A partnership headed up by Leonard Green’s D. J. Stable started off the proceedings with some fireworks during Tuesday’s session of the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Select Yearling Sale, placing the final bid on a share in prominent sire Not This Time for $2 million.
After the fall of the hammer, the remaining members of the 50-share syndicate in the stallion have 10 days to exercise their right of first refusal and purchase the share. If it clears the syndicate, the share will go to the group that placed the winning bid at the Saratoga sale.
Not This Time, a 9-year-old son of Giant’s Causeway, stands at Taylor Made Stallions in Nicholasville, Ky., for an advertised fee of $135,000. He is the sire of runners including champion Epicenter and Grade 1 winners Sibelius, Up to the Mark, Just One Time, and Princess Noor.
Though there was no physical horse in the ring when the bidding took place in the Humphrey S. Finney Pavilion in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., there was plenty of pomp and circumstance, with a video promoting the stallion playing on the television screens above the auctioneer’s stand ahead of a long introduction by pedigree reader Jesse Ullery.
For Mark Taylor, president and CEO of Taylor Made Farm, the attention and dollars paid to Not This Time represented a welcome validation of the stallion roster’s ace.
“I got goosebumps when they were playing the Not This Time video,” he said. “It’s kind of surreal to think we got another horse of this caliber, because it’s been 10 years since Unbridled’s Song passed away, and it was a long drink of water between having horses like that.
The two-percent share in Not This Time entitles the holder to annual nomination rights to the stallion, along with a share in the revenues from stud fees, including those from the 2023 breeding season. Shareholders are also responsible for expenses tied to the stallion, including board fees, marketing, and veterinarian fees.
“The syndicate is very tightly held, and we had one shareholder that said, ‘I think I’m going to pull some chips off the table, and I’d like to do it in Saratoga,’” Taylor said. “It was something that we’d never done before, but it was allowed in the syndicate agreement, so we were okay with it. Fasig-Tipton embraced it and said it would be a unique offering in a place that’s got a lot of energy and a lot of the right eyeballs.”
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Using a rudimentary method of valuation, if a 1/50 share in Not This Time trades at $2 million, his total valuation would be $100 million. Though the public auction market is likely a more emotionally charged arena to purchase a stallion share than a typical transaction, Taylor said the hammer price set a fair valuation on the stallion.
“I think it sets the bar of how shares are going to be valued going forward,” he said. “Whether this was done publicly or through private treaty, I think it sets the bar. This share still has to clear the syndicate, so there is still a chance an existing shareholder could still pick it up. It’s very unique, but we’ll see how it plays out.
“I thought that it would bring that, or possibly just a tick more,” Taylor continued, commenting on the hammer price. “We do pro formas on these things. When you’re buying shares, it’s not like buying a yearling where it’s complete speculation, but on a share, you can do some educated modeling on when it should pay back. By our calculations, we did three different models on it, and it should pay back sometime between him being 13 1/2 and 15 1/2. That’s still relatively young, so I think that’s the type of investment that people are comfortable doing. Plus, it gives you access to the stallion.”
Not This Time continues a run of notable stallion shares trading on the public auction market. A 2.5 percent share in 2022 Horse of the Year Flightline sold to an undisclosed buyer for $4.6 million at last year’s Keeneland November Breeding Stock sale, while a 2.5 percent stake in young sire Upstart sold to Mike Freeny of Dunquin Farm for $450,000 at the 2022 Keeneland April Horses of Racing Age Sale.
D. J. Stable is a prominent player in the Thoroughbred sphere, campaigning horses including champion Wonder Wheel and Grade 2 Tampa Bay Derby winner Helium. Leonard Green is a CPA and lecturer at Babson College in Massachusetts, and he is the founder and chairman of The Green Group, a Thoroughbred industry accounting and advisory firm based in New Jersey. Lois Green, his wife and partner in D.J. Stable, died in May.
