Costco’s February Sales Boosted by Surge in Virus-Fueled Demand

(Bloomberg) -- Costco Wholesale Corp. posted blowout February sales as customers began to stockpile goods in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

• U.S. comparable sales excluding gas, a key metric, increased 11.6% in the four weeks ended March 1, compared with the 7.2% gain expected by analysts polled by Consensus Metrix. Profit in the second quarter also beat projections.

Key Insights

• The warehouse club retailer was poised to deliver brisk February sales growth, as results last February were hampered by unseasonable weather.
• Costco's aisles have been clogged in recent days with shoppers worried about getting caught short of everyday goods as the virus spreads across the U.S. Visits to Costco's warehouses on Saturday, Feb. 29, were 72% above the daily average for the period between Jan. 2019 and Feb. 2020, according to data tracker Placer.ai. Costco said Thursday that the uptick in demand boosted February comparable sales by three percentage points.
• Costco's website has also seen a surge in traffic. According to researcher SimilarWeb, there was a 77% increase in so-called unbounced visits to Costco's same-day delivery service in the seven days ending March 3. Unbounced web traffic excludes visits when customers leave the site after viewing just one page. Costco said e-commerce sales rose 23% in February.
• It helps that Costco's club-store rivals have struggled of late. Comparable fourth-quarter sales at BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings Inc. and Walmart Inc.-owned Sam's Club both missed analysts' estimates.

Market Reaction

• Costco shares rose as much as 2.1% in late trading before paring gains. Shares had gained 7.4% this year through Thursday's close, compared with a 6.4% decline for the benchmark S&P 500 Index.

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To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Boyle in New York at mboyle20@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Crayton Harrison at tharrison5@bloomberg.net, Anne Cronin

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