If you want to know how the American consumer is really doing, skip the surveys and watch the warehouse. Costco reported its fiscal fourth-quarter results on Thursday, September 24, and the numbers tell a story of shoppers who are careful, not scared. The company posted a profit of $3 billion, or $6.75 a share, up from $2.61 billion, or $5.87 a share, a year earlier. Revenue climbed 11% to $95.72 billion, beating the $94.97 billion analysts had forecast.
Comparable sales, the number that strips out new store openings, rose 9.4% in the 16-week quarter, powered by a 3.3% gain in traffic and a 5.9% rise in the average ticket. In the United States, comps jumped 11%. Digitally enabled sales surged nearly 20%, with site and app traffic up 30%. Membership fees, the quiet engine of the whole model, grew to $1.85 billion from $1.72 billion. Costco now operates 939 warehouses worldwide, according to its official results announcement.
Look closer and the quality of the beat holds up, mostly. Reported earnings included a 15-cent-per-share non-recurring benefit from tariff refunds, so adjusted earnings were $6.60, still up 12.4% from a year ago and ahead of estimates. Strip out gasoline prices and currency swings, and underlying comps grew a healthy 6.7%. Gas price inflation alone added about three percentage points to reported sales growth, a reminder that part of what looks like strength is just the cost of filling the tank.
The most telling detail came from the earnings call, not the spreadsheet. Chief Financial Officer Gary Millerchip said shoppers “continue to show a willingness to spend on discretionary items where they see that there’s exciting new items that are offering great value to them,” MarketWatch reported. Jewelry sold. Protein and fiber products sold. Even as memory-chip costs pushed up electronics prices, people kept buying. This matters because rival Walmart had warned last month that higher gas prices and other costs were constraining spending. Costco’s quarter suggests the pressure is real but selective: shoppers are trading down on some things so they can keep spending on others.
Two quirks worth knowing. First, Costco was the sixth big retailer this earnings season whose profits got a lift from the Supreme Court’s ruling against President Trump’s emergency-powers tariffs, which is where those tariff refunds came from. Second, the company confirmed the rumor everyone actually cared about: the food-court churro is returning to U.S. locations this month, for a limited time.
Shares rose about 2.9% on Friday to $922.76, a solid but not euphoric reaction, which fits the quarter. Costco keeps doing what it does: selling a lot of stuff, cheaply, to members who keep renewing. In an economy where every data point gets argued over, a 9.4% comp with rising traffic is about as close to a clean signal as you get. The consumer is not booming and not breaking. She is at Costco, cart full, hunting value.
