1.1 0.6 1.6 2.9 1.3 1.2 1.3 2.5
