The sales season that was: Avesta Bloodstock

Cover image courtesy of Bronwen Healy

Two years ago, Jimmy Unwala couldn’t have picked a hairier time to go into business. It was 2020 in the thick of COVID, and few had a clue how the bloodstock market would fare.

Unwala had been the head of nominations at Aquis for three years and, before that, spent a decade at Godolphin in a very similar role. He was going out on his own, and it was a scary time to be doing it.

“We started buying predominantly during 2020, right when COVID hit, and the markets had severely collapsed,” he said, speaking to TDN AusNZ this week. “But the broodmares that we bought at that time, I honestly don’t think we can replace them now.”

In a short two years, Unwala has ridden COVID’s economic wave.

When he says he can’t replace those mares he bought, what he means is that he could sell them for a decent profit now, but he couldn’t buy anything similar for a price remotely close to what he paid in 2020.

“I might have bought a broodmare for $50,000 two years ago, and since then the market has gone up 20 to 25 per cent,” he said. “If I sell that mare for a good, decent profit today, that’s well and good, but I can’t replace her for the same value again because the market has gone up so much.”

It was an interesting and unique time to be launching a business, but Jimmy Unwala did just that. In 2020, right in the middle of COVID, his Avesta Bloodstock brand was born and it has sailed through the last two years under Unwala’s brilliant guidance and sharp mind.

Today, the outfit has some 150 mares in its portfolio, not all of them owned outright by Unwala, and, if you ask him, he’ll tell you he’s not a bloodstock agent.

“I’d call myself a bloodstock trader,” he said. “I own most of my stock at some level myself, and of course I have a few good investors with me, but basically we’re trying to trade horses, to buy low and sell high and find a niche in the market.”

One direction

At just 37 years old, Unwala is a world of experience. He was born in the small city of Indore in central India, and educated in Equine Science at the University of Kentucky.

In 2010 he graduated from the Godolphin Flying Start program, and from there it was straight into nominations at Darley Australia before a three-year tenure at Aquis Farm.

“I wanted to be a horse trainer growing up, but very quickly I realised that getting up at 4am in the morning wasn’t up my alley,” Unwala said. “I enjoy a good sleep-in.”

Flying Start was the making of the man, as it often is with this lucrative, worldwide program. For Unwala, the contacts and learning were invaluable, but more critical was the direction it gave him.

“It gave me my direction towards bloodstock,” he said. “When I did a placement with Inglis during my Flying Start, that was the first time I ever realised that I wanted to do bloodstock. It suited my personality better, and sometimes I think your calling can come later in life.”

Unwala jokes that he feels 47 instead of 37 these days. Since launching Avesta Bloodstock, which takes its name from a collection of Persian texts, he’s hardly lived in his Gold Coast home. He tries to get to every sale, determined that each will teach him something because no one ever knows everything.

“In horses, I’ve learned that it comes down to two things… personality and ego,” he said. “I don’t have an ego, so that helps me, at least.”

Buying below the line

The 150 broodmares in the Avesta Bloodstock portfolio are dotted around 20-odd farms the length of Australia. Most are in the Hunter Valley, but some are in Victoria and, lately, a few in Western Australia.

Unwala says placing them on various farms is partly about not aligning his brand with any one operation in particular, but it’s also about getting along with people. He wants to be able to pick up the phone and chat with studmasters about his horses, asking 10 questions about them if he needs to.

Some of his important alliances are with the likes of Fernrigg Farm, and some of the horses he’s been involved with lately are the likes of Artorius (Flying Artie).

This year, flat out in a bubbling bloodstock market, he’s traded weanlings, yearlings and broodmares.

“We’ve had a very good trading year,” Unwala said. “The market in Australia has been very buoyant for the last two years, despite COVID. When I go to the sales, I hear people saying that the interest rates are going to go up and house prices are going to come down, and that the market is going to come back 20 per cent next year. You hear every sort of speculation when you to go a sale.

“But at the end of the day, if you’re buying horses at $800,000, $80,000 or $8000, if you believe what you’re buying is below market value, even if the market is collapsing you’re still ahead. You book your profit when you buy something at the right price.”

Through 2022, Avesta Bloodstock had a phenomenal trading experience.

“We took about 30-plus weanlings to the sales this year, and we came home with two,” he said. “We sold pretty much everything we took, and we took just over 20 yearlings, or shares in yearlings, to the sale and we came home with one.”

Unwala says that’s not just a reflection on he and his partners doing things right. It’s a reflection on the health of the Australian market and for a company like his, which buys and sells furiously, it bodes well.

However, it’s not all beer and skittles, as he well knows. How, for example, can he continue to buy at below the market value in a market as white-hot as this one?

“It was very, very difficult to do that this year,” Unwala said. “Last year, there were a lot of broodmares between that $80,000 and $120,000 price bracket that we bought, and the same two years ago.

“This year, I found two or three in the entire year that I could buy at that price. Mares were significantly making way more money this year than they were worth because that’s how strong the market is.”

What is quality?

One of those mares was Seewhatshebrings, a daughter of Sebring and half-sister to the Group 3-winning Wandabaa (Wandjina). She was in foal to Bivouac.

Seewhatshebrings was picked up by Avesta Bloodstock at this year’s Inglis Chairman’s Sale, consigned by Twin Hills Stud and sold to Unwala and Fernrigg Farm for $800,000. It was more than what they would usually pay for a broodmare.

“She wasn’t cheap for us at $800,000, and it’s probably the most expensive horse I’ve ever bought personally,” Unwala said. “But she was a mare of such good quality. You rarely come across a horse that you really want to come home with, and she was that mare for us.”

Shortly after the Chairman’s Sale, Avesta headed to the Magic Millions National Sale and appeared on the buyers’ sheet nine times, sometimes in collusion with partners, and other times going solo.

Among the mares he landed was the $400,000 Gone Glimmering (USA), an American-bred mare by Tapiture (USA) served by Lope De Vega (Ire), plus Lime Soda (Spirit Of Boom), a full sister to Ef Troop.

The nine mares ranged from $400,000 right down to $10,000, because Unwala doesn’t believe that quality rests on a number.

“For me, quality is not really defined by the price tag of a horse,” he said. “I can have a $20,000 mare that I believe is good quality but we bought her cheap. She doesn’t have to be worth $600,000 to be called quality, and that definition of quality depends on where we think a horse sits in the market.”

For Unwala, the crux of it lies with a mare’s ability to produce a good racehorse, because if she can do that, it doesn’t matter if she cost $60,000 or 10 times as much.

“I did nominations for almost 10 years, a decade of my working life, and I saw so many pedigrees,” he said. “I saw $2000 broodmares walk into the barns at Darley and Aquis and produce a good racehorse, and I’ve seen million-dollar broodmares come in and produce nothing.”

Unwala doesn’t profess to being an expert. He’ll admit he’s still new to being in business, even though he’s not new to the business. He tries to learn all the time, picking up on the commercial trends of other breeders, seeing where they went wrong and where they went right.

He does have, however, a very measured and pliable attitude to trading horses.

“It’s a resilient industry,” Unwala said. “And in Australia, horse racing and horse breeding is actually pretty lucrative if you do it correctly. Yes, it might be a longer haul, but you can see the returns on pinhooking weanlings. What other business gives you those sorts of returns in six months’ time?

“I’m not saying it can’t go pear-shaped, but I’ve seen a lot of new people come into the horse business in the last two years, and that’s been the most positive thing I’ve seen, the fresh blood.

“I’ve seen a lot of young people come out and try to pinhook and trade stock. That’s the generation next, isn’t it? They’re the next bloodstock agents, farm managers and traders.”

Changing the guard

One of Unwala’s more interesting perspectives is that of the Australian stallion ranks. It might be because he’s an international, but he believes that the injection of foreign blood is important to local breeding.

“I’m quite keen to see St Mark’s Basilica, to see what he looks like in the flesh,” Unwala said. “I’m equally excited to see Pinatubo at Darley. They’re two very good racehorses and for me, when you’re breeding this many broodmares, it’s always good to see new stock coming through.”

He doesn’t seem to mind whether new blood is coming from Europe or North America.

“It doesn’t really matter because we need that influx,” Unwala said. “We need that for the broodmare bands, and it’s good for the genetics. We need new bloodlines and we need new sirelines to kick, because that gives you more options.

“One of the problems we’re going to face in the next five years is that many of our top stallions are all towards the end of their careers. Fastnet Rock, Written Tycoon, Snitzel… they’re all towards the ends of their careers as older horses, so it’s fair to say they won’t be there in the next five or so years.”

Unwala said Australia will need a young bunch of sires to take up the mantel because, as it stands, a $4 million broodmare has only three or so stallions at the top end of town, according to him.

“The market is going to change a lot in the next three or four years and that, for me, is the most fascinating part of bloodstock in Australia,” he said.

“Which horses are going to take the next step, because it’s good to identify them early. Will it be Pinatubo or St Mark’s Basilica, or could it be Profiteer or Tiger Of Malay? We’ll have to see.”