Costco Wholesale Corp. has increased the size of its real estate staff to support its goal to open 30 or more clubs per year globally for the foreseeable future, though overseas delays prompted the company to revise its target to 28 clubs in fiscal year 2026, officials said last week in a call discussing financial results for its first quarter.
About half of the new openings are targeted for the U.S.
The warehouse club opened eight new sites, including a relocation in Canada, a third warehouse in France, four net new U.S. locations and two addition Canadian clubs in the quarter that ended Nov. 23. The openings brought Costco's worldwide total to 921 clubs, Chief Executive Ron Vachris told analysts.
The company did not state how many of its new clubs offered fuel, but executives made clear during the call that they're adding fuel wherever possible and underlined fuel's importance, reminding analysts that Costco increased its fuel cashback feature on the Costco Anywhere Visa Card early this year to 5% from 4%.
In addition to enhancing the fuel benefit for its credit card, Costco is deploying AI tools in its fuel business to improve inventory management and drive incremental sales "by ensuring we are always delivering the best value to our members," Vachris said. Costco also recently started adding digital video screens with sound at its fuel islands as part of a broader initiative to develop its own retail media network, officials said.
Vachris said that adding gasoline operations and expanded parking can increase overall club sales volume as much as 60%.
Costco is "being creative" with real estate projects, converting old buildings to Costco clubs, which increases potential for future growth. In one instance, the company converted an old hypermart, and in two other cases it refurbished home improvement warehouses into Costco clubs, he said.
"This approach broadens our options for market expansion and lowers the capital investment required," he explained. "In addition to opening net new buildings, we will continue to relocate select high-volume warehouses to larger locations with more parking and expanded gas stations. By doing this, we're able to provide a better experience for our members and significantly accelerate sales growth in those markets."
In fiscal 2026, Costco plans five relocations, three in the U.S. and one each in Canada and Taiwan, China. Vachris said the company typically completes five to six expansions and relocations per year, and the uplift is "dramatic."
"When we do these, we normally are moving a building that is underserving the market and goes into a larger facility [with] better parking. If we have a gas station, expanded gas or we add gas to it [we can see] a wide variety of uptake to extreme 50%, 60% increases when you add a gas station and really add a lot of parking to a 20% uplift to a building that had everything but just got into a better facility."
Costco continues to see performance improve at its new clubs, including a reduction in the time it takes to reach maturity. Fiscal year 2025 openings generated an annualized $192 million in sales per warehouse in the year the club opened, up from $150 million for new warehouses opened just two years earlier, Vachris said.
Costco ranks fifth in the U.S. in gasoline brand market share by visits at 3.89%, selling gasoline at an average of 33.47cts/gal below local markets, according to OPIS MarketSharePro. Throughput at its clubs is more than eight times that of an average gasoline station, OPIS data shows.
This content was created by Oil Price Information Service, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. OPIS is run independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
--Reporting by Donna Harris, dharris@opisnet.com; Editing by Michael Kelly, mkelly@opisnet.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 15, 2025 16:56 ET (21:56 GMT)
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