Cover image courtesy of New Zealand Bloodstock

Under the new format beginning in 2018, Book 1 of the sale posted some remarkable results. After the completion of just that book, all the key measures – turnover, median, average and clearance – had surpassed the Premier, Select and Festival Sales combined results from 2017.

New Zealand Bloodstock’s Managing Director Andrew Seabrook stated at the time that the aim with the new format was to retain international buyers onsite for longer, and the results reflected a particularly strong show of support from buyers hailing from Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore.

A post-COVID fallacy?

It was no surprise then that, of all of Australasia’s major yearling sales, Karaka’s was hit hard by the effects of COVID on travel heading into the 2021 renewal. However, the key figures don’t tell the full story, and taking a closer look at the different sections of the market reveals a telling story.

A look at the median is misleading here - a dip of just NZ$10,000 from the NZ$100,000 median seen in both 2019 and 2020 isn’t telling the full story. Nor is the clearance rate, which was at its highest in 2021 of the now six renewals of the sale in its new format at 85 per cent.

Chart: The median price at Book 1 of the New Zealand Bloodstock National Yearling Sales

In that year, 512 horses were offered for sale after withdrawals, which was 101 down on the 2020 sale. The obvious reasoning? Vendors predicted the effects of reduced travel, only took to the sale those horses they thought suitable and were prepared to sell.

But how did that shape in the results? As ever, the average offers only limited insight. It dipped to a little under NZ$120,000 in 2021, down from around NZ$136,000 in both preceding years. That drop might seem a little more severe than the median’s, but put it as a percentage for context and they’re roughly matched at around 10 per cent.

However, breaking up the market into quartiles adds colour to the picture. In 2020, the average of the top 25 per cent of horses sold at the sale (i.e., the top quarter of the market) was NZ$288,611, which dipped to NZ$247,792 in 2021.

That drop of over 14 per cent at the top end, combined with the heightened clearance rate, suggests one of two things: Either vendors held back from taking their most valuable yearlings to the sale in that year, or they were willing to let them go for a cheaper price than they might have in an unaffected year. The challenge of coordinating trans-Tasman travel for horses due to their human counterparts being bound by closed borders also added complexity to the movement of yearlings.

Chart: The average price amongst the most expensive 25 per cent of horses at Book 1 of the New Zealand Bloodstock National Yearling Sales

That’s hardly a revelatory conclusion, but what’s interesting is that the negative effect of COVID on the top end didn’t last long. In fact, it appears that it lasted only for that one year.

The top-end average of NZ$311,422 in 2022 was a huge jump, and far surpassed the two pre-COVID years.

A few theories could be proposed here; perhaps it was a response to the excellent clearance rate in 2021.

If you consider that a key concern of vendors in that first COVID-affected year was how their horses would be received as a reliance was shifted onto video parades over in-person inspections, then it makes sense that they found trust in the market from the 2021 results.

Obviously, that goes for buyers as well, as they became accustomed to the remote approach.

How 2023 stacks up

NZB will have been delighted to see the average top NZ$150,000 for Book 1 this year, and further buoyed too by a median of NZ$130,000 - a significant increase from the NZ$100,000 in 2022.

Whilst the top-end average was down slightly on the previous year, it was still a healthy NZ$290,000. An even more salubrious sign is seen in the lower quarter - the average of the bottom 25 per cent of horses sold.

In 2023 that figure stood at NZ$53,639, much increased from the NZ$44,892 the year before, and the low-point figure of NZ$36,210 seen in 2021. This appears to be almost a reverse of the market trends as we analysed them from the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale last month, where quadrant analysis showed the growth strongest at the top end.

Chart: The average price amongst the least expensive 25 per cent of horses at Book 1 of the New Zealand Bloodstock National Yearling Sales

A most interesting point is that across most measures, the highs of the 2018 year remains an anomaly for the sale - and that’s from the largest number of horses sold too.

However, NZB will be happy that the areas of growth seen in 2023 put the sale back on a trajectory of confidence post the tumultuous border-closure years.