COSTCO WHOLESALE CORP /NEW
COST · Consumer Discretionary · $405.8B mkt cap · FY2025 filings · · Wide moat ·
On the watchlist
The five investor questions
2021–2025 (latest 5 aligned FYs; v3 window cap 5): revenue $195.9B to $275.2B, increasing; diluted EPS 11.27 to 18.21, increasing.
Median gross margin 12.9% over 10y, very stable.
Median ROIC 32.0%, above the 12% hurdle in 100% of years.
Net cash position — no leverage risk.
Owner earnings changed +14.7%/yr over up to the ten most recent annual observations.
Price vs. value if growth stopped today
A cautious baseline, not a price target: what the shares may support if normalized owner earnings simply hold steady.
- $6.3B
- $157.73
- $255.52
- $915.60
- 480% above value if growth stopped today
What today’s price assumes: owner earnings growing ~42%/yr over 5 years. The zero-growth estimate assumes owner earnings stay flat (0% growth).
How to read this
We solve for the constant annual change in owner earnings that would make the five-year zero-growth estimate equal today’s price. This keeps the existing model inputs and calculation unchanged; it is an expectations lens, not a forecast.
This zero-growth estimate assumes trailing owner earnings persist — unreliable for declining businesses. The recent FY revenue series does not trigger the three-consecutive-declines flag.
Among the current top-score group, the median current price is 238% above the zero-growth estimate across 49 of the current top 50 companies by Moat Score with both values.
Score records captured Sep 4, 2026.
Exactly which 50 companies?
FTNT, META, MEDP, IBEX, MSFT, GOOG, LULU, ANF, IDXX, TXRH, FHI, QLYS, FFIV, ADBE, LLY, MANH, VEEV, RMD, GRMN, PCTY, EAT, UI, SSD, MNST, DOCS, LRCX, MCO, CPRT, NTAP, NVDA, CORT, SFM, MPTI, ULTA, SN, ROL, CTAS, PAYC, IRMD, INTU, DECK, MORN, JKHY, TPR, LGCY, DAL, GWW, ISRG, MPWR, LOPE
Missing a usable price or zero-growth estimate: ANF.
Model details under moat-index@3.0.0: zero-growth multiple 11.1×, capped-growth comparison at no more than 18×; 9% discount rate; high-end growth 4% (capped at 4%) using min(5y revenue CAGR, 5y diluted-EPS CAGR), clamped to 0%–4%; maintenance capex uses min(capex, D&A); abstain when D&A is unavailable. This is a disclosed model range, not intrinsic value as fact.
19 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
COSTCO WHOLESALE CORP /NEW booked $275.2B of revenue in FY2025 in the Consumer Discretionary sector and kept 12.8% of it as gross profit — a thin-margin business by that measure. After every other cost, 2.9% of each revenue dollar reached the bottom line.
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $72.5B (FY2008) to $275.2B (FY2025) — about 8.2% a year compounded over 17 years.
It earned 37.4% on invested capital in the latest filed year, FY2025. Across the full 18-year measurable filed record, median ROIC was 20.8%. Over the v3 recent window (10 measurable filed years), median ROIC was 32.0%. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 100/100.
The balance sheet carried $5.8B of total debt in FY2025 against $8.1B of owner earnings — roughly 0.7 years of owner earnings to retire it all. Balance-Sheet Safety scores it 100/100.
Put together: Returns on Capital is the strongest of the five filters (100/100) and Pricing Power the weakest (27/100), which is how COST lands at 80/100 — a Wide moat.
This breakdown is generated from the filed numbers and sub-scores above — no outside narrative, no estimates. Where a filing doesn’t disclose an input, the sentence that would need it is omitted instead of guessed.
Exact FY and FY-1 financing invested-capital inputs are required.
The explained ROIC gaps have filed inputs but no meaningful positive invested-capital denominator. Other gaps mean the item is not in the filings for that year. The series is never interpolated or estimated. The Table view lists every filed value, including operating and net margins, total debt, and share count.
Visual explainers
The filing-backed explainer service is temporarily unavailable, so no partial or guessed chart is shown.
Moat Score history
Breaks in the line mark methodology or normalizer upgrades — readings across versions aren’t compared, so a level shift there isn’t a change in the business.
Tier changesSame-methodology and same-normalizer crossings of the Wide / Narrow / Shallow bars
- Normalizer upgraded unstamped (version unknown)tomoat-xbrl-normalizer@1.1.0 — readings across versions aren’t comparedJul 26, 2026
- Methodology upgraded moat-index@2.0.0tomoat-index@3.0.0 — readings across versions aren’t comparedJul 23, 2026
- Methodology upgraded moat-index@1.2.0tomoat-index@2.0.0 — readings across versions aren’t comparedJul 20, 2026
- Methodology upgraded moat-index@1.1.0tomoat-index@1.2.0 — readings across versions aren’t comparedJul 17, 2026
Scores are logged append-only and never overwritten — this record cannot be reconstructed retroactively, which is exactly why it’s worth keeping.
Insider activity
Form 4 reports mix P/S market or private transactions with compensation-plan mechanics. Activity casually described as “insider selling” can include compensation mechanics; awards, tax withholding, and option exercises are shown by their exact filed class here, never collapsed into “Bought” or “Sold.”
These are disclosed filing facts and arithmetic aggregates, not a signal or verdict.
This machine-readable surface covers SEC ownership filings from 2003; it does not represent earlier paper-era records.
Records still being gathered — partial as of retrieval Sep 5, 2026.
6 filings were skipped because the SEC primary document returned 404; the omission is disclosed and aggregates are withheld.
Trailing-12-month totals and the 90-day cluster result are withheld because this issuer walk is incomplete.
No reported Form 4 rows were captured for COST; the incomplete walk cannot establish zero activity, zero counts, or a negative cluster result.
A filing source-event date will appear when a Form 4 row is captured.
Retrieved .
Track record
How COSTCO WHOLESALE CORP /NEW’s moat rated in each of the years we can reconstruct from its filings — scored only on what was knowable at the time — and what its price and returns did afterward. The score never saw a price; the two are joined only in hindsight, for education, not as a signal.
How to read this: each dot is what the engine would have scored COST on that December 31; the line below is its total-return price path (dividends reinvested) in the years since.
Two tracks, one timeline: the score has its own 0–100 scale (top), the price its own 100-based scale (bottom) — never a shared axis. The price path is a total-return (dividends reinvested) index built from the same data the forward returns use; gaps in the score line are years with no reconstructed rating (see the table for why). The Table view carries every value.
What followed, in the years it rated Wide
In the 5 years COST rated Wide-moat (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025), the median forward total return that followed — measured only after each year’s filings were public — was:
- 1 year 18% vs the S&P 500’s 20% (price basis) · median over 4 years
- 3 years 82% vs the S&P 500’s 51% (price basis) · median over 2 years
- 5 years None of the 5 years it rated Wide has a fully elapsed 5-year window with a benchmark to compare against yet.
These are medians computed from the data, not a claim about any one year. The company figures are total returns (dividends reinvested); the S&P 500 is the price-only ^GSPC index, which excludes dividends and so understates the index — the gap flatters the company. A quality rating is not a return forecast, and past returns don’t predict future ones. Educational only, not investment advice.
Consumer Discretionary context
#42 of 486 scored Consumer Discretionary companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #40RVLV REVOLVE GROUP, INC.80.7 out of 100, Wide moatWide moat
- #41GNTX GENTEX CORPORATION80.4 out of 100, Wide moatWide moat
- #43WSM WILLIAMS-SONOMA, INC.79.7 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #44BAH Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation79.4 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
Compare COST with its nearest peers →All Consumer Discretionary companies on the Index →
Common questions about COST
- Does COSTCO WHOLESALE CORP /NEW have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2025 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores COSTCO WHOLESALE CORP /NEW (COST) 80.4 out of 100 — a Wide moat. The five questions behind that score begin at 20% each; if exactly one genuinely lacks data, the other four weights are renormalized and disclosed. revenue and EPS trend 98, pricing power 27, returns on capital 100, balance-sheet safety 100, capital allocation 77.
- Is COST trading below the conservative owner-earnings estimate?
- The value if growth stopped today — a zero-growth baseline — is $157.73 per share. It capitalizes normalized owner earnings at a 9% rate and assumes 0% growth. Versus a recent price of $915.60, that is 480% above value if growth stopped today. The model also publishes a capped-growth comparison, but the zero-growth estimate is the cautious baseline. It assumes trailing owner earnings persist and is unreliable for declining businesses. This is an educational estimate from primary SEC filings, not intrinsic value as a fact or investment advice.
- How has COST's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 21 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 80.4 out of 100 (wide moat). No tier changes on record yet. (Methodology or normalizer upgrades on Jul 17, 2026, Jul 20, 2026, Jul 23, 2026, Jul 26, 2026 re-based the score; readings across versions aren't compared.) The history is append-only — readings are only ever added, never rewritten.