Consumer & Retail
By SuperdayReps · Wharton MBA · ex-Greenhill · investment banking interview coaching
18 min read · updated October 10, 2026
A consumer and retail interview is mostly the standard first round. The three statements, a DCF, terminal value, WACC, enterprise value against equity value, and the valuation methods all still come up, and they are covered in the range of technicals and the lessons under it.
What is different here is not the accounting. Consumer companies are valued with the same DCF, EV / EBITDA and P / E you already know. The sector layer sits elsewhere: what drives the revenue, what a store or a brand earns on its own, one lease adjustment that changes how retailers are compared, and how the economy treats each part of the sector.
Two ideas carry most of this sector. Revenue is a count of units times what each one earns: stores times sales per store for a retailer, price times volume for a brand, so growth questions come down to which of those is moving. And retailers that rent their stores and retailers that own them report different EBITDA for the same business, so you compare them on EBITDAR with lease liabilities in enterprise value.
The map
Interviewers often open with the verticals, because the answer shows whether you know which businesses in the group behave alike. A useful split is five buckets.
| Vertical | Examples | How it makes money | How it is valued |
|---|---|---|---|
| Staples and packaged goods | Food, drinks, household and personal care brands | Brands that people rebuy every week or month, sold through retailers | P / E and EV / EBITDA, usually at steady premium multiples |
| Discretionary brands | Apparel, footwear, luxury, appliances, cars | Products people can postpone, sold at higher prices | EV / EBITDA and P / E, with multiples that swing with the economy |
| Retailers | Grocers, big box, department stores, specialty chains, dollar stores | Buying goods and reselling them through stores and websites | EV / EBITDAR alongside EV / EBITDA; store counts and sales per store drive the model |
| Restaurants | Company-owned chains and franchisors | Selling meals, or collecting royalties from franchisees who sell them | EV / EBITDA, with franchisors at higher multiples |
| E-commerce and marketplaces | Online retailers, direct-to-consumer brands, marketplaces | Selling online, or taking a cut of other sellers' sales | EV / revenue or EV / gross profit while growing; EV / GMV for marketplaces |
The first distinction is between those who make products and those who sell them. A packaged goods company, often called a CPG company, owns brands and sells mostly to retailers; it spends heavily on marketing and earns a high gross margin. A retailer owns the shelf, earns a thin margin and makes it up on volume and on how fast its stock turns over.
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Frequently asked
- What questions do consumer and retail investment banking interviews ask?
- The standard first round plus a sector layer. The sector layer is the difference between staples and discretionary companies and how the economy moves their multiples, how a retailer's revenue is built from stores, sales per store and same-store sales, what four-wall EBITDA is and how long a new store takes to pay back, what drives gross margin and inventory, why retailers are compared on EV / EBITDAR, why franchised restaurants trade at higher multiples, how brands and private label compete, and how e-commerce and marketplace companies are measured.
- What are same-store sales?
- The change in sales at stores that have been open long enough to compare with a year earlier, usually at least a year. They strip out the growth that comes only from opening new stores, so they show whether existing stores are actually selling more. Same-store sales can be split into traffic, the number of transactions, and ticket, the average spend per transaction.
- Why do retailers use EV / EBITDAR?
- Because some retailers own their stores and others rent them, and under US accounting the rent on an operating lease sits inside EBITDA. A renter therefore shows lower EBITDA than an otherwise identical owner. EBITDAR adds the rent back, and you pair it with an enterprise value that includes the lease liabilities, so owners, renters and companies reporting under different accounting standards can be compared on one basis.
- What is four-wall EBITDA?
- The profit a retailer's stores earn on their own: store sales, less the cost of the goods, less the costs of running the stores such as rent, staff and utilities. It leaves out corporate overhead like the head office, IT and finance teams. Bankers use it to judge whether the stores themselves make money and to work out how quickly a new store pays back what it cost to open.
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