Costco's net margin is around 3%. Most retailers would kill for half that, *consistently*.
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✦ The bottom line
Costco makes 3¢ of profit per dollar of sales. But the fees are pure margin — and renewal is 93%.
↓ the brief below
✦ Teach me
How many cents the business actually keeps as profit
After paying for the products, the stores, the workers, the trucks, the taxes — what's left as actual profit. For Costco it's tiny per dollar. The whole company runs on huge volume of small margins.
Wall Street calls this
Net margin / operating margin
When the margin is this thin, *consistency* matters more than expansion. Costco wins by never breaking.
Net income · latest quarter
$4.0
B
Profit this quarter on $68B in sales — about 3¢ per dollar. Up 13% from a year earlier. Boring, repeatable, growing.
Source · 10-Q · Income Statement · Q2 FY26 · Filed Mar 11, 2026
The fee math · widely reported
Costco's worldwide membership renewal rate sits at roughly 93% — and over 90% even in newer regions. Of every dollar of membership fees, almost all of it flows to operating profit.
↳ A 93% renewal rate means customers love it enough to pay every year just to keep shopping there. That's the , in one number.