The sales ring in 2018: Boom or bust?

Horses In Training Sales (HIT)

Tattersalls’ Autumn HIT Sale concluded at the start of November, with the Newmarket-based auctioneers revealing that turnover for the three-day sale reached almost 27 million guineas, second only to the previous year’s total.

Making up a chunk of that total was the record-breaking figure (for that particular sale) of one million guineas fetched by Aljazzi, a five-year-old mare who won the Duke of Cambridge Stakes at Royal Ascot this summer for trainer Marco Botti and owners Saleh Al Homaizi and Imad Al Sagar. The winning bid for the now-retired daughter of Shamardal easily eclipsed the 700,000 guineas paid for Elizabeth Browning at the same sale last year.

All in all, the figures for the Autumn HIT Sale are what financial experts might call ‘robust’ – the trading system has remained effective under different market conditions. As the chart below shows, the number of horses sold has generally increased year on year this decade, rising from 758 in 2000 to 1,049 this year.

While the number of horses offered was at its lowest in 2002 and 2003, the median sale price of horses being sold had a noticeable dip six years later during the recession. After steadily rising from a decade-low of 7,000 guineas in 2001, the median price dropped from 13,000 in 2006 to just 8,000 in 2008, before levelling off at 9,000 for the next three years.

Like waves, the numbers have since started to rise into a swell once more, with the 2016 figure of 13,500 the highest this decade. With a noticeably smaller number of horses offered that year, it appears to have been a good example of quality over quantity, a concept that is not always associated with the mass production of racehorses across the globe.

Over in Ireland, yearling sales have produced worryingly low figures in the current period of financial uncertainty, including a clearance rate of just 60% at the recent Goffs Autumn Yearling Sale. However, the following day’s Autumn Horses In Training Sale at the same auction house featured 20 fewer offerings than 12 months earlier, but was notable for a clearance rate of 85% (up 9% from the previous year) and an increase of 50% of the median sale price to 9,000 guineas.

Perhaps the 2018 word of the year ‘Single-use’ no longer applies to horse racing. An ever-increasing number of lots at the HIT sales are being bought to race in Australia, the Middle East and America, helping to prop up the more traditional avenues of canny owners looking for a bargain and young stayers bought to go hurdling. Archetype, pictured below, was the top lot on day one of the Autumn HIT, sold for 335,000 guineas to Prince Faisal Bin Khalid's Saudi Arabian-based Red Stable.

Archetype at the sales, copyright of www.tattersalls.com

Yearling Sales

The general trend across smaller sales in Europe in 2018 has seen median prices for yearlings fall slightly, including Arqana’s recent sale at Deauville, though Europe’s Premier Yearling Sale, which takes place at Tattersalls earlier in October, saw record turnover for the seventh consecutive year.

This was in part due to the 3.5 million guineas paid by David Redvers on behalf of Sheikh Fahad Al Thani for a brother to Too Darn Hot. That was the highest price for a yearling anywhere in the world this year, and one of seven lots that fetched a million guineas or more on the opening day of the sale.

The other leading lot was a brother to Secret Gesture and Sir Isaac Newton, the Galileo colt consigned by Newsells Park Stud and picked up by MV Magnier for 3.4 million guineas. It’s a family that Newsells Park Stud know very well, having sold Sir Isaac Newton at the same sale in 2013 for 3.6 million guineas, as well as a full-sister in 2016 and a full-brother last year, both for around 1.3 million guineas. The latter is Japan, who won the Group 2 Beresford Stakes at Naas in late-September.

To translate it back to the original High Street analogy, it appears that the Horses In Training charity shops are surviving, but only the top-end Yearling department stores – think Harrods rather than B&M – are keeping their heads well above water.

Rather than attribute the poor trade at the Autumn Yearling Sale solely to Brexit, Goffs chief executive Henry Beeby suggested that the ‘supply/demand ratio is out of kilter again’, and it will be interesting to see whether this is reflected in the Tattersalls December Yearling Sale later this month. The feeling is, though, that the protective Newmarket bubble may not be ready to burst just yet.

Arc runner-up Sea of Class was bought there two years ago, and her sire Sea The Stars has four yearlings catalogued this year. While the Frankel colt out of the seven-time Japanese Group 1 winner Vodka may attract more column inches, it would be no surprise should one of the Sea The Stars colts or fillies steal the limelight.

The December Breeding Stock Sale – usually the primary opportunity to sell mares – follows hot on the heels of the yearling and foal sales. Prices have been stable over the last five years, the median around double that of the Autumn HIT Sale but with a lower clearance rate, though last year’s median dropped slightly despite the sale of Nunthorpe and Prix de l’Abbaye winner Marsha for six million guineas. This is where using median figures can provide a truer picture than merely using the average sales price.

Aljazzi at the sales, copyright of www.tattersalls.com

To turn full circle, Autumn HIT record-breaker Aljazzi was offered at the October sale in order to make her stand out from the mares going under the hammer next month, and it clearly worked. She was bought by Julian Dollar to join the large band of broodmares at Newsells Park Stud in Hertfordshire, an operation that enjoyed plenty of success with selling at Book 1 of the Yearling Sale – their draft of 22 lots garnered a total of 11 million guineas.

The stud has enjoyed notable success in recent years, with the chart below showing how all but two of their 12 one million-plus lots have been sold since 2016.

"She will be difficult to replace, but we will have to find another like her now!" said Tony Nerses, representing Aljazzi’s former owners Saleh Al Homaizi and Imad Al Sagar, echoing the sentiments of many an owner-breeder who has metaphorically sifted through plenty of grit whilst panning for gold.

Botti, for whom Aljazzi was a first Royal Ascot winner, will feel the loss of the stable star from his yard keenly. But given the success that Newsells Park Stud have had with their Galileo and Dubawi yearlings – clearly adopting a ‘speculate to accumulate’ approach – it may not be long until we see Aljazzi’s own progeny fetching large amounts in the sales ring, before gracing the biggest stages on the racecourse proper.