Texto original en inglés · EN
Cuatro fechas distintasAnalysis: October 19, 2026. Financial year: September 1, 2025–August 30, 2026, 52 weeks; Q4: 16 weeks ended August 30. Earnings release: September 24. SEC filing date: October 7 (accepted October 6 at 21:13:15). Latest retail-sales observation: five weeks ended October 4, published October 7. Quote: October 16 session, retrieved October 18; no Monday US session has yet occurred at this review.
Cotización guardada: 989,11 US$ · 2026-10-16. Cotización obtenida: 2026-10-18T10:42:35.460Z. NASDAQ:COST · market quote
Fuente financiera revisada y obtenida: 2026-10-19T07:30:51Z.
01
Business model: loyalty rather than merchandise markup
FY2026 membership fees were USD5.907bn. Renewal was 92.3% in the US/Canada and 89.8% worldwide, but the definition looks back seven to eighteen months; it is not an October churn reading. Our interpretation: the economic moat is the incentive to renew when purchase savings exceed the fee. Membership revenue should not be equated with pure profit: merchandise operations, rewards and shared operating costs remain necessary to sustain it.
Fuente primaria ↗02
Latest results: separate recurring performance from refunds
FY2026 total revenue was USD303.154bn, including net merchandise sales USD297.247bn, versus total revenue USD275.235bn a year earlier. Operating income was USD11.685bn and net income USD9.226bn. Q4 diluted EPS USD6.75 includes a nonrecurring USD0.15 tariff-refund benefit after partial reinvestment in member value; the arithmetic excluding that item is USD6.60, not a forecast. Full-year GAAP diluted EPS is USD20.76. The business grew, but a one-off refund is not evidence of permanently higher margins.
Fuente primaria ↗03
Latest sales update is not a new earnings report
Retail September means five weeks ended October 4: sales USD30.02bn, +13.0%; comparable sales +11.4%, or +7.6% excluding fuel-price and FX changes. Digitally enabled sales rose 19.0%. The Labor Day shift added a little over 50 basis points to total and comparable sales. This supports demand resilience but does not establish the new quarter’s earnings or cash flow. Do not extrapolate the headline growth without its calendar and fuel effects.
Fuente primaria ↗04
Cash flow: audited figures and a working-capital caution
The audited CFO is USD15.817bn, superseding preliminary USD15.825bn. Less capex USD6.435bn gives USD9.382bn; less economic SBC USD0.924bn and finance-lease principal USD0.089bn gives our USD8.369bn proxy. This is not an issuer-defined distributable-cash measure. CFO benefited from inventory/payable movements; repeating that funding benefit is uncertain. Net other investing was an inflow of USD0.034bn: we exclude it rather than infer zero gross acquisitions. Securities purchases/maturities are treasury movements, not productive capex.
Fuente primaria ↗05
Debt, leases and the next investment cycle
At August 30 cash was USD20.207bn, short-term investments USD1.094bn and carrying debt USD6.162bn; finance-lease liabilities USD1.413bn and operating leases USD2.606bn are separate obligations. Debt principal of USD2.250bn matures in FY2027. Management plans approximately USD7.5bn capex and up to 33 openings including five relocations; these are plans, not achieved returns. Our model retains interest and operating rents in CFO, deducts finance-lease principal and assumes debt principal can be refinanced without net new borrowing. It adds no supposed excess cash, avoiding an unsupported cash-release bridge.
Fuente primaria ↗06
Valuation discipline and the next evidence required
The frozen October 16 price is USD989.11; the saved provider market capitalisation is approximately USD438.3bn. Dividing price by reported FY2026 diluted EPS gives 47.65x; this is trailing, not forward P/E. The annual diluted weighted average of 444.427m shares is not the same as 443.129m outstanding on September 29 and is not used as today’s fully diluted denominator. No current consensus, independent float/ownership or complete current dilution bridge was verified for this edition. Consequently there is no precise market-implied growth claim, per-share target or upside percentage. Evidence on new-store returns and post-capex cash conversion is needed before a positive valuation conclusion.
Fuente primaria ↗DCF a cinco años: capacidad agregada de generar flujos de caja
Periodo inicial: 2025-09-01 / 2026-08-30 · 52 weeks. CFO 15,817 USD mil millones − inversión en activos 6,435 USD mil millones − SBC 0,924 USD mil millones − finance-lease principal 0,089 USD mil millones = 8,369 USD mil millones.
Valor inicial aproximado de año completo (×1): 8,369 USD mil millones. The full 52-week base is not multiplied by 12/9 or treated as a current TTM. Model years Y1–Y5 follow this analysis, not the completed FY2026. The base case begins with a 15% cash-flow decline to allow for higher capex and partial working-capital normalisation, then grows 8/8/7/6%. These net paths assume continued productive reinvestment and no incremental acquisitions; they are not a line-by-line forecast or management guidance. Interest and operating lease costs stay in CFO; finance-lease principal is deducted. No separate net-debt deduction or surplus-cash addition is made.
Fórmula: PV = Σ CFₜ/(1+kₑ)ᵗ + CF₅(1+g)/(kₑ−g)/(1+kₑ)⁵. El crecimiento del flujo de caja neto incorpora la reinversión continuada, la remuneración en acciones y el capital circulante. El crecimiento terminal supone una generación sostenible de caja neta después de esos costes.
Escenario base · años del modelo posteriores a la fecha del análisis| Año | Crecimiento | Flujo de caja | Valor presente |
|---|
| Y1 | -15% | 7,114 USD mil millones | 6,556 USD mil millones |
|---|
| Y2 | 8% | 7,683 USD mil millones | 6,526 USD mil millones |
|---|
| Y3 | 8% | 8,297 USD mil millones | 6,496 USD mil millones |
|---|
| Y4 | 7% | 8,878 USD mil millones | 6,406 USD mil millones |
|---|
| Y5 | 6% | 9,411 USD mil millones | 6,259 USD mil millones |
|---|
Escenarios · supuestos analíticos, sin probabilidades asignadas| Escenario | kₑ / g | Crecimiento a cinco años | Valor actual de los flujos de caja | Peso del valor terminal |
|---|
| Pesimista | 10,5% / 1,5% | -25% → 0% → 3% → 3% → 3% | 71,195 USD mil millones | 65,95% |
|---|
| Base | 8,5% / 2,5% | -15% → 8% → 8% → 7% → 6% | 139,162 USD mil millones | 76,83% |
|---|
| Optimista | 7,5% / 3% | 0% → 13% → 12% → 10% → 8% | 242,601 USD mil millones | 82,69% |
|---|
Pesimista: Working-capital funding reverses and higher investment depresses cash; recovery remains slow and required equity returns rise.
Base: Initial normalisation, then membership and new-store productivity support cash growth after reinvestment; growth fades with maturity.
Optimista: Strong productivity absorbs capex without an initial cash decline; better renewal economics and lower required returns support a larger terminal value.
Aggregate cash-capacity PV, not enterprise value or a quoted-share target. Current dilution, usable excess cash and future lease/reinvestment commitments are not fully bridged. No Class A conversion issue is asserted for Costco. In the base case roughly 77% of PV is terminal, so the 8.5% required equity return and 2.5% terminal growth are decisive assumptions. Cash-flow timing, working capital and capex are major uncertainties; no scenario probabilities or precise investment return are assigned.