Same-store sales (comparable-store sales, comps)

Same-store sales strips out the effect of opening and closing locations so a retailer or restaurant chain can see whether its existing stores are actually selling more, not just whether the company has more stores than last year. A chain can grow total revenue by opening outlets while every existing store is losing customers; same-store sales is designed to catch that.

The usual calculation is (current-period revenue at comparable stores − prior-period revenue at those same stores) / prior-period revenue, expressed as a percentage. A store typically has to be open for a minimum period, commonly twelve months, before it counts as "comparable," and a store that is remodeled, relocated, or temporarily closed may be excluded or handled differently depending on the retailer's policy.

Analysts and investors treat same-store sales as a core health signal because it is harder to inflate through expansion, and public retailers usually report it alongside earnings. Common pitfalls: definitions of "comparable" are not standardized across companies, so figures are not always directly comparable; a 53rd week or shifted holiday calendar can distort year-over-year comparisons; and whether e-commerce sales attributed to a store are included varies, which can make the metric flatter or stronger than the in-store trend alone. It pairs naturally with sell-through rate and should be read with seasonality in mind.