Costco Wholesale (COST) FY2025 results: revenue $275.2 billion, up 8.2% on the year

Costco runs membership warehouses. Shoppers pay an annual fee for the right to buy, and in return the company carries a narrow range of goods in large pack sizes at low prices. It began in Seattle in 1983 and now runs warehouses across North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific, with e-commerce sites in several of those markets.

Where it operates

Costco operated 914 warehouses worldwide at 31 August 2025, against 890 a year earlier and 861 the year before that. They sit in the United States and Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico, Japan, the United Kingdom, Korea, Australia, Taiwan, China, Spain, France, Sweden, Iceland and New Zealand. E-commerce sites run in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Australia. The average warehouse covers about 147,000 square feet, with newer ones a little larger. Floor plans are built around moving merchandise rather than displaying it, goods sit on pallets and on racks above the sales floor, and the buildings are deliberately plain.

What it sells, and how little of it

The core categories are foods and sundries, non-foods, and fresh foods. Alongside them sit the warehouse ancillary businesses, which operate inside or next to the warehouse and pull members back more often: gasoline, pharmacy, optical, food court, hearing aids and tyre fitting. A third group holds e-commerce, business centres, travel and the rest. Costco operated 747 gas stations at the end of 2025, and gasoline came to about 10 percent of total sales. E-commerce came to about 7 percent, and digitally enabled sales, which include Costco Travel and anything ordered on a device whether it ships from a warehouse or a distribution centre, came to about 10 percent.

The narrowness is the point. A core warehouse carries fewer than 4,000 active stock keeping units, fewer than other broadline retailers carry. Online the range runs from 9,000 to 10,000. Many consumable goods are sold only by the case, carton or multi-pack. Costco buys most of its merchandise straight from the producer, with no one supplier accounting for a large share, and it also makes and sells private-label goods.

The membership

Gold Star membership is for individuals and Business membership for businesses, which can add affiliate cardholders at the same annual fee. The fee is $65 in the United States and varies elsewhere. Paid members other than affiliates can upgrade to Executive membership for another $65 a year, which earns a 2 percent reward on qualifying purchases, generally capped at $1,250 a year and redeemable in the warehouses. Executive membership is also sold in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Australia. Executive members accounted for about 73.6 percent of worldwide sales in 2025. The filing counts memberships in thousands: 81,000 paid memberships at the end of 2025, of which 38,700 were Executive, plus 64,200 household cards, making 145,200 cardholders in all. The renewal rate was 92.3 percent in the United States and Canada and 89.8 percent worldwide.

How the goods reach the shelf

Merchandise goes from the supplier either to a cross-docking depot or straight to a warehouse. The depots take large shipments in and move them out to warehouses quickly, which cuts the handling steps a conventional distribution chain adds. E-commerce orders ship through the same depots and logistics operation, and also through drop-ship and other arrangements with suppliers. Costco often sells stock before it has to pay the supplier for it, while still taking early-payment discounts. Volume buying, that distribution method and the no-frills warehouse together are what let the company run at gross margins below those of most other retailers.

From Costco's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 August 2025. The filing

Written from the 10-K filed 8 October 2025: read the full 10-K.