Company: COST
Filing Date: 2025-04-21
Form Type: CORRESP
Source: 0000909832-25-000025
Chunk: 1

Company: COSTCO WHOLESALE CORP /NEW
Filing Date: 2025-04-21
Form: CORRESP
Chunk 1
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2023 and February 2024. These represented the base (i.e., denominator) of memberships used to evaluate the renewal rate. Using that same membership base, to the extent the membership has been renewed as of the most recent month-end prior to the reporting date, it is included in the renewal count used as the numerator. This calculation yields the reported renewal rate.

2. Please revise to clarify whether the membership figures in the table are as of a point in time or for a period of time.

Response:

The membership figures in the table are as of a point in time, at the end of years 2024, 2023, and 2022. We will conform our future disclosures accordingly.

3. You state membership counts include active memberships as well as memberships that have not renewed within the 12 months prior to the reporting date. Please tell us your basis for including memberships that have not renewed within the 12 months prior to the reporting date.

Response:

As noted above, a substantial number of our members renew after expiration and renewal timing can be impacted by seasonal trends, membership promotions and concentrations of new warehouse openings in a given period. Internal reports to management utilize the methodology reflected in our public filings regarding a membership count that includes members that have not renewed within the twelve months prior to the reporting date (to capture a full annual cycle). In our Forms 10-K since 2020 we have advised investors that the membership counts include those that have not renewed within the twelve months prior to the reporting date.

Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Conditions and Results of Operations

Results of Operations, page 25

4. Please revise to quantify factors to which changes are attributed. For example, you state the increase in net sales was attributable to an increase in comparable sales and the opening of new warehouses, partially offset by one less week of sales. As another example, you cite wage increases as impacting SG&A expenses. Please also revise to quantify impacts of changes in price and volume on revenue. Refer to Item 303(b)(2) of Regulation S-K.

Confidential Treatment Requested by Costco Wholesale Corporation

C-002

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

Response:

Our 2024 Form 10-K disclosed the factors contributing to the increase in net sales as an increase in comparable sales and sales at new warehouses opened in 2023 and 2024, partially offset by the impact of one less week of