A Costco store in Inglewood, Calif.
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Costco Wholesale was lower in late trading Thursday, following the discount retailer’s mixed fiscal second-quarter results.
Costco (ticker: COST) said it earned $951 million, or $2.14 a share, compared with $2.10 in the year-ago period. Revenue rose 14.7%, to $44.77 billion. Analysts were looking for earnings of $2.45 a share on revenue of $43.75 billion.
The company’s same-store sales rose 12.9%, excluding fluctuations in gasoline and foreign currency exchange, led by a 74.8% gain in e-commerce sales. U.S. comparable sales climbed 12.6%. Membership fees rose 8% year over year to $881 million.
Costco was down 0.6% to $317 in late trading.
As an essential, value-oriented retailer, Costco was a major beneficiary of the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite delivering double-digit same-store sales gains in recent months, investors have been growing increasingly concerned about how it will fare amid an economic reopening. The shares are up 1% in the past 12 months, but have fallen more than 15% since the start of the year.
Nor has the pandemic been all good news for the company: In its latest report, Costco said that it incurred $246 million pretax, or 41 cents a share, in largely Covid-related costs, including premium wages. Without that, the company’s bottom line would have come in ahead of expectations.
The stock didn’t do much after its prior earnings report in early December, but did fall last week after the company announced a minimum-wage increase.
Write to Teresa Rivas at [email protected]
