Moroney turns attention to Melbourne Premier and Karaka Yearling Sales
Leading agent looking forward as hot bloodstock market makes it difficult for price-sensitive buyers to find value
Record trade at the two Australian yearling sales held so far this year has forced agents to reassess their valuations and push clients to extend their budget in order to secure horses. Even so, many are being blown out of the water by the competition.
Experienced Kiwi agent Paul Moroney, who buys for his brother, Group 1-winning trainer Mike, is one who has found it especially difficult so far in 2022, coming away with just three yearlings across the Magic Millions and Inglis Classic Yearling Sale on behalf of his Flemington-based sibling.
“It has been difficult because we have valued horses that we would normally value at, say, $200,000 to $250,000 and aware that the market was going to be quite hot, we would raise our sights on those by $100,000. We go to our clients and say we’d have to stump up and pay a little bit more for them this year,” Moroney said.
“But we found a lot of those horses this year are making $500,000, $600,000, $700,000 and you have got to value your horse. Once you have already listed your value, and you start paying another 25, 30, 40 per cent, I find that I can’t go to my clients and say, ‘I am sorry, that is where the market is at, you’re going to have to find another $200,000 to $300,000’ when you have already elevated your assessment of the horse’s price point.
“It has been very difficult – it’s been great for the vendors.”
On the surface, it may appear that buyers – the owners and trainers – are throwing caution to the wind and bidding ever higher amounts to ensure they have horses entering stables, but Moroney could not put his finger on what was exactly causing the demand.
“There seems to be a combination of factors in Australia, the strength of prize-money, the new schemes, the new races, there’s a lot of marketing going around it now and maybe there’s some money left over from people not being able to go overseas during Covid,” said Moroney, who works in tandem with partner Catheryne Bruggeman.
“People have got the attitude, ‘let’s spend it today, we’ve got the money in the bank’. There’s a lot of forces driving it and it’s made it very difficult for the buyers.”
With syndicators and trainers competing between themselves for owners, Moroney said ensuring the horses purchased were within suitable budgets for his client base was imperative.
“Buyers like us who don’t have big syndicates behind us, when I am buying for a trainer like Mike, he has got to get out there and get them sold. He doesn’t have a syndication company behind him, so he is relying on a client base which is hard to extend these days with the number of people out there being proactive in marketing.
“It has made it tougher for some of the trainers to buy at a level that they can then get them done (sold).”
On the last day of the Classic sale, Moroney went to $340,000 for a filly by Almanzor (Wootton Bassett), a figure he says he had to push Mike to go harder on.
Moroney intends to up the ante at the Inglis Melbourne Premier Yearling Sale in order to add to the depth of his brother’s stable as well as act for his other clients.
Other trainers, particularly the parochial Victorians who have either avoided the other sales or struggled to acquire the numbers they normally would because of the hot market, are expected to push harder at upcoming auctions. This could be a positive for the New Zealand Bloodstock Karaka Yearling Sale as well as other auctions, including the Magic Millions Tasmanian and Perth Yearling Sales.
Moroney and Bruggeman, as they did last year, will be working the midnight oil on the Karaka catalogue from afar.
“So, we’ll do it like we did last year. Catheryne and I spent hours and hours viewing videos. We had 280-odd new videos shot at the complex and horses that made our final list of 75, we had five-minute high-definition videos shot exactly how we like to see them: walking away from us, walking towards us, side on, close up, you name it,” he said.
“We’ve got a professional team around us there, checking things like height or any question marks, we’ve got a vet there and we have people on site who we know we can call upon and do that fine-tuning for us.
“We bought 19 there last year, doing it exactly this way, and the reports from our clients is that we did a great job, so that’s inspired us to know that we can, with some surety, do it that way.”
He added: “There’s nothing like being there yourself, but when you have been doing it for as long as I have and you do trust your eye, I tend to trust Catheryne and my eye looking at them that way and still have the level of confidence that we can buy the right product.”