Costco Wholesale (COSTS) – Get Free Report on Thursday released weaker-than-expected first-quarter results as membership earnings missed Street forecasts while sales tumbled in the final weeks of autumn.
Costco said diluted earnings for the three months ended Nov. 20, the company’s first fiscal quarter, were $3.09 per share, up 3% from the same period last year but down 2 cents than Street’s consensus forecast.
TheStreet’s Dan Kline blogs live from the Costco conference call
Consolidated revenue rose 8.1% to $54.437 billion, according to Costco, just below analysts’ forecasts of $54.64 billion. Membership revenue increased 5.7% to $1 billion.
Adjusted same-store sales rose 7.1% year over year, Costco said, about 230 basis points above Street’s forecast, while e-commerce sales fell 3.7%.
Costco shares, down 0.11% during Thursday’s session, were down 1.1% in after-hours trading following the earnings release, pointing to an opening bell price on Friday of $476.01 each.
Last week, Costco released a weaker-than-expected November sales report of $19.17, up 5.7% year over year, which was significantly lower than the 7.7% for the month of October and the 10.1% increase % posted by the group in September.
Late fall slowdown reverberates, comments Brian Cornell, CEO of big-box rival Target (TGT) – Get Free Report, which told investors Nov. 16 that the group saw a “shift in shopping behavior in the second half of October into November.”
Cornell said consumers are “working on their budget, shopping very carefully, looking for value, and realizing they need to start with staples before spending dollars in discretionary categories.”
Costco may also have suffered from the general decline in U.S. gas prices, which have fallen more than 30% since hitting an all-time high of $5.10 a gallon earlier this summer.
The rise in gas prices helped in part as U.S. sales rose 15.8% in the three months to August, Costco reported, a development many analysts attributed to the offering of cheaper gas to club members.