Subject: Re: DG on sale today
The issue of the likely upper limit for future growth in U.S. DG stores was also addressed in the 2022 Q3 Q&A, wherein the CEO Jeff Owen stated they had room for about 16k "opportunities", including their other ventures:

Q: Could you talk a little bit more about the strong returns that you're continuing to see on those new stores? And what we should expect more so from a continued ROIC standpoint as it relates to some of these new stores as we look ahead?

A: Yeah, Corey, I'll start and then I'll let John fill in on some of your questions around returns. But our real estate model continues to be a huge strength of this business. I mean the low-risk and high-return model is incredibly powerful. [...]

And with 1,050 new store, it continues to just highlight our ability to serve the customer and our ability through format innovation, our real estate model, our technology, we're able to go where the customer needs us to go. And so, feel great about that. And really pleased at the fact, through format innovation, this larger store we're opening, our new store performance has been incredibly positive. And I'm very, very pleased at our ability to exceed our pro formas, and we continue to see that.

So that larger store format is continuing to deliver higher sales per square foot, which is excited. And as you know, the large majority of our openings are in that larger footprint. But as you think about the next year in the future, I think the other thing that excites us here is the pipeline that we have. And on the U.S. alone, we have 16,000 additional opportunities, and we feel great about our ability to capture those. And certainly, our fair share, which we've certainly demonstrated, but 12,000 additional for DG, 3,000 for pOpshelf and then 1,000 for DGX. So, stepping back, you can probably hear in my excitement about the real estate and our ability to continue to grow here. And we feel like we're being very prudent in this environment, I'm very, very pleased with the team's performance here.



That'd be a DG store count of 31, 000 - 32, 000 (+12k plus a then-projected +1050 in 2023, plus the 18.8k at the time), with the current DG store count at 19, 000 and change after the openings since the above statement (NB: datascraper has the current DG count as 19, 310; on May 22, 2023, it was 19, 135; on Nov 20, 2022 it was 18, 721). As Jim notes, DG's current store count is very uneven geographically at present, but there is no indication that its store-heavy states (especially places like Texas and the Southeast) are having an issue carrying the load. The more recent pullback has come with news, among other things, that projected store growth is to slow down in the current environment, but I haven't heard or seen any indication that this has changed the outlook on what DG views as its current, projected U.S. saturation point for DG stores.

Also worth nothing that they've continuing to remodel stores and increase square footage that way, so DG store count isn't the full DG story either.