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Costco reports fiscal fourth-quarter earnings after the bell, with Wall Street expecting $94.85 billion in revenue and $6.53 in EPS. Those numbers would cap fiscal 2026 with another period of double-digit growth.
Costco’s Q3 report largely met expectations but still sent shares tumbling 3.91%. This time around, investors will be watching core-on-core margins closely, particularly for any impact from gasoline prices and other factors outside Costco’s underlying retail business.
Beyond the headline numbers, membership fee income and renewal trends remain key indicators of the strength of Costco’s model. Investors will also be listening for updates on tariff refund timing and management’s planned pace of new warehouse openings heading into fiscal 2027.
Costco still trades at roughly 45x earnings, while the consensus analyst price target of $1,069 implies around 18% upside. Any meaningful deterioration in core margins or spending trends, however, could put pressure on Costco stock heading into the new fiscal year.
This article is updated throughout the trading day. Check back for more.
Costco (NASDAQ:COST | COST Price Prediction) is expected to report Q4 FY2026 today at 4:15 PM ET, with the earnings call scheduled for 5:00 PM ET. After a lukewarm reaction to Q3, this report closes fiscal 2026 and tests whether membership economics and digital velocity carried a roughly $95B quarter.
Q3 FY26 delivered $70.53B in revenue, up 11.58% YoY, and $4.93 in EPS on comparable sales up 9.8%. However, shares fell 3.91% on the day and have not recovered, down 7.07% over the past month.
Reported gross margin slipped 21 basis points as management widened gas price gaps and cut Kirkland prices on eggs, meat, and staples. SG&A improved 20 basis points to 8.96%, membership fee income rose 10.7% to $1.373 billion, and executive penetration reached 75.0% of sales. Sentiment sits cooler than the operating trend.
| Metric | Q4’26 Estimate | YoY Change | FY 2026 Estimate | FY 2027 Estimate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $94.85B | +10.1% | $301.96B | $326.63B |
| EPS (Normalized) | $6.5273 | +11.2% | $20.5605 | $22.663 |
Revisions have drifted higher into the report, with four upward Q4 revisions and zero cuts over the trailing seven days. FY27 modeling implies mid-teens EPS growth on roughly 8% top-line expansion. Setup: expectations high, but not stretched.
Tonight, I’ll be watching how core-on-core margin evolves after Q3’s nine basis point decline. It will be interesting to see if Kirkland cuts on Crispy Wings ($16.99 to $14.99), Chocolate Almonds, Golf Balls, and King Size Sheets pull traffic without denting profit density.
Analysts will focus on gas: the final five weeks of Q3 were the company’s top five volume weeks ever. Did that momentum hold, and did widened price gaps stabilize gas profit as a rate of sales?
Tariffs matter too. Management said IEPA refund claims could arrive on a rolling basis over the following two to three months, with a plan to return the pass-through portion to members. Any update could reshape the near-term margin bridge.
On membership, executive members grew to 41.2 million (+9.6%), while total paid members rose 4.1%. Investors will be looking for confirmation that growth sits in management’s 4% to 5% “normal” range. Finally, warehouse cadence: FY26 was trimmed to 26 net new openings, with a 30-plus-per-year pace still on the table.
| Quarter | EPS Surprise | 1-Day Move | 7-Day Move | 30-Day Move |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q3’26 | +0.14% | -3.91% | +1.63% | -3.31% |
| Q2’26 | +0.78% | +1.58% | +1.03% | +3.22% |
| Q1’26 | +5.19% | 0.00% | -3.26% | +8.17% |
| Q4’25 | +1.11% | -2.90% | -0.06% | +0.90% |
On average, shares moved -1.18% seven days after earnings across the past year’s beats.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Thomas Richmond is a financial writer and content strategist with 5+ years of experience covering stocks and financial markets. He has published over 500 articles focused on individual stock analysis, helping investors better understand business fundamentals, stock valuations, and long-term opportunities.
Thomas previously served as a Content Lead at TIKR, a stock research platform, where he helped scale the company’s blog to hundreds of articles per month and contributed to a weekly newsletter reaching more than 100,000 investors.
Outside of work, Thomas enjoys weight lifting and soccer.
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