- The board of directors at Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ: COST) announced this week that it is going to pay its shareholders a special dividend of $10 per share. These are the details.
The board of directors at Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ: COST) announced this week that it is going to pay its shareholders a special dividend of $10 per share. The $4.4 billion payout is going to be made to shareholders of record as of December 2. And this is the fourth special dividend issued by the Costco board in the past 8 years. The most recent special dividend paid by Costco happened in April 2017.
“Our strong balance sheet allows us to pay this dividend, while preserving financial and operational flexibility to continue to grow our business globally,” said Costco CFO Richard Galanti in a statement.
On September 24, Costco had reported that its fourth-quarter profit increased 25% year-over-year to $1.39 billion ($3.13 per share). And sales at stores open at least 12 months increased by 14%. This was nearly double the previous quarter when comparable sales had increased by 7.8%. Plus Costco’s comparable online sales increased by over 91% for the month of October. As of August 30, Costco reported 105.5 million membership cardholders, which was an increase of 7% from the fiscal year 2019.
Costco had previously announced a regular quarterly cash dividend of $0.70 per share on October 14. And the special $10 dividend represents a 2.6% return on the closing share price of $379.79 on Monday.
