What Item 19 shows across 431 franchise brands
Updated 16 October 2026
A Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) is the document a franchisor must give a buyer before a sale. It has 23 numbered items. Item 19, the financial performance representation, is where a brand may publish what its locations sell and earn. Item 19 is optional. Averan read Item 19 in the 2026 FDDs of 431 brands. This page counts what they publish and works through one brand for each point.
What the 431 brands publish
| Item 19 content | Brands | Share of 431 |
|---|---|---|
| An average sales figure | 359 | 83% |
| A median sales figure | 305 | 71% |
| A top and bottom group by sales | 339 | 79% |
| The share of locations that reached the average | 258 | 60% |
| An EBITDA or profit margin | 114 | 26% |
| Wages as a share of sales | 112 | 26% |
| No average sales figure | 72 | 17% |
EBITDA is profit before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. One brand in four publishes it. For the other three, Item 19 stops at sales.
The Joint Chiropractic is one of the 114 brands with a profit figure. Its 2026 FDD includes a profit and loss for 492 clinics, which averaged $578,201 in sales. Wages took 47.9% of sales and the net profit margin was 16.2%.
Layouts
Fifty-three brands publish sales in bands, 36 publish a full profit and loss statement, and 28 publish quartiles. Forty-five publish no financial performance representation. Twelve list every location. The remaining 257 brands use other layouts, and most of those layouts appear at one brand only. Two brands in the same category can publish Item 19 in forms that cannot be set side by side without rework.
The Goddard School lists revenue and four cost lines for each of 620 schools, one row per school. CertaPro Painters lists sales for 291 named franchisees. Both layouts let a reader sort the system into quarters. A brand that publishes bands only gives the reader its own grouping.
Who is counted
Item 19 often covers part of the system. The median reporting group in the library is 62 locations. Hand & Stone publishes expenses for 134 of its 570 spas that were open a full year. The Goddard School reports 620 of its 628 mature schools, after leaving out 8 with incomplete data.
Read the paragraph above each Item 19 table. It states which locations were left out and why: too new, closed during the year, company-owned, or missing data.
Dogtopia reports sales for 169 owner-run centers and full costs for 101 of them. The 101 centers with costs are 60% of the 169 with sales. A Dogtopia buyer reading the cost lines reads them for that subset.
Average and median
At the median brand, the middle location sells 85.5% of the average. The median sits below the average at 91% of the brands that publish both. Across 258 brands, the median share of locations that reached the average is 38.00%.
The top group by sales outsells the bottom group by 5.50 times at the median brand. Plan a new location against the median and the bottom group, since the average is lifted by a few high sellers.
CertaPro Painters reports an average of $2,102,015 and a median of $1,294,333. The middle CertaPro business sells 61.6% of the average, and 32% of CertaPro businesses reached the average. A plan built on the CertaPro average starts $807,682 above the middle business.
How the figures were kept
Cash basis records a sale when the money arrives. Accrual basis records it when it is earned or billed. In the library, 245 brands state a basis or a data source for Item 19, and 186 state neither. One hundred eighty-three of the 245 describe the figures as reported by franchisees or as unaudited.
HealthSource Chiropractic defines its sales as funds actually collected, so a HealthSource sale counts when the money arrives. Two Maids defines its sales as all billings, collected or still outstanding, so a Two Maids sale counts when it is invoiced. The two figures follow different dates in the same month.
The other items to read with Item 19
| Item | What it lists | Library median |
|---|---|---|
| Item 5 | Initial franchise fee | $50,000 |
| Item 6 | Royalty and other ongoing fees | 6.50% royalty |
| Item 7 | Estimated cost to open | $164,981 to $327,686 |
| Item 20 | Locations opened, closed and transferred | 4.5% of locations left in 2025 |
Goddard's Item 5 initial fee is $135,000. Its Item 6 royalty is 7% with a 4% brand fund. Its Item 7 cost to open runs from $1,003,500 to $8,908,000. Its Item 20 table shows 642 schools at the start of 2025 and 665 at the end.
What this means for an owner
Item 19 tells an owner what a brand chose to publish. Three brands in four stop at sales, so profit has to come from current owners or a buyer's own model. The median location sells 85.5% of the average at the median brand, and fewer than four in ten locations reach the average. The reporting group is often a subset, so an owner reads the paragraph above each table before using its figures. Items 5, 6, 7 and 20 complete the picture with fees, opening cost and outlet counts.
Check one location
The Franchise Numbers Check is a free tool on this site. It takes one location's figures and sets them against the brand data Averan has published. Each of the 431 brand pages in the Averan Franchise library shows that brand's own Item 19.
Where to next
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How these figures are put together
Every number comes from a brand’s own 2026 filing, and anything Averan calculated is marked on the page. Read the method.
If you want this done for you
What happens next
Reading about it and having it done are different things. Here is exactly what happens if you want the second one.
- The call takes thirty minutesYou describe the business and where the numbers are letting you down. We give you an expert view of your situation, and what we would start with. There is no pitch deck.
- We look at the fileYou give us read access to the books as they are. We come back with what is wrong, what it will take to fix, and whether the answer is bookkeeping, controller work, or something else.
- We send a written scope and a priceIt lists what we do each month, what you get, the date it lands and the fee. We agree it before anything starts, and it does not change unless you agree.
- We take over the books and close the first monthWe set up access and systems and enter the opening balances. The first close lands on the date in the scope, and every one after it does too.