COST Stock Summary and Trading Ideas (Costco Wholesale | NASDAQ:COST)

Costco operates a membership-based, no-frills retail model, predicated on offering a select product assortment in bulk quantities at bargain prices. The firm avoids maintaining costly product displays by keeping inventory on pallets and limits distribution expenses by storing its inventory at point of sale in the warehouse. Given Costco's frugal cost structure, the firm is able to price its merchandise below competing retailers, driving high sales volume per warehouse and allowing the retailer to generate strong profits on thin margins. Costco operates over 600 warehouses in the United States and boasts over 60% market share in the domestic warehouse club industry. Internationally, Costco operates another 280 warehouses, primarily in markets such as Canada, Mexico, Japan, and the UK.

Costco Wholesale trades on the NASDAQ stock market under the symbol COST.

As of January 30, 2025, COST stock price climbed to $978.94 with 842,522 million shares trading.

COST has a beta of 0.86, meaning it tends to be less sensitive to market movements. COST has a correlation of 0.33 to the broad based SPY ETF.

COST has a market cap of $434.55 billion. This is considered a Mega Cap stock.

Last quarter Costco Wholesale reported $62 billion in Revenue and $3.82 earnings per share. This beat revenue expectation by $71 million and exceeded earnings estimates by $.03.

In the last 3 years, COST traded as high as $1,008.25 and as low as $406.51.

The top ETF exchange traded funds that COST belongs to (by Net Assets): VTI, VOO, QQQ, SPY, IVV.

COST has outperformed the market in the last year with a price return of +41.7% while the SPY ETF gained +24.6%. COST has also outperformed the stock market ETF in the last 3 month and 2 week periods returning +10.5% and +6.0%, respectively, while the SPY returned +4.3% and +2.0%, respectively.

COST support price is $953.18 and resistance is $974.86 (based on 1 day standard deviation move). This means that using the most recent 20 day stock volatility and applying a one standard deviation move around the stock's closing price, stastically there is a 67% probability that COST shares will trade within this expected range on the day.