Re:I Want to Live Like Costco People
by parliament32 on Thursday May 07, 2026 @07:01PM
(#48056223)
Agreed it's a weird comparison, but I'd argue SG&A needs to come out of gross margin too for a fair comparison. You need a warehouse/staff/utilities/etc to sell merchandise, you need nothing to sell a membership (whether it's worth anything is another question of course).
In their 2025 filing, gross margin on merchandise was $30B, but SG&A cost $25B (with membership fees at $5.3B).
Note that $2.6B of those membership fees will go back to members as membership rewards, which is interesting too.
Re:I Want to Live Like Costco People
by throw0101c on Thursday May 07, 2026 @05:28PM
(#48055318)
> The sentence you quoted from Wikipedia is nonsensical.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Feel free to click "edit" and fix it: that's kind of the whole point of Wikipedia. :)
Comparing one revenue line to total net profit is a category error: the numerator and denominator measure different things.
In FY2024, Costco did $249.6B in net sales and collected $4.8B in membership fees. Gross margin on product sales was about $25B. That $25B is 5x the membership fee revenue. So, even if you consider membership fees as being free money, membership fees are only 16% of gross margin.
Moreover, without those product sales, the membership would be worth zero and no one would buy it.