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Costco topped fourth-quarter earnings and revenue estimates.
The warehouse club has been winning over younger members with better merchandise and stronger digital offerings.
E-commerce sales increased by 13.5% compared with the year-ago period, excluding the impacts from changes in gas prices and foreign exchange.
A Costco store in Richmond, California, US, on Thursday, May 29, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Costco on Thursday topped Wall Street’s expectations for quarterly earnings and revenue as the warehouse club posted double-digit gains in both membership income and its e-commerce business.
Unlike many other retailers, the company does not share an annual outlook.
On the company’s earnings call, CFO Gary Millerchip said the retailer has worked hard to offset higher tariff costs. In some cases, it has introduced new items from its Kirkland Signature private-label brand as alternatives to goods hit by tariffs, he said. About a third of Costco’s U.S. sales come from imported goods.
Costco is also changing its merchandise assortment in some cases, he said, such as buying more U.S.-made items or leaning into categories with less tariff exposure like health and beauty.
He said overall inflation remained in the low- to mid-single-digit range, with food price increases similar to last quarter. Yet for the second consecutive quarter, he said inflation returned for non-food merchandise, primarily driven by imported items.
Shares of the retailer fell slightly in extended trading.
Here’s how Costco did in its fiscal fourth quarter compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:
Earnings per share: $5.87 vs $5.80 expected
Revenue: $86.16 billion vs. $86.06 billion expected
Costco’s net income for the three-month period that rose to $2.61 billion, or $5.87 per share, compared with $2.35 billion, or $5.29 per share a year earlier. Revenue increased from $79.7 billion in the year-ago period.
Same-store sales, an industry metric that takes out one-time factors such as store openings and closures, rose 6.4% excluding the impact from changes in gas prices and foreign exchange. That result, which was reported along with Costco’s August sales numbers, marks two quarters in a row of decelerating same-store sales.
E-commerce sales increased by 13.5% compared with the year-ago period, excluding the impacts from changes in gas prices and foreign exchange.
For the full year, e-commerce sales exceeded $19.6 billion, a 15% year over year increase, Vachris said on the company’s earnings call. That amounts to a little over 7% of Costco’s net sales for the year.
Vachris said Costco is adding more digital features, including the rollout of checkout technology to clubs that makes it faster for employees to scan small- and medium-sized transactions. It’s improving the search features on its website and app. And, he said, it’s created a virtual waiting room on its website for high-demand items like Pokemon cards during peak traffic periods.
As U.S. consumers look for value, Costco and its warehouse club competitors have opened new locations and attracted more members. Younger shoppers have signed up for the stores as the retailers offer more convenient ways to shop online, a wider variety of merchandise and cheaper meals.
In an interview this summer, Millerchip told CNBC that the average age of the company’s members has fallen, and just under half of its new signups each year from people under 40.
As members across age groups join, Costco’s revenue, which includes net sales and membership fees, has also grown. Its full-year revenue totaled $275.24 billion, up about 8.1% year over year.
In the quarter, its membership fee income jumped about 14%, which reflects its increase in paying shoppers, the rising number of members who are upgrading to higher-tier memberships and its higher annual fee. Last fall, it raised its membership fee for the first time since 2017. Costco shoppers now pay $5 more per year or $10 more annually for its higher-tier membership when their annual fee renews.
Millerchip said on the company’s earnings call that the membership fee increase accounted for a little less than half of its membership fee income growth in the quarter.
On the company’s earnings call, CEO Ron Vachris said Costco opened 27 new warehouses, including three relocations. It plans to open another 35 warehouses in the coming fiscal year, including five relocations.
Traffic to stores and Costco’s website rose 3.7% globally during the quarter, Millerchip said on the call. Meanwhile, average transaction size climbed 2.6% worldwide, excluding gas and foreign exchange changes, he added.
During the quarter, sales in Costco’s fresh category, which includes perishable items, grew by high-single-digits led by double-digit gains in meat, Millerchip said on the company’s earnings call. Non-food grew by high-single-digits, too, as jewelry, gift cards, toys and men’s apparel all rose by double-digits year over year.
Gold bars, however, were less of a growth driver in the quarter because Costco is lapping a year-ago period when it first started to sell the item, Millerchip said.
Shares of Costco have jumped by about 180% over the past five years. Yet the retailer has underperformed the market more recently, as shares are up just over 2% so far this year compared to the S&P 500’s more than 12% gains during the same time.
When Morgan Rogers handed Ollie Watkins the ball, the Holte End chanted the striker’s name.
Seconds after his weak penalty was saved by Bologna’s Lukasz Skorupski, Watkins’ name was again chanted in support.
The England striker is enduring a 10-game goal drought for club and country at a time when Villa need him at his sharpest, despite Thursday’s Europa League win.
His nine games without scoring in the club shirt is the joint longest he has gone without a goal in his Villa career, having previously had nine-game dry spells in 2020-21 and 2022-23.
His second-half spot kick was the ideal chance to end that but the scuffed strike lacked confidence and allowed Skorupski to save with his legs.
Watkins has now failed to score three of his last five penalties for Villa, including missing in the Champions League against Celtic last season.
It allowed boss Unai Emery to relax after victory and assert with confidence that Watkins will end his drought.
“He didn’t score, okay, it doesn’t matter, the goal is coming through the work he did today,” Emery said.
“I am happy because he played doing his task. He worked, this is the most important.
“He pressed, he was getting in duels, he got chances, he got a penalty, he missed but the most important [thing] is how he played in 30 minutes doing his task and he did a fantastic job.
“He has to feel after each match like I am feeling now, be happy because he did his work. He has to feel the same and if he is scoring he is going to feel better.
“The most important thing is how he is working in his tasks for the team. Today he played a good match, not enough because he didn’t score but he played good. This is the first step.”
Watkins’ struggles can be charted back to the second half of last season when he scored just four times in Villa’s final 19 games.
This season he has missed all five of his big chances, has managed just 40 touches in the opposition’s box across his nine appearances and is averaging less than one shot on target per game.
With an expected goals return of 2.2 it is clear he is falling short.
Yet this is Villa’s record Premier League goalscorer. His strike against Bournemouth in May put him on 75 goals, one ahead of Gabby Agbonlahor from 133 fewer games.
He has 87 goals in 229 appearances for Villa and five in 19 caps for England, including a debut international strike against San Marino in 2021.
That came during a first season at Villa where he scored 16 goals, adapting instantly to the Premier League following a £28m move from Brentford.
His first top-flight goals came with a hat-trick in Villa’s stunning 7-2 demolition of Liverpool in October 2020.
Watkins has not dropped below double figures in his five years in the Premier League, including the 19 goals he scored in 2023-24 to help fire Villa into the Champions League, and there is belief he will return to his best.
McGinn told TNT Sport: “He’s a top-class striker. He’s not in the England squad for nothing. He’s shown over the years how good he is.
“If he’s not scoring, that’s fine. You’ve seen the effort he puts in for the team. We don’t need to put any pressure on him and add to any external noise. He’s been brilliant for us and has got nothing to prove to us.”
US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump has vowed to stop Israel from annexing the West Bank and has said a ceasefire is “pretty close”, ahead of a high-stakes visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu will address the United Nations on Friday and later meet Trump in Washington as Israeli ministers muse of annexing the West Bank in response to recognition of a Palestinian state by France, Britain and several other Western powers.
But Trump, who has offered crucial support to Netanyahu as Israel comes under mounting global pressure, made clear he would not back annexation, which far-right Israelis see as a way to kill any real prospect of an independent Palestine.
“I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “No, I will not allow it. It’s not going to happen.”
Trump voiced optimism about ending nearly two years of devastating war, echoing the confidence expressed a day earlier on the sidelines of the United Nations by his roving envoy, Steve Witkoff.
“We’re getting pretty close to having a deal on Gaza and maybe even peace,” said Trump, who also spoke to Netanyahu by telephone on Thursday.
Trump met Tuesday at the United Nations with the leaders of key Arab and Muslim nations who warned him of consequences if Israel moved ahead.
“I think the president of the US understands very well the risks and dangers of annexation in the West Bank,” Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told reporters.
Saudi Arabia has mulled recognition of Israel in what would be a massive symbolic step, as the kingdom is home to Islam’s two holiest sites.
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The United Arab Emirates, whose 2020 normalization with Israel is seen as a top achievement by both Netanyahu and Trump, has publicly warned Israel against annexation.
Netanyahu nonetheless has defied Trump in recent months with attacks in Iran, Qatar and Syria amid US diplomacy.
Abbas’ address
Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas in his own address to the United Nations on Thursday sought to allay concerns as he called for all countries to recognize Palestinian statehood.
The veteran 89-year-old president of the Palestinian Authority was forced to address the General Assembly by video after the United States took the unusual step of denying him a visa to come to New York.
Abbas made clear he was different from Hamas, which took control of Gaza in 2007.
“Hamas will not have a role to play in governance. Hamas and other factions will have to hand over their weapons to the Palestinian National Authority,” Abbas said in a speech that received loud applause by delegates watching the video.
“Despite all that our people have suffered, we reject what Hamas carried out on 7 October, actions that targeted Israeli civilians and took them hostage, because these actions do not represent the Palestinian people, nor do they represent their just struggle for freedom and independence,” Abbas said.
“We reject confusing the solidarity with the Palestinian cause and the issue of antisemitism, which is something that we reject based on our values and principles,” he said.
Abbas nonetheless called the nearly two-year Israeli assault in Gaza “one of the most horrific chapters of humanitarian tragedy of the 20th and 21st century”.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 65,500 Palestinians, according to health ministry figures in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.
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