Costco Wholesale Shares Quietly Gained 50% in 2021
Shares of warehouse retailer Costco Wholesale (NASDAQ: COST) rose 50.7% last year, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. This wasn't a dramatic series of sudden surges but a subtle, general uptrend that just didn't want to stop. Costco is the kind of stock you can just buy, stick under your pillow, and never lose a minute of sleep over. If you didn't already know, 2021 served as a perfect illustration of Costco's worry-free stability.
No, really. Costco's largest single-day pop last year was a 6.6% boost on Dec. 10 on the heels of an impressive first-quarter report. The retailer posted earnings of $2.98 per share on $50.4 billion in top-line sales, exceeding Wall Street's consensus estimates by 13% and 17%, respectively. Many stocks would have scored a double-digit price increase on a report like that, but Costco proved its consistent stability with a smaller gain.
That was arguably not even the strongest earnings surprise of the year. A bottom-line result 17% above the analyst consensus on a 4% revenue outperformance for the third quarter of fiscal 2021 gave Costco's stock a 2.4% haircut the next day. At the same time, analysts reacted to the same news with a flurry of boosted price targets. The market just doesn't make sense sometimes.
Source Fool.com
