Pearle Vision's 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document reports 2025 average EBITDA per reporting EyeCare Center of $120,000 to $223,000 across its three operating structures. Median EBITDA ranged from $123,000 to $184,000. These are official store-level earnings measures, not an owner's salary, distribution, after-tax take-home pay, or guaranteed result.
Evidence confidence is HIGH for store-level EBITDA because current Item 19 directly reports it for 364 qualifying franchised centers. The disclosure does not isolate a single owner-income figure. Item 19 defines Payroll to include owner salary, wages, bonuses, and commissions, plus employee compensation, payroll taxes, and benefits. The official earnings measure is therefore reported after owner compensation recorded through that expense line but before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Financing principal, capital expenditures, and personal income taxes are outside this measure.
- Legal franchisor
- Luxottica of America Inc., formerly Luxottica Retail North America Inc.
- Disclosure reviewed
- Franchise Disclosure Document issued March 27, 2026.
- Item 19 basis
- Unaudited franchisee financial statements and monthly reports for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025; full-service operating model; no company-owned EyeCare Centers.
- Included structures
- OD Owner EyeCare Centers, Sublease EyeCare Centers, and Employed EyeCare Centers.
- Financial benchmarks
- None. All financial figures in this article come from the same-brand current disclosure.
- Date checked
- July 15, 2026. The official U.S. franchise website confirms the current ownership paths and refers prospects to the current disclosure.
OFFICIAL. Revenue range across the three structures; revenue is not owner income.
OFFICIAL. A useful counterweight to averages affected by high performers.
OFFICIAL. 169 OD-owned, 64 sublease, and 131 employed centers.
OFFICIAL. EBITDA divided by Net Total Revenue within each disclosed structure.
What does the current disclosure actually report?
The disclosure reports Net Total Revenue, operating expenses, and EBITDA for three distinct full-service franchise populations. It does not merge the operating structures, and neither should an earnings analysis. The applicable period is fiscal 2025, and the tables exclude all company-operated EyeCare Centers.
| Operating structure | Reporting centers | Average Net Total Revenue | Official EBITDA Average / median / margin |
|---|---|---|---|
|
OD Owner EyeCare Centers Owned by an optometrist or ophthalmologist. |
169 | $1,437,000 |
$223,000 $184,000 15.5% |
|
Sublease EyeCare Centers Owned by an optician or investor that subleases space to a doctor. |
64 | $1,020,000 |
$120,000 $123,000 11.8% |
|
Employed EyeCare Centers Owned by an optometrist, ophthalmologist, optician, or investor that employs the doctor. |
131 | $1,336,000 |
$219,000 $178,000 16.4% |
Source: Pearle Vision 2026 FDD, Item 19, Tables 1A-3B, pp. 69-74. Amounts in the source tables are presented in thousands; this table displays full-dollar equivalents.
Official fiscal 2025 store-level earnings measure, in thousands of dollars.
Interpretation: OD-owned and employed centers reported similar averages, while sublease centers reported lower revenue and a lower average result. The near-equal sublease average and median suggest less upward skew at the center of that population.
Source: Pearle Vision 2026 FDD, Item 19, pp. 69-74. The defined measure is not personal take-home pay.
Average Net Total Revenue ranged from $1.020 million to $1.437 million, but the corresponding average EBITDA ranged from $120,000 to $223,000. The difference reflects Cost of Goods Sold, Payroll, Occupancy, Royalty & Advertising Fees, and Other Expenses. A sales number alone cannot answer how much an owner keeps.
How wide is the range between lower and higher performers?
The official quartile averages show a very wide spread. Across the three operating structures, fourth-quartile average results ranged from a $25,000 loss to a $44,000 profit, while first-quartile averages ranged from $334,000 to $516,000. Quartiles are performance groups, not probability forecasts for a new center.
Average result for each performance quartile, fiscal 2025, in thousands of dollars. Q1 is the highest-performing quartile.
Interpretation: The largest unresolved uncertainty is not the average; it is where a new center would land in this distribution. The sublease fourth quartile reported a negative average result, while the top quartiles of all three structures were above $300,000.
Source: Pearle Vision 2026 FDD, Item 19, Tables 1A, 2A, and 3A, pp. 69, 71, and 73. Quartile labels follow the disclosure's order, with Q1 representing the highest-performing group.
Which outlets were included and excluded?
The reporting population is broad but not systemwide. The 364 included locations used the full-service operating platform, had at least one year of operating results, and supplied the required financial statements and monthly reports. The FDD excluded 5 centers not using the full-service platform, 20 with less than one year of results, 23 with late fourth-quarter reporting, 29 without four submitted quarters from Q4 2024 through Q3 2025, and 14 Canadian centers.
Only 40% to 44% of reporting centers were above the average Net Total Revenue within their structure. That is why the median and quartile data are more decision-useful than an average alone. The outlet tables separately report that franchised outlets declined from 441 at the start of 2025 to 424 at year-end; Item 20 is an outlet-count disclosure, not evidence that any particular center was profitable or unprofitable.
These results are based on unaudited franchisee submissions. New centers, incomplete reporters, non-full-service centers, Canadian centers, and company-operated centers are absent. A buyer should not treat the performance groups as a forecast for a specific lease, market, doctor arrangement, or financing structure.
Source: Pearle Vision 2026 FDD, Item 19, pp. 68-75; Item 20, pp. 76-83.
How does owner involvement change what the owner may receive?
Owner involvement changes the route through which value reaches the owner, but the disclosure does not isolate the owner-pay component. Item 15 requires direct participation either by the owner being on-premises or by appointing a qualified Designated Operator. A designated employee can support a manager-run structure, while an active owner may perform operational or clinical work.
Active OD owner
May generate Professional Fee Revenues and receive clinical or management compensation through the labor expense line. That compensation cannot be added to the reported result without the owner's actual records.
Investor with an employed doctor
This population includes exam revenue but also includes doctor and staff compensation in labor expense. The official average result was $219,000, but the investor's cash distribution still depends on debt, capital spending, and retained cash.
Investor using a sublease
This population reports no Net Exam Revenue. Its official average result was $120,000 and its median was $123,000. The doctor's economics may sit in a separate professional practice rather than the retail franchise entity.
Manager-run operation
A Designated Operator's compensation belongs in labor expense. Because the reported result already includes that line, subtracting a generic manager salary would risk double counting unless the center's own books show that the expense is absent.
An active owner can receive both labor compensation and residual business earnings. That combined economic benefit may exceed the reported result because owner pay is already expensed in the labor line. It is not passive profit, and the disclosure does not provide enough detail to quantify it reliably. Pearle Vision's official pages describe both optometrist ownership partnerships and investor partnership structures, which reinforces the need to model the specific legal and operating arrangement.
The official new-practice ownership page also states that owners take the lead in establishing the medical practice, including doctor staffing, credentialing, and medical billing. Those tasks can affect both labor cost and the availability of Net Exam Revenue.
Sources: Pearle Vision 2026 FDD, Item 15, pp. 59-60; Item 19 definitions, p. 75.
Which franchise fees are already reflected in EBITDA?
The official store-level result already deducts the actual Royalty & Advertising Fees recorded by the reporting centers. Do not subtract the standard fee schedule a second time from the official store-level figures. The standard Item 6 schedule is 7% royalty plus an 8% advertising contribution on Gross Revenues, excluding Professional Fee Revenues, with lower royalty structures for certain Independent Conversions and Development Agreements.
Royalty
Standard rate: 7% of Gross Revenues. Professional Fee Revenues are excluded from the contractual Gross Revenues definition. Certain conversion and development arrangements use reduced rates.
Advertising Contribution
Standard rate: 8% of Gross Revenues, currently allocated between local and national advertising funds. Item 19 combines royalty and advertising in one expense line.
Technology Fee
The current disclosure states planned monthly charges of $400 for the Base PMS option or $500 for Base PMS with eHR as EyeCare Centers convert to VisionX.
Debt and capital spending
EBITDA excludes interest, depreciation, and amortization by definition. Loan principal and future capital expenditures are not operating expenses in the reported store-level figure and must be modeled separately.
Source: Pearle Vision 2026 FDD, Item 6, pp. 12-16; Item 19, pp. 69-75. Item 7 startup investment is not treated as an annual operating expense in this earnings analysis.
What should a buyer verify before relying on the earnings range?
Verify the specific center economics rather than applying the $120,000-$223,000 official average range mechanically. The most important driver is the operating structure: whether exam revenue belongs to the franchise entity, whether the doctor is the owner, employee, or subtenant, and how owner labor is recorded in the accounts.
- Request financial-performance substantiation. Confirm the definitions, reporting cohort, quartile assignment, and whether any material update or amendment has changed the 2025 financial performance representation.
- Separate owner pay from business profit. Ask existing franchisees how owner salary, clinical compensation, management compensation, distributions, and retained earnings appear in their books.
- Rebuild the center's labor cost. Identify the Designated Operator, doctor, opticians, lab staff, benefits, payroll taxes, and any owner role that would be replaced by a paid employee.
- Test the lease and doctor structure. Compare occupancy, sublease income, Professional Fee Revenues, managed-care participation, and state ownership rules with the relevant Item 19 population.
- Model financing separately. Deduct actual interest and principal payments from cash flow, not from revenue. Do not estimate personal taxes inside the franchise operating model.
- Interview current and former franchisees. Use Item 20 and the disclosure exhibits to ask about ramp-up, remodels, working capital, closures, transfers, and the difference between EBITDA and cash distributions.
The FTC rule requires a financial performance representation to have a reasonable basis and written substantiation, to identify the relevant outlet population and period, and to warn that individual results may differ. Those protections improve the evidence quality; they do not turn historical results into a forecast.
What is the strongest defensible annual earnings range?
The strongest defensible range is $120,000 to $223,000 of official average annual EBITDA per reporting EyeCare Center, with official medians of $123,000 to $184,000. It is a Mode A official result for fiscal 2025, not an independent scenario and not personal take-home pay. The main earnings driver is the ownership and doctor arrangement because it changes Net Exam Revenue, labor cost, and the entity receiving professional fees.
The largest unresolved uncertainty is owner compensation: the disclosure includes owner pay inside the labor expense line but does not state it separately. Before underwriting a purchase, a buyer should verify the financial-performance substantiation, obtain center-specific payroll and debt records, and ask franchisees how the reported operating result converts into salary, distributions, capital spending, and cash retained by the business.