Costco Stock In Focus Ahead of Q1 Earnings: Retail’s Extremely Bullish

Costco Wholesale Corp ($COST) stock was slightly up on Wednesday ahead of the retailer’s first-quarter earnings, with retail sentiment turning ‘extremely bullish.’

Wall Street analysts expect the retailer to post earnings per share of $3.79 on estimated revenues of $66.52 billion. Costco beat EPS estimates for all four quarters last year.

Recently, BofA analyst Robert Ohmes upped the firm's price target to $1,095 from $972 while keeping a ‘Buy’ rating following the company’s November update saying it increased comp growth by 4.3% for the U.S. ex-gas and by 4.9% for ex-gas and forex, the Fly.com reported citing the analyst.

The report added that e-commerce sales were negatively impacted by Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday falling a week later this year.

For the full-year 2024, Costco posted net sales of $249.6 billion, up 5.0% from 2023.
Its net Income for the full fiscal year 2024 was $7.367 billion, or $16.56 per diluted share, compared to $6.292 billion, or $14.16 per diluted share, in fiscal year 2023.

Retail sentiment on Stocktwits has turned ‘extremely bullish’ (79/100) from ‘bearish’ (41/100) a week ago. Message volumes climbed to the ‘extremely high’ zone from ‘high.’

COST sentiment meter and message volumes on Dec 11

Costco stock is up 53% year-to-date.

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