Same Store Sales Growth: How to Read Retail Results Beyond New Store Openings

A retailer that opens a hundred new outlets in a year will almost always report higher revenue. That tells you very little. The number that tells you whether customers actually like the stores is same store sales growth: how much more the outlets that already existed last year are selling now. Indian companies call it SSSG, like-for-like (LFL) growth or comparable store sales, and once you know where to find it in a results release, you read retail and restaurant earnings very differently.

We will go through what the metric measures, how companies define it, the traps in it, and two real disclosures from Avenue Supermarts (DMart) and Jubilant FoodWorks (Domino’s India). The worked examples with round numbers are hypothetical, built only to show the arithmetic.

What same store sales growth actually measures

Take every store that was open and trading in both the current period and the comparison period, usually the same quarter a year ago. Add up their sales in each period. The percentage change is same store sales growth. Stores opened recently are left out, and so are stores that shut. What remains is an apples-to-apples comparison of the same set of shops.

Why bother? Because total revenue mixes two very different engines. One is expansion: more stores, more square feet, more cities. The other is productivity: the same shop selling more because more people walk in, or each person spends more. Expansion costs capital. Productivity is close to free money, since rent, staff and power at an existing store are largely already paid for. A company growing only through new stores is buying its growth. A company growing in old stores too is earning it.

Investors and analysts lean on this split heavily in consumer businesses: supermarkets, apparel chains, jewellers, quick-service restaurants, footwear, paint and electronics retail. If you have read our guide on how to analyse quarterly results of a company, think of SSSG as the retail-specific line you check right after the revenue number.

How Indian companies define the “same” store

There is no single accounting standard for this metric. Each company picks its own cut-off for when a store becomes “comparable”, and the cut-off changes what the number means.

DMart is a clean example. In its investor presentation for FY26, Avenue Supermarts defines LFL growth as the growth in revenue from sales of the same stores that have been operational for at least 24 months at the end of a fiscal year (DMart investor presentation, FY26). Two years is a strict filter. A store needs time to ramp up, and by excluding stores younger than two years, DMart keeps the ramp-up phase out of the number.

Other companies use a shorter window, sometimes twelve months, sometimes stores that were open for the full comparison quarter. A shorter window lets young stores still climbing their learning curve into the base, which tends to flatter growth. So before comparing two retailers, read the footnote. An 8% LFL on a 24-month base and an 8% figure on a 12-month base are not the same performance.

Total revenue tells you how fast a retailer is spending. Same store sales tell you whether the stores it already built are earning their keep.

A worked example: splitting growth into old and new stores

Here is a hypothetical chain to make the arithmetic concrete.

• Last year’s quarter: 100 stores, total revenue ₹1,000 crore.
• This year’s quarter: 120 stores, total revenue ₹1,150 crore.
• Of that ₹1,150 crore, the original 100 stores sold ₹1,030 crore and the 20 new stores sold ₹120 crore.

The headline says revenue grew 15%. Same store sales grew only 3% (₹1,030 crore against ₹1,000 crore). The 20 new outlets, about 10% of this year’s revenue, supplied most of the growth. Nothing wrong with that by itself, but it means the business is leaning on capital spending. If the store pipeline slows, growth would drop towards that 3%.

Now push one step further. Same store sales can be split into how many bills were cut and the average value of each bill. Suppose bills at the old stores rose 1% and the average bill rose 2%. Combined, that is 1.01 × 1.02 − 1, or roughly 3.02%, which is the same-store figure above, give or take rounding.

Then layer inflation on top. If the chain raised prices about 4% on average over the year, a 3% rise in same-store sales actually means customers took home slightly less stuff: 1.0302 ÷ 1.04 − 1 comes to about −0.9% in volume terms. This is why management commentary on “volume” versus “value” growth matters so much in FMCG and food retail. A positive SSSG can hide a shrinking basket.

Reading DMart’s numbers

DMart reports its LFL growth every year, and the trend is a useful case study. According to the FY26 investor presentation, LFL growth for stores at least 24 months old was 16.7% in FY22, 24.2% in FY23, 9.9% in FY24, 8.4% in FY25 and 8.1% in FY26 (DMart investor presentation). The FY22 and FY23 numbers came off the pandemic years, when stores had faced restrictions, so the base was unusual. Since then, the like-for-like pace has settled in high single digits.

Look at the store side in the same presentation. DMart ended FY26 with 500 stores, having added 85 during the year, and retail business area grew from 17.2 million sq ft at the end of FY25 to 20.6 million sq ft at the end of FY26. That is a jump of roughly 20% in area. Meanwhile, the company’s revenue from sales per sq ft of retail business area fell from ₹33,896 in FY25 to ₹33,422 in FY26, a dip of about 1.4%.

How do you square that with positive LFL growth? The footnote explains it. DMart calculates revenue per sq ft using annualised revenue divided by retail area at the end of the fiscal year. Stores opened late in the year add their full area to the denominator but only a few weeks of sales to the numerator. Mature stores were still growing; the fresh space simply had not caught up yet. That is exactly why you read the two metrics together instead of in isolation.

The quarterly picture also moved. In its Q4 FY26 press release dated May 2, 2026, DMart’s MD and CEO said stores two years and older grew 10.8% during Q4 FY26, against 8.1% in Q4 FY25, while standalone total revenue for the quarter grew 19.0% and the company opened 58 new stores in that quarter (Avenue Supermarts press release). The same release noted that geopolitical tensions led to some spike in consumer buying in March 2026, which normalised towards the end of the month. That is a reminder to check for one-offs before treating a strong same-store quarter as a new trend.

Reading Domino’s India’s LFL

Restaurant chains report the same idea. In its Q2 FY27 business update, Jubilant FoodWorks said Domino’s India recorded like-for-like growth of 4.1% while adding 88 stores, taking the Domino’s India count to 2,601, and consolidated revenue from operations rose 11.9% year-on-year to ₹2,608.7 crore (CNBC-TV18 report on the Jubilant FoodWorks Q2 update). Domino’s Eurasia posted LFL growth of −2.1% after Ind AS 29 adjustments, according to the same report.

Be careful with the comparison here. The 11.9% is consolidated revenue, which includes Eurasia and the group’s other brands, not just Domino’s India. So you cannot simply subtract 4.1% from 11.9% and call the rest “new stores”. What you can say is that the existing Domino’s India outlets grew at a mid-single-digit pace, and a large part of the group’s growth is still coming from network expansion. Whether that is healthy depends on what the new stores earn once they mature, which the next few quarters of LFL will show.

A positive same-store number can still hide a shrinking basket once you strip out price increases.

Five traps when you read SSSG

1. Definitions drift. Companies sometimes change the comparable-store window, or exclude renovated or relocated stores. If the footnote changes, the series is no longer continuous. Note it and treat comparisons across the change with suspicion.

2. Cannibalisation. A new outlet two kilometres from an old one can pull customers away from it. The chain’s total revenue rises, but the older store’s sales stagnate. Persistent weakness in SSSG during an aggressive expansion phase is often the first visible sign. Using our hypothetical chain, if the old stores would have done ₹1,060 crore without new neighbours but did ₹1,030 crore, that ₹30 crore gap is the cost of cannibalisation, and the company will never show it to you directly.

3. The base effect. A weak quarter last year makes this year’s SSSG look great, and the reverse also holds. Look at two-year stacked growth if the company gives enough history, or at least check last year’s same quarter before cheering.

4. Price versus volume. As in the worked example, price hikes inflate same-store sales. Ask whether management talks about bills, footfalls, tickets or volume. If it only talks about value, you have half the picture.

5. Online orders and channel mix. For chains that deliver from stores, some companies count delivery orders inside store sales and some report them separately. A shift from dine-in to delivery can move the number without any change in overall demand.

Connecting SSSG to the rest of the results

Same store sales do not live alone. Pair them with a few other lines in the results:

• Store additions and closures. Fast openings with flat SSSG mean growth is being bought. Closures with rising SSSG may mean the company is pruning weak locations, which is often a good sign.
• Revenue per sq ft or per store. As DMart’s numbers show, this can dip during heavy expansion even when mature stores are doing fine. A fall that persists beyond the ramp-up period is more worrying.
• Asset efficiency. Our explainer on the asset turnover ratio covers how much revenue each rupee of assets brings in. Strong SSSG usually shows up as improving turnover a year or two later.
• Rent and lease costs. Most retailers lease their stores, and under Ind AS 116 those leases sit on the balance sheet. Our piece on lease liabilities in results explains why EBITDA can look rosier than the cash a store generates. Weak same-store growth on a heavy lease base is a squeeze on margins.

A quick checklist for the next retail results

When the next quarterly release from a retailer or restaurant chain lands, we would run through this in about five minutes:

1. Find the same-store, LFL or SSSG number and its footnote. Note the comparable window.
2. Compare it with total revenue growth. The bigger the gap, the more growth is coming from new stores.
3. Check store additions in the quarter and over the past year.
4. Look for comments on volume, footfall or bill count versus price.
5. Check last year’s same-quarter SSSG for base effects.
6. Read revenue per sq ft or per store alongside, keeping the timing of openings in mind.

None of this needs a model or a terminal. It needs patience with footnotes. A retailer that keeps growing its old stores while opening new ones is rare and usually deserves attention. One that grows only by opening stores is running on a treadmill that has to keep speeding up.

Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and is not investment advice. Company figures are taken from the linked company disclosures and news reports; worked examples are hypothetical. Please consult a SEBI-registered investment adviser before making any investment decision.