The 2024 Bloodstock Review - Part 1 : The Best Southern Hemisphere Buyers of Yearlings in 2023
This is Part 1 of a series that will look at various aspects across the global bloodstock market in 2024.
We'll start by looking at the records of purchasers with 2yos and 3yos racing across the Southern Hemisphere in 2024, purchased in the yearling crop of 2023.
Our results data here goes up to mid-November 2024. So anything after is not incorporated.
Note that these are in progress results. So you would see the proportion of runners, winners, stakes winners etc increase as this group of horses get more of a chance to run in their 3yo career and as 4yos and beyond next season.
2023 Yearling Crop: 2yos of 2023-24, 3yos of 2024-25.
David Ellis (Te Akau)
I seem to write about David Ellis fairly frequently and that's largely because I believe him to be one of the best purchasers of yearling bloodstock in the world.
On our figures since 2015 we have David Ellis with 368 yearlings purchased, 246 runners (66.84%), 154 winners (41.84%), 32 stakes winners (8.69%), 25 Group winners (6.79%), 13 Group 1 winners (3.53%).
That's a remarkable performance when you compare against the baselines across the entire dataset; Runners (58.38%), Winners (27.39%), Stakes Winners (1.22%), Group Winners (0.72%), Group 1 Winners (0.1%). Note that yearling crops from 2023 and 2024 are included which has an impact.
Comparatively Ellis punches above the baselines of the yearling purchase market by 1.52x in terms of returning winners, 7.12x in terms of Stakes Winners, 9.43x in terms of Group Winners and 35.3x in terms of Group 1 Winner returns.
The 2023 yearling crop netted similar high performance gains for the Te Akau principal. 41 yearlings purchased, 25 runners so far (60.97%), 17 winners (41.46%), 4 Stakes Winners (9.75%; Move to Strike, Captured by Love, Bellatrix Star, Discretion Rules), 3 Group Winners (7.31%) and 2 Group 1 Winners in Move to Strike and Captured by Love (4.87%).
In terms of total turnover, we identified $8,432,000 of spend from Ellis at the 2023 yearling sales, returning a Stakes Winner for every $2,180,000 of spend. This was comparative to $659,756,660 of total spend across the market returning 57 stakes winners in our dataset. A Stakes Winner for every $11,574,678 of turnover.
Note that it is slightly easier to get stakes winners in New Zealand than in Australia. This is due to the available number of stakes races comparative to the active population of racehorses. That said, Ellis still stands alone.
China Horse Club / Newgate Partnership
The partnership of China Horse Club & Newgate Farm also showed up well in terms of positive returns from their 2023 yearling investments. On our figures showing 2 stakes winners for 27 yearling purchases from that crop; 7.40%. (High Octane & Holmes A Court).
Remember that the market baseline currently is 1.22%, so that's 6.06x above baseline.
Those Stakes Winners came from $17,840,000 of outlay, a stakes winner every $8,920,000 of spend currently.
Historically we identified 306 purchases involving China Horse Club back to 2025; 208 runners (67.97%), 111 winners (36.27%), 10 Stakes Winners (3.26%), 8 Group Winners (2.61%), 3 Group 1 Winners (0.98%).
Comparatively we found that when China Horse Club are working in a joint partnership with Newgate Farm, the results improve further; 163 purchases, 68 Winners (41.71%, +5.44%), 8 Stakes Winners (4.90%, +1.64%), 7 Group Winners (4.29%, +1.68%), 2 Group 1 Winners (1.22%, +0.24%)
Gai Waterhouse & Adrian Bott as a purchasing entity
We identified 58 records with Gai Waterhouse & Adrian Bott listed as a purcashing entity of yearlings in the 2023 crop. In total we tracked $21,117,500 of spend.
Of the 58 purchases; 24 had run by mid-November (50%), 12 had won (20.68%), 3 were stakes winners (5.17%, Storm Boy @ $460,000, Too Darn Lizzie @ $1,000,000, Dawn Service @ $1,400,000), with Storm Boy and Too Darn Lizzie both Group winners.
In our data up to mid November 2024, Stakes Winners were returned every $7,036,166 of spend.
Yulong
At the yearling sales of 2023, Yulong were the largest investors in the yearling market. We noted 46 yearling purchases across all the sales, for a total spend of $21,725,000.
As at mid-November we had these purchases with a recorded performance record as follows; 26 Runners (56.52%), 15 Winners (32.60%), 3 Stakes Winners (6.52%, Certain Rise, Clean Energy and First Settler).
At our time snapshot, Yulong purchases had returned a stakes winner for every $7,241,666 of spend.
Lindsay Park Racing
The training duo of Will, Ben and JD Hayes at Lindsay Park certainly show up well on the value metrics. At the 2023 sales, we identified 50 yearling purchases with Lindsay Park involvement, for a total spend outlay of $8,115,500. Two Stakes Winners returned by mid November in the form of Double Market and Evaporate mean that they've returned a stakes winner for every $4,057,500 worth of turnover. Of buying entities with multiple stakes winners purchased, they were the best performing on turnover in Australia.
Total record read; 50 purchased, 28 runners (56.0%), 14 Winners (28.0%), 2 Stakes Winners (4.0%), 2 Group Winners (4.0%).
Looking back over the years to 2015 we noted Lindsay Park with a purchasing record of 228 purchased, 62 Winners (27.19%), 6 Stakes Winners (2.63%), 4 Group Winners (1.75%).
There are many good purchasers of bloodstock out there. But these are just some of the those currently standing out with purchases from the 2023 yearling crop in the Southern Hemisphere.