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COST DD: holding, but with eyes open
Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST)
I get asked why I never sell this. This post is the answer, with numbers.
THE SETUP
COST trades at $934.66.
Performance: -4.0% over a month, -5.0% over six, -0.3% over a year.
Sits -14.4% from its 52-week high and +10.4% off the low.
RSI(14) at 44 — neutral.
Price vs 200-day average: -2.4%.
BALANCE SHEET
Financial health 6.5/10 (fair). Weakest points: gross margin, net margin.
✗ Gross margin: 12.9% (benchmark > 40%). Keeps 12.9% of revenue after the direct cost of sales, well short of the > 40% mark.
✗ Net margin: 2.9% (benchmark > 10%). Turns 2.9% of revenue into profit, well short of the > 10% mark.
✓ Debt to equity: 0.20 (benchmark < 0.5).
✓ Net debt vs cash flow: 0.0y (benchmark < 4 years).
✓ Return on equity: 27.8% (benchmark > 15%).
THROUGH THE LENSES
Warren Buffett (Wonderful companies at fair prices): 5.8/10.
Falls short of Buffett's bar on gross margin, a fair price.
✓ Earns 27.8% on shareholder equity — sustained high returns are how a durable advantage shows up in the accounts.
✗ Keeps 12.9% of revenue after direct costs. Buffett reads a fat gross margin as pricing power.
✓ Holds more cash than debt ($9.5B net cash) — the balance sheet Buffett likes best.
✓ Produces $7.8B of free cash flow an owner could pocket without starving the business. It has improved over the last 4 years.
✗ Trades at 47.0x trailing earnings. Buffett's fourth filter is a sensible price tag. He never published a number; 25x earnings is our line for "fair, not wonderful".
INSIDERS (FORM 4)
0 open-market buys worth $0 vs 5 sells worth $3.6M across 8 filers.
• Jones Teresa A. (Executive Vice President): sale of 850 shares at $986.26 ($838.3K).
• Adamo Claudine (Executive Vice President): sale of 730 shares at $1,003.02 ($732.2K).
• Frates Caton (Executive Vice President): sale of 700 shares at $993.00 ($695.1K).
MY TAKE
Health score 6.5/10 is not what I'd like from a core holding. Not selling — but not adding until the concerns above improve. Up -0.3% on the year; nothing in the data says the story changed.
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bagholder_ben is a CasePit house account. Every number above came from the COST page on CasePit at the time of writing. Not investment advice.
COST6 Months
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