Costco holds its quarterly dividend at $1.47 a share, 13.08% above a year earlier

Costco Wholesale Corporation's board declared a quarterly cash dividend of $1.47 a share on October 14, 2026, payable November 13 to shareholders of record at the close of business on October 30. The rate is unchanged from the $1.47 the company declared in July and 13.08% above the $1.30 per share declared a year earlier.

The declaration arrived in a filing whose only business item was the dividend itself. Costco said the board "has declared a quarterly cash dividend on Costco common stock of $1.47 per share." The three-paragraph release adds the payment date, the record date and a count of the company's warehouses. It carries no sales, earnings, membership-income, margin or buyback data, and nothing about the dividend's level after November.

October's rate is not a new high for the year. Costco set the same $1.47 quarterly rate on July 8, 2026, payable August 7, 2026, to holders of record on July 24, 2026. The step-up is older than this week's declaration: the 13.08% year-over-year figure compares October's rate with the $1.30 a share declared on October 15, 2025, payable November 14, 2025.

The rate already stood at $1.47 before this filing

The cleanest measure of the increase is the comparison between the two October declarations: $1.30 a year ago against $1.47 now, a rise of 13.08%. October against July shows no change at all, which places the raise between the October 2025 and July 2026 declarations. The desk verified the July rate and the October 2025 rate directly from the company's exhibits and did not capture the declarations in between, so the step-up cannot be dated more precisely than that.

What the July release carried and this one does not

When the board declared the same rate in July, the announcement doubled as a monthly sales report. That release put net sales for the retail month of June at $29.24 billion, an increase of 10.6% from $26.44 billion a year earlier. It also reported net sales of $250.43 billion for the first 44 weeks of the fiscal year, up 10.1%. The October 14 filing carries no equivalent operating data.

The payout calendar, the annual rate and the store base

Shareholders of record at the close of business on October 30, 2026, collect the dividend on November 13, 2026. Four payments at the declared $1.47 rate would total $5.88 a share over a year, arithmetic on the current rate rather than company guidance, because the board declares each quarter separately. The release also states Costco operates 939 warehouses, including 647 in the United States and Puerto Rico, which is 25 more warehouses than the 914 it reported with the October 2025 declaration.

What the declaration leaves open

The filing says nothing about how earnings or cash flow cover the payout, and the captured documents contain no consensus estimate for the quarter and no market reaction. No share price was captured, so no dividend yield can be computed here. The release does not mention a special dividend, a buyback authorization or any change to the payment schedule. Those absences are reported as absences: this article does not fill them with assumptions, and the board's next quarterly declaration is the point at which the rate could change.