Non-food revenues were soft at Costco Wholesale Corporation in fiscal March as net sales came in at $21.71 billion, up 0.5% from the year-earlier month.
In a conference call, Costco stated that U.S. traffic was up 3.6%. Regions with the strongest sales results in the U.S. were the Northeast, Southeast and Midwest. As for merchandising departments, Non-Foods sales were negative in the mid to high single digits with the strongest categories being tires, health and beauty, and apparel. Comps for Food & Sundries were up in the high single digits while those for Fresh Food were up in the mid-single digits.
Costco operates 850 warehouses including 585 in the United States and Puerto Rico, 107 in Canada, 40 in Mexico, 31 in Japan, 29 in the United Kingdom, 18 in Korea, 14 in Taiwan, 14 in Australia, four in Spain, three in China, two in France, and one each in Iceland, New Zealand and Sweden. Costco also operates e-commerce websites in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Mexico, Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Australia.
