Issaquah, WA, December 9--Costco Wholesale, the largest U.S. warehouse club, posted a 21 percent increase in quarterly profit on Thursday.
For the fiscal first quarter ended on Nov. 21, net income rose to $193.2 million, or 40 cents a share, from $160.2 million, or 34 cents a share, a year earlier.
Quarterly sales increased 10 percent to $11.34 billion. Sales at warehouses open at least a year rose 7 percent.
Analysts had on average expected Costco to post first-quarter earnings of 41 cents per share on revenue of $11.54 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.
Costco operates about 445 warehouses in the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, Britain, Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Mexico.
