Store estate roll-forward and cohorts
Openings, closures, average trading stores, store age.
By Surojit Chakraverti, founder of L3VLUP and an investor running a long-short healthcare and technology equities strategy.
On this subject: store estate roll-forward and cohorts.Updated 5 November 2026
What it does
The space a retailer trades from. Stores at the start of the year plus openings less closures give the stores at the end; because stores open and close through the year, the year’s sales come from average trading stores, the average of the two, so a store opened mid-year earns about half a year. The estate is also split by age: stores in their first, second and third years, which trade below the mature sales density, and the mature base that like-for-like growth is measured on.
Where it lives
The same schedule in each model that carries it, with the rows to open. Open a model in the browser, go to the sheet, and click the lines.
- Assumptions, rows 11–16: Mature stores, end of FY0, Stores opened in FY-2, Stores opened in FY-1, Store openings…
- Stores, rows 6–11: Stores, start of year, Add: openings, Less: closures, Stores, end of year…
- Stores, rows 14–21: Stores in their first year (opened this year), Stores in their second year, Stores in their third year, Stores reaching maturity (opened three years earlier)…
What a reviewer looks for
- Sales on the year-end store count, so new stores earn a full year.
- Closures taken from new stores rather than the mature estate.
- A new store counted in the like-for-like base from the day it opens.
Learn it, then build it
Vocabulary: Like-for-Like Sales.