What's Going On With Costco Stock Thursday?

Costco Wholesale Corp COST shares are rising Thursday after the membership-based retailer reported sales results for June and announced a membership fee increase.

What Happened: Costco reported net sales of $24.48 billion for the retail month of June after the market close on Wednesday. Sales were up 7.4% on a year-over-year basis. Net sales for the first 44 weeks of the year were up 6.9% year-over-year at $210.55 billion.

Total comparable sales were up 5.3% in June, while e-commerce sales jumped 18.4%. Costco’s U.S. comparable sales were up 5.6% last month, Canada comparable sales were up 5.2% and Other International sales were up 4.3%.

Costco announced that it would increase its annual membership fees by $5, effective Sept. 1. Following the increase, U.S. and Canada Gold Star (individual), Business and Business add-on members will pay an annual fee of $65. Executive memberships are set to increase from $120 to $130. Costco said the fee increases will impact around 52 million memberships, half of which are Executive.

The company also announced that its board declared a quarterly cash dividend of $1.16 per share, payable on Aug. 9 to shareholders of record as of July 26.

See Also: PepsiCo’s Q2 Performance, Annual Outlook Underwhelms Investors, Stock Slides

Analyst Changes: Following the announcements, multiple analysts raised price targets on the stock.

• Baird analyst Peter Benedict maintained Costco with an Outperform and raised the price target from $850 to $975.

• BofA Securities analyst Robert Ohmes maintained Costco with a Buy rating and raised the price target from $874 to $962.

• Telsey Advisory Group analyst Joseph Feldman maintained Costco with an Outperform and raised the price target from $900 to $925.

COST Price Action: Costco shares were up 2.11% at $903 at the time of writing, according to Benzinga Pro.

Photo: Mike Mozart from Flickr.