Costco Wholesale misses on both earnings and revenue in fourth quarter

Membership fee income climbed to $5.907B from $5.323B a year earlier, and comparable sales rose 9.4%

Costco Wholesale reported fourth-quarter earnings of $6.60 a share excluding a tariff refund benefit, six cents below expectations. Revenue came in at $95.72 billion, short of the $96.76 billion analysts had forecast.

The tariff refund itself added $0.15 a share to the quarter, tied to IEEPA duties Costco recovered and partly reinvested in member pricing, the company said in its earnings release. Including that benefit, diluted earnings per share were $6.75, up from $5.87 a year earlier.

Companywide comparable sales rose 9.4%, or 6.7% excluding gasoline prices and currency swings, the company said. Membership fee income rose to $5.907 billion from $5.323 billion a year earlier. For the full fiscal year, net sales increased 10.1% to $297.2 billion, and diluted earnings per share rose to $20.76 from $18.21.

Costco shares had edged up 0.10% to $899.41 on Tuesday even as the broader market sold off, according to Eastern Herald, and were already down 7% over the prior month after tumbling 4% following a beat-and-miss reaction to the third-quarter report, 24/7 Wall St. reported. Ahead of Thursday's release, Oppenheimer analyst Rupesh Parikh had flagged that the tariff refund could distort the underlying earnings figure, Eastern Herald reported.

The double miss breaks a recent pattern in which Costco topped expectations on the strength of its membership business, and the $1.04 billion revenue shortfall points to softer traffic or spending than the market had priced in. With no offsetting detail in the release, the numbers read as a bearish signal for the stock heading into the next session.