Costco Stock Slips Premarket as Analysts Reset Targets After Q4 Beat

Costco Wholesale Corp. (NASDAQ: COST) delivered a fiscal fourth-quarter earnings beat that remained intact after stripping out a one-time tariff-refund benefit, but Friday’s analyst response shifted attention toward valuation rather than the quality of the quarter itself.

Costco shares were at $891.41 in premarket trading at 8:30 a.m. ET Friday, down 0.51% from Thursday’s $896.48 close, according to Yahoo Finance. The stock had fallen 0.91% during Thursday’s regular session. 

Costco reported diluted earnings of $6.75 per share, up from $5.87 a year earlier. The company said the result included a non-recurring $0.15-per-share benefit from IEEPA tariff refunds, net of partial reinvestment into increased member value. Excluding that benefit, adjusted EPS was about $6.60, still above the $6.53 LSEG consensus estimate. Total revenue reached $95.72 billion, compared with the $94.86 billion expected. 

Q4 Operating Results Supported the Earnings Beat

Costco’s company-reported net sales rose 11.2% to $93.9 billion from $84.4 billion a year earlier. The distinction from total revenue is important: Costco also generated $1.85 billion in membership-fee income, up from $1.72 billion, bringing reported quarterly revenue to $95.72 billion.

Total-company comparable sales increased 9.4%, while adjusted comparable sales excluding gasoline-price and foreign-exchange effects rose 6.7%. Digitally enabled comparable sales advanced 19.5%, or 19.8% excluding foreign-exchange effects.

Membership metrics provided additional context for the valuation discussion. Costco ended the quarter with 84.1 million paid members, up 3.8% year over year, while U.S. and Canada renewal rates improved 10 basis points sequentially to 92.3%. Worldwide renewals also rose 10 basis points to 89.8%.

Friday Analyst Actions Put Valuation at the Center

The post-earnings analyst response showed a wide range of price thresholds without producing a simple positive-versus-negative split. 

D.A. Davidson raised its Costco target to $1,040 from $1,000 while maintaining a Neutral rating; some analyst-data services classify Michael Baker’s stance as Hold. Raymond James lowered its target to $1,050 from $1,100 while keeping Outperform. JPMorgan cut its target to $1,015 from $1,100 with an Overweight rating, while Mizuho reduced its target to $1,065 from $1,100 and retained Outperform. 

At the lower end of Friday’s fresh targets, Wells Fargo moved to $950 from $1,000 while maintaining Equalweight, and Truist cut its target to $955 from $1,011 while keeping Hold. Goldman Sachs maintained Buy while trimming its target to $1,134 from $1,159, and Bernstein maintained Outperform with a $1,143 target, down by $1. 

Raymond James explicitly tied its reduction to modestly lower valuation-multiple assumptions and moderating membership growth, even as it noted that adjusted earnings came in slightly ahead of expectations. That distinction helps explain why analysts can retain positive ratings while assigning different prices to the same operating performance.

Valuation remains material because Costco was trading at roughly 39.3 times estimated fiscal 2027 earnings in current MarketScreener data. The Friday revisions are separate from pre-earnings calls, including Telsey Advisory’s $1,135 target dated Sept. 21, Evercore ISI’s $1,100 target on Sept. 22, and BTIG’s $1,125 target on Sept. 23.

Separately, Costco Tokenized Stock (Ondo), or COSTon, was at exactly $896.96 at 8:20 a.m. ET Friday, down 1.71% over the previous 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. CoinMarketCap identifies COSTon as Ondo’s tokenized version of Costco stock. Its 24-hour performance is distinct from COST’s Nasdaq premarket move and covers a different trading window.