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If You Invested $1000 in Costco 10 Years Ago, This Is How Much You'd Have Now

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For most investors, how much a stock's price changes over time is important. This factor can impact your investment portfolio as well as help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.

Another thing that can drive investing is the fear of missing out, or FOMO. This particularly applies to tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.

What if you'd invested in Costco (COST - Free Report) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to COST for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?

Costco's Business In-Depth

With that in mind, let's take a look at Costco's main business drivers.

Based in Issaquah, Washington, Costco Wholesale Corporation sells high volumes of foods and general merchandise (including household products and appliances) at discounted prices through membership warehouses. It is one of the largest warehouse club operators in the United States. The company also operates e-commerce websites in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Australia.

The company’s warehouses offer an array of low-priced nationally branded and select private labeled products in a wide range of merchandise categories. Costco offers three types of memberships to its customers: Business, Gold Star (individual), and Executive.

As of Apr 6, 2022, Costco operates 829 warehouses, including 573 in the United States and Puerto Rico, 105 in Canada, 40 in Mexico, 30 in Japan, 29 in the United Kingdom, 16 in Korea, 14 in Taiwan, 13 in Australia, four in Spain, and two each in France and China, and one in Iceland.

Costco generates revenue from two sources: 1) Store sales (Net sales; 98% of fiscal 2021 total revenue) and 2) Membership fees (MFI; 2% of fiscal 2021 total revenue).

Costco offers myriad varieties of food products as well as a vast range of household and lifestyle products, stationeries and appliances. The company also sells gasoline to customers at cheap prices and offers merchandise in the following categories:

Food and Sundries (including dry foods, packaged foods, groceries, snack foods, candy, alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages, and
cleaning supplies)

Hardlines (including major appliances, electronics, health and beauty aids, hardware, and garden and patio)

Fresh Foods (including meat, produce, deli, and bakery)

Softlines (including apparel and small appliances)

Ancillary (including gasoline and pharmacy businesses).

Bottom Line

Anyone can invest, but building a successful investment portfolio requires research, patience, and a little bit of risk. So, if you had invested in Costco ten years ago, you're likely feeling pretty good about your investment today.

A $1000 investment made in April 2012 would be worth $6,821.63, or a gain of 582.16%, as of April 20, 2022, according to our calculations. This return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.

The S&P 500 rose 224.07% and the price of gold increased 13.97% over the same time frame in comparison.

Analysts are anticipating more upside for COST.

Shares of Costco have increased and outpaced the industry in the past six months. The company’s growth strategies, better price management, decent membership trend and increasing penetration of e-commerce business reinforce its position. The strategy to sell products at discounted prices has helped draw customers seeking both value and convenience. These factors have been aiding in registering impressive sales and earnings numbers. Costco put up a decent performance in second-quarter fiscal 2022, wherein both the top and the bottom lines not only surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate but also improved year over year. Also, Costco has been witnessing stellar comps sales run. While aforementioned factors raise optimism, supply chain bottlenecks and higher labor and freight costs remain concerns. Any deleverage in SG&A rate may hurt margins.

Shares have gained 6.24% over the past four weeks and there have been 10 higher earnings estimate revisions for fiscal 2022 compared to none lower. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.

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