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Key Takeaways
- Retail giant Costco reported September sales showing a rise a bit less upbeat than it reported a year ago. The stock rose Thursday anyway.
- One likely reason why: Investors noted that last year’s September sales were higher for reasons associated with port strikes and a hurricane.
Costco stock got a lift on a day when U.S. indexes fell. Strong September sales numbers helped.
Shares of the warehouse retail giant finished Thursday up some 3% to almost $943. The move was helped by September retail sales that rose 5% year-over-year to near $26.6 billion. Investors may have read the news as an encouraging sign about the start to the holiday season, though it’s worth noting that September’s sales are part of a just-begun fiscal quarter that will be reported in full this December.
Why This Matters to Investors
Investors might’ve expected a slowdown in September sales growth as bad news for Costco, but the stock rose today. That’s at least in part due to the fact that there were reasons for unusually high demand in the year-ago month, and investors took that into account in their evaluation of the latest report.
Costco’s (COST) September sales rose 9% in 2024, but investors didn’t perceive that slowdown as a bad thing. The company, UBS analysts wrote, “had a tougher comparison from last year when the retailer benefited from a rise in demand as consumers spent around Hurricane Helene and ahead of port strikes.” Extended store hours have been seen as giving sales a lift lately.
Shares of Costco have had a bumpy 2025; through Thursday’s close, they’re up roughly 3% year-to-date. Wall Street analysts are mostly bullish, with Visible Alpha’s mean price target at $1,065, about 13% above Thursday’s close.
Costco said global same-store sales rose 5.7%; it also introduced a new metric, “digitally-enabled” comparable sales, which includes all sales to members that started through a digital device. That number, the company said, rose more than 26%.
“We see these results as yet another strong showing,” UBS wrote.
