Sales excluding VAT increased 21% to SEK38,805 million. Overall, H&M has posted 18% sales growth excluding VAT in the first nine months of 2014, putting the company ahead of our plan to achieve 14% growth for the year. H&M had 3,341 stores by the end of August, only very slightly below of our estimate of 3,345.
We are very encouraged with this level of comparable sales growth and new store openings, which is in line with our belief that the competitive advantage of being able to quickly respond to sales trends of high-fashion products with lower inventory risk increases full-price sell-through and yields a narrow economic moat. However, we believe that this story is well understood by investors and see the stock as slightly overvalued when compared with our fair value estimate of SEK286.
As a reminder, our fair value estimate is based on the assumption of 11% average annual revenue growth over the next five years and 15% average annual operating income growth due to economies of scale. We are making no change to our fair value estimate at this time, as we hope to gain more insight about selling trends and profitability in the Nine-Month Report scheduled to be released on Sept. 25.