Company: COST
Filing Date: 2025-04-21
Form Type: CORRESP
Source: 0000909832-25-000025
Chunk: 0

Company: COSTCO WHOLESALE CORP /NEW
Filing Date: 2025-04-21
Form: CORRESP
Chunk 0
---
Writer’s Direct Number: (425) 313-2060

Fax: (425) 313-6800

### FOIA CONFIDENTIAL TREATMENT REQUESTED
April 21, 2025

BY EDGAR

Patrick Kuhn and Lyn Shenk

Division of Corporation Finance

Office of Trade & Services

Securities and Exchange Commission

100 F Street N.E.

Washington, D.C. 20549

Re: Costco Wholesale Corporation -- Form 10-K for the Fiscal Year Ended September 1, 2024, filed October 8, 2024 -- File No. 000-20355

Dear Mr. Kuhn and Mr. Shenk:

In response to your letter of March 19, 2025 (the “Letter”), please see the discussion below, which corresponds to the paragraph in your letter.

Form 10-K for the Fiscal Year Ended September 1, 2024

Business

Membership, page 6

1. You disclose your membership renewal rate is a trailing calculation that captures renewals during the period seven to eighteen months prior to the reporting date. Please further describe your renewal rate calculation to us, including why you use this time period.

Response:

We received a Comment Letter dated January 22, 2014, concerning our Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 1, 2013, filed October 16, 2013, with a similar question regarding our membership renewal rate calculation. The following response is consistent with the response to that letter (dated February 4th, 2014), as to which the staff had no follow up. Our subsequent disclosures for the past decade have been consistent, and renewal patterns were comparable during that period.

Historical data show that most members renew prior to expiration; the vast majority of those who renew late do so within six months of expiration. As such, measuring renewals only at

Confidential Treatment Requested by Costco Wholesale Corporation

C-001

[*] - Information omitted and provided under separate cover to the Staff pursuant to Rule 83 (17 C.F.R. § 200.83)

the point of expiration would not provide investors an accurate picture of our renewal activity. Memberships that have an expiration date in the six months prior to the end of our reporting period are excluded from this calculation, regardless of whether or not they have been renewed.

For example, our renewal rate calculation as of September 1, 2024, included all memberships that had expired between March