Costco (COST) earnings Q1 2026

Costco on Thursday surpassed Wall Street’s quarterly expectations and posted year-over-year sales growth of 8.2% as the retailer attracted more digital sales and opened new locations.

The warehouse club does not share a full-year outlook.

On the company’s earnings call, CFO Gary Millerchip said e-commerce gains were one of the strengths of the quarter. Digital sales jumped by 20.5% year over year. Traffic on its website increased 24% year over year and traffic on its app shot up 48%. Same-day delivery service offered through Instacart in the U.S. and Uber and DoorDash internationally grew at a faster pace than overall digital sales.

Costco had a positive start to the busiest weeks of the holiday season, too. Millerchip said Black Friday was a record-breaking day for the warehouse club’s U.S. e-commerce business, generating over $250 million in non-food orders.

Here’s how Costco did in its fiscal first quarter compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

• Earnings per share: $4.50 vs. $4.27 expected
• Revenue: $67.31 billion vs. $67.14 billion expected

Costco has attracted new members and higher sales at its clubs and online as U.S. consumers across incomes seek value while shopping for groceries, household essentials, holiday gifts and more.

Along with its warehouse club competitors, Costco has gained traction with younger customers who are signing up for memberships. Costco has also benefitted from a membership fee increase in the U.S. and Canada, which took effect in September 2024, and kicked in as new members signed up or as existing customers’ renewed their annual memberships when they lapsed.

In the three-month period that ended Nov. 23, Costco’s net income rose to $2 billion, or $4.50 per share, from $1.80 billion, or $4.04 per share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue increased to $67.31 billion from $62.15 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Comparable sales, an industry metric that takes out the impact of one-time factors like store openings and closures, increased 5.9% in the U.S. and 6.4% across the globe.

Sales in non-food were led by pharmacy, gold and jewelry, tires, small electrics and apparel, which grew by double-digits year-over-year, Millerchip said.

In the first quarter, Costco opened eight new warehouse clubs, including a relocation in Canada, its third location in France, four new locations in the U.S. and two additional Canadian business centers, CEO Ron Vachris said on the company’s earnings call. Business centers tend to sell bulk items intended for restaurants and other types of businesses. Those additional locations bring its total store count to 921 around the world.

He said the company plans to continue to open 30 or more clubs per year in future years.

As a warehouse club, Costco relies on membership fees to boost its revenue and help keep the price of its items low. With higher tariffs, however, the retailer has dealt with rising costs. About a third of Costco’s U.S. sales come from imported goods.

Inflation “remained relatively consistent with recent quarters,” Millerchip said. He said in grocery, Costco saw higher inflation in commodities such as beef, seafood and coffee, but that was offset by lower inflation in eggs, cheese, butter and produce.

In non-food, he said Costco saw low single-digit inflation for the third consecutive quarter, primarily driven by gold and imported goods.

Millerchip said on the earnings call that Costco has looked for ways to reduce the impact of the duties, including sourcing more items from the U.S., consolidating buying across the globe to lower the cost of goods and swapping out categories or items to ones that aren’t as exposed to steep tariff costs.

Its private label, Kirkland Signature, is another way to offset tariff prices because it has more control over the supply chain, he said.

In late November, Costco sued the Trump administration to get a full refund of new tariffs that it has paid so far this year and to block those import duties from being collected from the company as it waits for a Supreme Court ruling on the duties.

As of the end of the quarter, Costco had 81.4 million total paid members, up 5.2% year over year and 145.9 million cardholders, up 5.1% year over year, Millerchip said. Its renewal rate in the U.S. and Canada was 92.2% and its worldwide rate was 89.7%, slipping a bit as more customers sign up for memberships online and those members renew at a slightly lower rate.

As of Thursday’s close, Costco’s shares have declined nearly 4% so far this year. That trails the S&P 500’s 17% gains during the same period. However, over the past five years, Costco’s stock has jumped by 141%. The company’s stock closed at $884.48 on Thursday, bringing its market value to $392.67 billion.