Costco Wholesale Corporation is a membership warehouse club with 671 warehouses in nine countries on four continents. The company opened in 1976 under the Price Club name in San Diego, California. The first Costco warehouse opened in 1983 in Seattle, Washington. In 1993, Costco and Price Club merged under the name PriceCostco. In January 1997, after the spin-off of most of its non-warehouse assets to Price Enterprises, Inc., the Company changed its name to Costco Companies, Inc. On August 30, 1999, the Company reincorporated from Delaware to
Washington and changed its name to Costco Wholesale Corporation. I am long-time member of Costco and appreciate their competitive pricing on a wide range of merchandise. Costco is also well known
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The data enables easier visualization of the proportions of separate accounts. Vertical analysis results in common-size financial statements that enable easy comparisons of financial data among companies and the industry sector. Overall, Costco’s vertical analysis is rather uneventful. No percentage moved further than 0.1% when comparing the years of 2013 & 2014. While uneventful, there are still a few areas I would like to analyze.
Merchandise Costs or Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)
The most significant percentage that stands out in the vertical analysis is the Merchandise Costs. The Merchandise Costs for Costco equals 89.3% of Net Sales. This number seemed high to me, so I searched through Costco competitors to check their merchandise costs percentage. Walmart is 75% and Target is 71%. From a consumer standpoint Costco is the place to shop since their markup is only 10.7%; less than half of their major competitors. This also shows Costco needs to sale over twice as much inventory as their competitors to earn the same amount of profit.
Interest
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Preopening expenses are related to new warehouses, new regional offices and other startup operations. In 2014 Costco opened or relocated 30 warehouses. This information correlates directly with the increase in Plants & Property which will be shown in the horizontal analysis.
Membership Fees
Also of note, without membership fees Costco would be in the red. Membership fees contribute 2.2% to Costco’s total revenue and without membership fees, Costco’s Net Income would be -0.3%. As a prior member (when I was in the states), I used to complain about the membership fee. Now, I see that it plays a vital role in Costco’s annual earnings.
Horizontal Analysis (Refer to Table 2)
Horizontal analysis, also known as trend analysis, shows the changes of the financial data over a period of time. The data is used to determine increases or decrease that have taken place. The data is expressed in dollar and percentage
Price: All the Costco products have a maximum mark up of 15%, keeping their prices competitive and almost always cheaper than their competitors which usually mark up at 25%. In the video the founder is seen comparing the price of one of their products (a toy truck) to Sam’s Club which was offering it at a lower price, and reconsidering their pricing for it. Their pricing does however force the consumer to buy the product in bulk- making them assume that they are getting the best possible price.
To begin with, some store history may be helpful. In 1914, Anna Albrecht opened a small store, Albrecht Discount, in the town of Essen, Germany. By 1948, her sons had taken over the business and had expanded it to four locations. In 1962, the store’s name changed from Albrecht Discount to Aldi. In 1976, Aldi makes their debut in the United States, opening a store in Southwestern Iowa. Today, in 2014, Aldi has 1,300 locations in the United States and 4,000 locations worldwide (Aldiuscareers.com). In 1962, Wal-Mart opens in Rogers, Arkansas. In 1983, Sam Walton opened the first Sam’s Club in Midwest City, Oklahoma. By 1988, Walton had opened the first Wal-Mart Supercenter in Washington, Missouri. Wal-Mart went global in 1991, opening a Sam’s Club in Mexico City, Mexico. Today, in 2014, Wal-Mart employs 2.2 million associates, serves 200 million customers, with 11,000 stores in twenty-seven countries (Corporate.walmart.com).
There are ten elements needed to survive a zombie apocalypse: a steady food supply, clean water, medicine, transportation, gas, a defense system, a sturdy shelter, a safe place to sleep within the shelter, weapons, and simple tools. Costco supplies all of these items. According an article in The Concordian, “If you asked 100 people where they would hide during a zombie apocalypse, 98 would say Costco. Costco is a vast market that sells basically anything you would need to live there permanently” (Menexis). Unfortunately that still leaves those two out of one hundred people that disagree. Those people say that Costco would be an unwise place to be during the apocalypse because of its sheer size. They state that the massive size of a Costco store is too big for a person or even small group of people to defend. While this argument has a logical line of thinking behind it, there are several factors that render this viewpoint invalid. Costco does not need a huge defense system because it is literally a huge warehouse. This means that Costco is essentially a huge concrete box with two ope...
In case A, the protagonist organizes her analysis into three parts: common-size financial statements, sustainable growth modeling, and benchmarking ratios. With these methods she is willing to review Costco operations and evaluate her investment. As we have learned how to calculate ratios with the financial statements, I think Costco is performing well compared to other competitors. Costco’s current ratio is 0.94 when Sears is at 2.32, Wal-Mart is at 2.7, and BJ’s is at 1.2. Costco is the only one whose current ratio is less than one.
Costco Wholesale Corporation is an international chain of membership warehouses operating on the concept that offering members lower prices will produce high sales volume and rapid inventory turnover (“Annual Report” 4). While Costco warehouses are designed to help reduce costs for small-to-mid-sized companies, memberships are also available for individuals (“Company Profile”). The two memberships offered by Costco include Business and Gold Sta...
Let start with Costco. Costco is Wholesale, Retail Corporation which operates an international chain of membership distribution centers that provides quality, brand name merchandise at noticeably more affordable rates than a conventional wholesale or retail sources. Costco 's warehouses display the largest and great product categories such as groceries, candy, appliances, television and media, automotive supplies, tires, toys, hardware, sporting goods, jewelry, watches, cameras, books, house wares, apparel, health and beauty aids, tobacco, furniture, office supplies and office Their ability to distribute the cut rate from their operating proficiencies in supply chain management and cash flow, permits them to offers items at discounted rate and a lower price than their competitors. For Costco the meaning of being the low-cost provider while also differentiating from the competitors is ambiguous at best. Costco’s CEO, Jim Sinegal, is certain that low priced, and the high value merchandises are exactly what is needed maintain and achieve a staying power in the industry.
Their boards are similar in member size (Walmart with 12 and Costco with 13). Both companies also advocate for a separate CEO and Chairman. They also have a similar number of meetings per year (Walmart 6 and Costco 5) (Spencer 4). Both companies also utilize executive sessions and Costco, like Walmart, has at least two executive sessions a year for independent directors (Costco 11). Finally Costco also has a code of ethics that applies to all employees, directors and executives. They
In the warehouse segment, Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club competes harshly with Costco. Costco has fewer warehouses but greater sales and revenues. Costco customers also shop at Costco more frequently than Sam’s Club customers and, on average, spend more each visit as well. Costco’s dominance may be the result of better innovation. Costco offers luxury items and was the first to sell fresh meat and produce, and gasoline. This is important because innovation is a key factor in assessing competitors in an industry.
At the end of 2012, Costco was a successful business; however there are some issues that they would need to deal with. These issues mainly arise from their previous successful ventures as a warehouse wholesale company. The first issue is that Costco has competitors that can actually be and are a threat to their success. Competition allows a company to improve itself and prove its prowess to its customers. However, when a competitor is able to provide the service at a much reduced cost, problems will arise. As for the second issue, it seems that Costco’s efforts to become an international company are moving slowly. They have not reached a point where their US and Canadian warehouses provide a backbone for their finances. Costco’s third issue is their expenses which include merchandising costs and preopening expenses have been increasing steadily and they need to balance this out to keep a positive net income.
Each competitor 's current ratio, quick ratio, and cash ratio are able to be found in this exhibit for the year ended in 2015. McDonald’s currently has a cash ratio of 0.76, a quick ratio of 1.20, and a 1.52. Starbucks has a cash ratio of 0.44, a quick ratio of 0.64, and a current ratio of 1.19. Finally, the Dunkin Brand Group Inc. has a cash ratio of 0.59, a quick ratio of 0.74, and a current ratio of 1.25. When looking at these ratios one is able to find that compared to its competitors, Starbucks is less liquid than McDonald 's and Dunkin Brand Group
This chart shows the net revenues and net earnings for the years of 2013-2009. As you observe the net revenues have been consistent in the 18,000 for at least 3 years in a row. This is a good trend for the Kraft Food Group. The trend for the net earnings is sporadic. The net earnings is also called the bottom line. This shows the amount of money that is left over after paying all of the expenses. Kraft Food Group needs to cut down on its expenses.
...nce 2008), [CITE: #7?] it adversely impacted Dollar General’s profitability given their higher purchasing costs and lower margins relative to other categories. Analysts estimated that Dollar General’s margins fell from 7.4% in 2008 to 7.1% of net sales in 2013. [2]
Nguyen, A. (2013, April 12). Costco: From Concept to $1 Billion in Three Years. Costco Wholesales Corp. . Retrieved April 6, 2014, from http://lindaperry.us/aec3033/AdNguyen2.pdf
The overall purpose of cost accounting is to advise top administration and the management team on the most suitable and cost effective methods and actions to employ based on cost, capability and efficiencies of a given product or service. It can be defined as the method where all the expenditures used during execution of business activities are gathered, categorized, examined and noted down (Horngren & Srikant, 2000). Once these numbers are gathered and recorded the information is used to determine a selling price and/or to identify possible investment opportunities. Although the principal aim or function of cost accounting is to help the business administration with their decision making and business planning process, the cost accounting data
Every company has some kind of Revenue and they all have costs that are associated with running the company. It is also true that if a company wants to increase their Revenue, their costs will increase too. It is every company’s goal to maximize revenue and either through Production or Services, and minimize cost. These things are easy to figure out, but actually identifying the production and figuring out how it will increase or decrease with change is very difficult.