It is time to provide shareholders with numbers for the first quarter of fiscal 2018 at Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST, Financial).
The quarterly results will be disclosed by the U.S. wholesale hypermarket chain company next Thursday, Dec. 14, after the Nasdaq stock exchange closes.
As illustrated in the chart sourced by Yahoo Finance (see below), 26 analysts were surveyed on Costco’s earnings for the first quarter of fiscal 2018. These estimates range between a low of $1.24 per share and a high of $1.42 per share, and have produced an average EPS of $1.34, which is 17 cents higher than the one-year-ago figure.
Source: Yahoo Finance
According to Yahoo Finance, seventeen analysts were surveyed for revenue. Forecasts fall into a $30.48 billion-to-$31.84 billion range, which has a mean of $31.43 billion.
Essentially, the average analyst forecasts an 11.80% year over year growth in Costco’s sales from the first quarter of fiscal 2017 when – as illustrated in the chart below – the company reported revenue of $28.099 billion. The chart below shows the trend in Costco’s sales over the last five quarters:
Yahoo Finance also reports growth estimates for fiscal 2017 to fiscal 2018 period. Analysts foresee 6.50% growth in fiscal 2018 sales from a figure of $129.03 billion reported by the company at the end of full fiscal 2017. The trend in Costco’s annual sales over the last five years is illustrated in below chart:
GuruFocus gives Costco a profitability & growth rating of 7 out of a total of 10.
The U.S. wholesale hypermarket chain company will also update shareholders with figures about its financial condition.
GuruFocus gives the company a financial strength rating of 7 out of a total of 10.
If Costco will exceed analysts’ expectations on earnings and sales, this may have a positive impact on the share price of the stock. Over the 52-week through December 8, it has gained 17% to $188.07, on a par with the S&P 500 index over the same span of time:
Source: Yahoo Finance
The stock has a 52-week range of $150.00 to $191.22 and is trading above the 50 and the 200-simple moving average lines.
The average target price is $183.65 per share and the recommendation rating is 2.1 out of 5.
Costco’s share price is above the Peter Lynch earnings line (with and without NRI), which may show that the stock is overvalued by the stock market at the moment.
Costco has a price-book (P/B) ratio of 7.68 versus an industry median of 1.85 and a price-sales (P/S) ratio of 0.63 versus an industry median of 0.49.
In addition, the stock has a forward PE ratio of 28.99 versus an industry median of 18.08 and distributes a forward dividend of $2.00 for a forward yield of 1.06% versus a S&P 500 dividend yield of 1.82%.
Disclosure: I have no position in Costco.
