Costco Net Worth: A Blueprint for Retail Success Since 1983

Through strategic expansion and a keen eye for opportunities, Costco has become one of the most well-known affordable wholesalers.

As of November 2024, Costco’s net worth is $422.75 billion. This figure consolidates its position as the third-largest retail company in the world based on market capitalization.

Our team of experts here at Business2Community has curated Costco’s net worth timeline to dive deep into its success. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a marketer, or simply interested in the retail giant’s stock performance, here is everything you need to know.

What is Costco’s Net Worth?

As of November 2024, Costco’s net worth, alternatively known as market cap, is $422.75 billion. This figure is based on a stock price of $961.55 per share and 443 million shares outstanding. It is traded on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol COST.

Costco’s initial public offering took place in 1985, the same year it started its international expansion to Canada, at $10 per share.

Eight years later in 1993, Costco merged with Price Club to form PriceCostco under the ticker symbol PCCW on the NASDAQ. Following the merger, its net worth doubled to $2.7 billion from $1.3 billion the year before. Each share of Price Club was exchanged for 2.13 shares of PriceCostco while the share exchange rate for Costco was 1:1. In 1997, PriceCostco was renamed Costco Companies. Its ticker symbol also changed to COST.

As a comprehensive retailer, Costco enjoyed the economic benefits brought by the housing boom during the late 1990s. Between 1995 and 2000, its number of stores doubled. From January 1996 to January 2008, Costco’s net worth went up tenfold from $3.05 billion to $30.33 billion. Then, due to the real estate crisis, one-third of Costco’s market cap evaporated, falling to $18.34 billion just a year later in January 2009.

Costco experienced a favorable ecommerce growth period in the 2010s, thanks to the rise of online shopping and its international expansion strategies to Europe and Asia. Costco’s ecommerce sales doubled in just five years from 2014 to 2019. It also welcomed its $100 billion market cap milestone in June 2018. By the end of 2019, the value had gone up to $130 billion.

Like other leading retailers such as Amazon and Home Depot, Costco brought in a lot of new customers during COVID-19. Between 2020 and 2021, it gained 10 million new members to its existing 113 million-member pool with a membership renewal rate of 90%.

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This rapid growth allowed Costco’s net worth to grow to $200 billion in October 2021. Even after the pandemic ended, the affordable retail chain kept its momentum, reaching $431.67 billion net worth in November 2024.

Costco’s financial year ends on September 1 with quarterly and annual financial reports published on its website within the next 3 months.

Costco’s Revenue

For the last three decades, Costco’s revenue has shown a steady upward trend, except for a minor drop from $73.07 billion in 2008 to $72.33 billion in 2009 due to the Great Recession. Costco achieved its first $100 billion sales year in 2012 and its annual revenue hasn’t fallen below this mark since.

As COVID-19 generated an unexpected wave of new customers for the affordable retail chain giant, Costco decided to double down on its expansion strategy and opened new stores in various locations to attract more customers. As a result, its revenue rose from $172.93 billion in 2020 to $203.08 billion in 2021 and $231.03 billion the subsequent year.

Although its growth rate has slowed since the effects of the pandemic have eased, its 2023 annual revenue still saw a modest increase to $245.65 billion.

Costco Dividend History

For nearly two decades after its IPO, Costco didn’t pay dividends to its investors. It paid its first dividend in 2004 at $0.10 per share. It has been paying dividends quarterly ever since.

In 2012, Costco announced a special dividend of $7 per share, spending a total of $3 billion on this payout. Since then, Costco has been delivering special dividends once every few years, including in 2017 at $7 per share and in 2020 at $10 per share.

The latest special dividend payout happened in 2023 at $15 per share, making it the biggest special dividend payout so far, and Costco’s total return on investment since its IPO rose to 110,800%, including reinvested dividends.

Who Owns Costco?

Costco is a publicly traded company, belonging to a mix of institutional and individual shareholders. The largest institutional shareholder is Vanguard Group which holds (9.42%) followed by BlackRock (7.57%) and State Street (4.57%).

Costco went public in 1985, at $10.00 per share. In 2004, it announced a quarterly cash dividend on the common stock, starting with $0.10 per share. Fast forward to 2024, the company pays a quarterly dividend of $1.02 per share.

For shareholders who held stocks on December 28, 2023, Costco announced a special dividend of $15 per share, payable on January 12, 2024.

When Was Costco Founded?

In 1983, Jim Sinegal and Jeffrey H. Brotman opened the first Costco warehouse in Seattle, Washington. However, the company’s history can be traced back to 1976, when American entrepreneur Sol Price founded Price Club in a converted airplane hangar in San Diego. Pioneer of the membership warehouse clubs, Price Club eventually merged with Costco in 1993.

Sol Price was also the founder of FedMart, a discount department store chain where 18-year-old Jim Sinegal worked as a bagger in 1954. Sinegal continued working for Price as the executive vice president of merchandising, distribution, and marketing of Price Club. He helped the company fine-tune its marketing strategy — in the beginning, Price Club only targeted small businesses with wholesale needs. It then expanded to selected non-business members, marking the growth of the warehouse club industry.

After its launch in 1983, Costco became the first company to grow its sales from zero to $3 billion in less than six years. When Price Club and Costco merged in 1993, they took the name PriceCostco. In 1997, the company started operating under the name Costco Wholesale Corporation.

Who is the Costco CEO?

Ron Vachris is Costco’s CEO and president. Elected by the board of directors, he started his new role on January 1, 2024, as the former CEO Craig Jelinek retired.

The company has only had three CEOs, with co-founder Jim Sinegal serving as CEO for nearly 30 years. Both Jim Sinegal and Craig Jelinek have had high approval ratings throughout their careers, as they focused on employee wellbeing and retention.

In 2009, during Sinegal’s tenure, 86% of Costco employees got healthcare and benefits, and the average hourly salary was $19. Craig Jelinek became Costco’s CEO in 2012.

In 2021, Jelinek made it into Glassdoor’s Top CEOs List, with an employee approval rating of 92%. Jelinek also invested in employee retention, reporting that the company paid benefits and high wages, with an average wage of $25 per hour in 2020.

Growth and Development of Costco

Costco is known for offering low prices on bulk quantities. With its membership warehouse model and its private label products, it appeals to both small businesses and retail customers. According to former CEO Craig Jelinek, Costco is able to maintain lower prices by eliminating the “frills and costs” such as fancy buildings, salespeople, and extra services.

Here are the key dates for the company’s growth, global expansion, and membership offerings.

1983-1994: Costco Opens Its First Warehouse In Seattle

The first Costco warehouse opened on 4th Avenue S in Seattle. Its warehouse concept was pioneered by Price Club, where small businesses got discounts.

Costco offered small business owners an 8-9% discount on various products, including food, tires, and cosmetics, in return for an annual membership fee of $25-35. Later on, the company started offering its membership plans to retail customers and non-business members.

In 1985, Costco went public at $10.00 per share. Eight years later, it merged with Price Club, changing its name to PriceCostco. The merged company had 206 locations making $16 billion in annual sales. Changing its name didn’t change the company’s philosophy:

Keep costs down and pass the savings on to our members.

Costco opened its first store in Canada in 1985, starting its global expansion. In 1992, the company expanded further with its Mexico City store launch. Although many thought it wouldn’t be so popular, Costco had six outlets in Mexico by 1994.

One of the company’s iconic products, the Costco hot dog, started in its Seattle store in 1985. It has become famous for its steady price: $1,50 for a combo of hot dog and soda in Costco’s food court. Years later, the company’s Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti announced that the company aimed to keep the price at $1,50 forever. The $1.50 combo has since become a valuable publicity tool and a major draw for families looking for a quick, and ultra-cheap meal.

1995-2000: Costco Introduces the Kirkland Signature Brand

In 1995, amidst the rising prices of brand-name products, Costco decided to develop its own brand: Kirkland Signature Brand. It designed the brand to be equal to or better quality than national brands, while maintaining lower prices. The name Kirkland came from the city of Kirkland, where Costco’s headquarters were based at the time. Shortly after Kirkland’s launch, Costco moved its headquarters to Issaquah.

Kirkland Signature brand has been selling a wide range of products, including clothing, groceries, health and beauty, cleaning items, and organic food, all exclusive to Costco stores.

In 1997, PriceCostco resumed using the Costco name, with the remaining Price Club locations adopting the Costco rebrand. A year later, it launched its ecommerce store, costco.com. In 1999, Costco changed its corporate name from Costco Companies Inc. to Costco Wholesale Corporation.

2000-2010: Costco Offers Additional Services

In addition to its warehouses and ecommerce store, Costco increased its services to offer travel, pharmacy, direct-to-consumer, and same-day delivery deals to its members.

Although it started providing additional services, Costco continued selecting its warehouse products carefully. The average Costco warehouse stocks 3,700 products at any given time, which is less than one-tenth of most supermarkets.

2010-2020: Costco Continues Growing

Jim Sinegal noted that Costco’s ecommerce business had been profitable since its launch in 1998. In five years, from 2014 to 2019, Costco’s ecommerce sales doubled. In 2023, it made over $10 million in net sales from ecommerce only.

Craig Jelinek became Costco’s CEO in 2012, upholding the Costco co-founders’ values: offering high wages to employees and keeping product prices as low as possible. During Jelinek’s tenure, Costco expanded into new markets, including France, Spain, Iceland, and China.

Unlike other Western retailers such as Home Depot and Carrefour, Costco experienced immediate popularity in China ever since it first opened in 2019. Customers waited three hours to get a parking spot and stayed in line for hours. According to retail analysts, this was thanks to Costco’s ability to bring a new and exciting concept to the Chinese market.

Costco also strategically introduced its Kirkland signature products through a Chinese ecommerce site five years before the store launch, familiarizing the consumers with its products.

2020-Present: Costco Wholesale Corporation Has Over 800 Warehouses

As of 2024, Costco had 873 warehouses, operating in 14 territories in North America, Asia, Europe, and Australasia. Nearly 600 of these Costco warehouses are located in the United States and Puerto Rico, over 100 in Canada, and 40 in Mexico.

The company has 129.5 million members who pay the annual membership fee. In Q1 of 2024, the company’s membership income increased 8.2% year-over-year. 90.5% of Costco members renewed their membership plan in 2024, suggesting they found value in the deals offered by Costco Wholesale.

Costco made it into Forbes’ Best Employers List in 2023. Employing 206,000 full and part-time employees in the US and 316,000 employees worldwide, Costco offers health benefits including medical, dental, and vision, in addition to competitive salaries, employee development programs, and paid internships.

According to the National Retail Federation, Costco is the third largest retailer in the US, having made $164.15 billion worth of retail sales in 2022. It only ranks below Walmart, the world’s largest retailer with $600.94 in retail sales, and Amazon, the second largest retailer with $343.33 billion in sales.

Costco is one of the three mass market brick-and-mortar retailers in the US, along with Walmart and Target. In 2022, it had the highest average sales volume per store at $286 million, outranking its competitors.

Costco Membership Fees

Costco has three membership plans: executive, business, and gold star. Business members can purchase for resale, but they must provide Costco with the appropriate resale information.

All the memberships include a free Household Card and are valid in all Costco locations around the world. The Executive Membership offers an annual 2% reward on qualified purchases, capped at $1,000 for a 12-month period.

According to co-founder Jim Sinegal, Costco’s membership model develops with loyalty. “If the members are shopping intelligently, they’re going to wind up saving the membership fee in one trip,” he said in an interview at Georgetown University.

To get a Costco membership, shoppers have three options:

1. Visiting the membership desk at a Costco warehouse to join in person
2. Signing up online on Costco’s website
3. Calling 1-800-774-2678 to speak to Member Services on the phone.

History of the Costco Logo

Before Jim Sinegal and Jeffrey H. Brotman started Costco, there was Price Club, the first discounted warehouse club company. Price Club’s logo was black, written in block capitals. When Costco opened its first store in 1983, it picked an attention-grabbing red logo.

Both companies adjusted their logos during the 1993 merger of Price Club and Costco: Price Club adopted a blue color, and Costco changed its font to block capitals, underlining its name with a blue line. This was the start of the combined company, PriceCostco.

In 1997, PriceCostco changed its name to Costco Wholesale and adjusted its logo to reflect the change. Below is a video showing how the company’s logo has evolved from the Price Club logo in 1976 to the 1997 logo that is still used today:

The Future of Costco

According to analysts, Costco will be in a good position in the stock market in the future, thanks to its high value, renewal rates, and club expansion plans.

The Motley Fool’s stock experts predict Costco’s memberships to continuously increase, and reach 165 million by 2028. Given that the company opens 20 to 25 stores per year, it is expected to have 960 stores by 2028.

In 2024, the company announced several future store openings, namely in China and the US.

By focusing on the people within the business, keeping a tight rein on the products on its shelves, and taking time to develop offerings in global markets, the future of Costco is secure.

Wrapping Up

Costco’s legacy as a retail giant is a testament to its commitment to providing high-quality products at unbeatable prices.

From its humble beginnings in 1983 to its current status as the third-largest retailer globally, Costco’s membership model has reshaped the retail landscape.

Under the leadership of CEO Ron Vachris, Costco continues to prioritize employee welfare and customer satisfaction, ensuring its continued success and growth in the years to come.

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