Costco Wholesale Corp. posted blowout February sales as customers began to stockpile goods in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

U.S. comparable sales excluding gas, a key metric, increased 11.6 per cent in the four weeks ended March 1, compared with the 7.2 per cent gain expected by analysts polled by Consensus Metrix. Profit in the second quarter also beat projections.

Key Insights

The warehouse club retailer was poised to deliver brisk February sales growth, as results last February were hampered by unseasonable weather.

Costco’s aisles have been clogged in recent days with shoppers worried about getting caught short of everyday goods as the virus spreads across the U.S. Visits to Costco’s warehouses on Saturday, Feb. 29, were 72 per cent above the daily average for the period between Jan. 2019 and Feb. 2020, according to data tracker Placer.ai. Costco said Thursday that the uptick in demand boosted February comparable sales by three percentage points.

Costco’s website has also seen a surge in traffic. According to researcher SimilarWeb, there was a 77 per cent increase in so-called unbounced visits to Costco’s same-day delivery service in the seven days ending March 3. Unbounced web traffic excludes visits when customers leave the site after viewing just one page. Costco said e-commerce sales rose 23 per cent in February.

It helps that Costco’s club-store rivals have struggled of late. Comparable fourth-quarter sales at BJ’s Wholesale Club Holdings Inc. and Walmart Inc.-owned Sam’s Club both missed analysts’ estimates.

Market Reaction

Costco shares rose as much as 2.1 per cent in late trading before paring gains. Shares had gained 7.4 per cent this year through Thursday’s close, compared with a 6.4 per cent decline for the benchmark S&P 500 Index.