Costco Wholesale (COST) Q4 FY2026 Earnings Call

Bottom line

The sleeper story is that retail media, called 'a significant milestone' just one quarter ago, vanished completely from this call, and when an analyst directly asked about agentic commerce, management pivoted entirely to AI search traffic and explicitly disclaimed the agentic commerce framing. The obvious headline is a beat (EPS $6.75, comps +9.4%) but core growth actually decelerated across nearly every underlying metric: membership fee growth, digitally enabled comp, and total paid member growth all slowed, and the 15-cent tariff refund benefit flatters the ex-item EPS growth rate of 12.3% versus 15% last quarter. The binding constraint right now isn't demand, it's monetization conversion: Costco has traffic (AI search up triple digits two quarters running) and engagement (record executive penetration) but still doesn't monetize digital advertising and has gone quiet on its one clear monetization lever in retail media. Gary's own words on agentic commerce say it best: 'I don't know if I would say agentic commerce at the moment', a tell that visibility into next-gen digital monetization is worse than the AI-search headline suggests. My view changes if next quarter brings back a quantified retail media revenue figure or a specific agentic commerce roadmap; until then, treat the digital growth story as stalled narrative, not an accelerating binder.

The 30-second version

Retail media went silent and nobody on the call noticed
Beat was real but partly manufactured by a one-time tariff check, and comps actually decelerated into the print
Membership engine quietly losing horsepower right as the fee-increase tailwind disappears

What changed this quarter

Metric	Q3'26	Q4'26	Change
Net Sales	$69.2B, +11.6% YoY	$93.87B, +11.2% YoY	Growth rate decelerated 40bps
EPS (diluted)	$4.93, +15% YoY	$6.75; ex-tariff item +12.4% YoY	Headline beat but core growth decelerated ~260bps and includes a 15c non-recurring item
Net Income	$2.19B	$2.998B reported, $2.61B/+12.3% ex-item	Core growth decelerated from 15% to 12.3%
Comp Sales (total)	+9.8%	+9.4%	-40bps deceleration
Comp Sales ex-gas/FX	+6.6%	+6.7%	Flat, holding the 6-7% band for a year
Digitally Enabled Comp Sales	+21.5%	+19.5%	-200bps deceleration
Membership Fee Income Growth	+10.7%	+7.3%	-340bps, with fee-increase tailwind now fully lapped
Executive Member Growth	+9.6% to 41.2M	+9.4% to 42.3M	Roughly flat
Total Paid Member Growth	+4.1% to 82.9M	+3.8% to 84.1M	Continued multi-quarter deceleration
Worldwide Renewal Rate	89.7%, unchanged QoQ	89.8%, +10bps QoQ	Second straight quarter of improvement

Accountability tracked

5 new promises made5 narrative shifts flagged3 prior promises scored

Inside the full report

The complete write-up covers the full promise ledger with kept/missed calls, disclosure-quality scoring, the metrics-vanished check, verification items, and the questions to ask next quarter.

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Costco Wholesale (COST)

The 30-second version

What changed this quarter

Accountability tracked

Follow what management promises next