Same-store sales jump 5% for Costco in Q1

Costco Wholesale's treasure hunt experience, value-priced bulk groceries and popular Kirkland Signature store brand line continued to attract scores of shoppers in its first quarter, despite a website crash that dented online sales.

Issaquah, Wash.-based Costco reported net sales of $13.62 billion for the month of November, the four weeks ended Dec. 1, for an increase of 6.7% from $12.77 billion last year. For the 12-week first quarter ended Nov. 24, the company reported net sales of $36.24 billion, an increase of 5.6% from $34.31 billion last year.

Same-store sales at Costco jumped 5% in the first quarter. 

The company said that e-commerce sales in November were negatively impacted by an estimated 20 percentage points, primarily due to Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Cyber Monday occurring a week later this year versus last year and, to a lesser extent, website performance issues experienced on the company’s U.S. and Canadian e-commerce websites on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. Total and same-store sales were negatively impacted by about 1.5%.

According to Business Insider, Costco's website was down for at least 16.5 hours during the holiday weekend. This means that in that time period, Costco could have missed out on as much as $10.9 million worth of sales, the publication noted. 

Costco operates 785 warehouses worldwide, including 535 in the United States and Puerto Rico.