Costco Wholesale beats Q4, says it was impacted by covid-19 premium wage expenses and sanitation costs
Costco Wholesale released its fourth quarter earnings report after hours on Thursday, beating investor expectations on both revenue and earnings per share. The company said that it was negatively affected by coronavirus premium wage expenses and new sanitation costs. Yahoo Finance’s Myles Udland breaks down the company’s earnings report on The Final Round.
Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: We're going to get to some breaking news here after hours. Costco is out with their earnings report. Myles has the numbers for us. Myles?
MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, Seana, another strong quarter here from Costco. Stock, however, is off about 2% in after hours trading. Running through the numbers here, earnings per share $3.13. The street was looking for something closer to $2.85. Revenues for Costco's fourth quarter, $53.38 billion, better than the $52.46 that was expected. Same store sales in the US up 11%. Same store sales across the company's portfolio up 11.4% during the quarter. E-commerce sales up 90.6% in the company's fiscal fourth quarter.
Just a couple of items that the company flagged here in the release. Hurting earnings by $0.47 per share was a $281 million charge related to increased wages, they're calling them COVID-19 premium wages, as well as sanitation costs. The company also paid down some debt-- early pay, prepayment of some of that debt, and they took a small charge on that. So again, just a couple items in there that Costco flagged.
As folks know, not the most robust earnings release, but the numbers there, again, beating on the top and the bottom line. And again, with total company same store sales up 11.4%, and e-commerce up 90.6% during the company's most recent quarter, Seana.
SEANA SMITH: Certainly interesting here, when you look at the after hours action in the stock. It was off just over 2%. Now off just around 1.5%, but Costco has been an outperformer so far this year.
