Costco Wholesale Corporation Revenue & Financials

The most interesting thing about Costco's financials isn't the $275.2 billion in FY2025 revenue — it's how little of that revenue the company actually keeps. Net income was $8.1 billion, which works out to a net margin of roughly 2.9%. For a company with a $397 billion market cap, that's an extraordinarily thin margin. The market is paying a massive premium not for current earnings but for the durability and predictability of those earnings. Revenue grew 8% year-over-year from $254.5 billion in FY2024, which is impressive for a company this large. But the real financial story lives in the membership line. That $5.3 billion in fee income arrives with virtually no cost of goods sold attached. It's almost pure profit. Strip it out, and Costco's merchandise operations generate margins so thin they'd make a grocery chain wince. The balance sheet is conservative by retail standards. Costco carries manageable debt, generates strong free cash flow, and returns capital through dividends and occasional special dividends rather than aggressive buybacks. The company has doubled revenue since 2017 (from $129 billion) without taking on proportionally more risk. For a 333,000-employee operation running 914 warehouses, that's disciplined capital allocation.