Where Will Costco Stock Be in 3 Years?
Key Takeaways
Wondering if now is the time to buy Costco? Spoiler alert -- it's very rarely a bad idea to hold this stock for a few years.
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July 10, 2025
07:53 AM
The Motley Fool
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Wondering if now is the time to buy Costco
Spoiler alert -- it's very rarely a bad idea to hold this stock for a few years
Warehouse retailer Costco Wholesale (COST -1. 18%) has been a fairly cyclical stock in the past
The stock chart often stays close to the S&P 500 (^GSPC 0. 27%) index for a few years, ed by a couple of years with market-crushing returns
Taken together, this pattern has resulted in wealth-building holder returns over the long haul
Where is Costco positioned in this cycle right now, and where should the stock go in the next three years
Costco keeps running circles around the S&P 500 First, let me state the obvious
Nobody knows exactly what the next three years will look
There could be another pandemic around the next corner, or perhaps a new nology that makes the artificial intelligence and quantum computing booms look small
Historians can only look backward, and unpredictable events can unravel any forward-looking prediction I make -- bullish or bearish
That being said, Costco has a long history of outperforming the market in a wide variety of economic situations
I compared the stock's total return to the S&P 500 (^GSPC 0. 27%) index over a handful of three-year periods
COST Total Return Level data by YCharts Starting with a 109% 3-year Costco return against a 67% gain in the market index as of July 7, 2025, all of my sample comparisons made Costco look good
That includes the inflation-burdened span from the end of 2022 to Dec 31, 2024
The COVID-19 crisis, starting from January 2020, showed a 63% Costco gain in three years while the S&P 500 rose 25%
There was a close call from 2015 to 2018, with Costco lagging behind the market for most of that period -- but the warehouse retailer still came back to a 35% vs. 20% victory in a period characterized by the Brexit and a slower pace of Chinese economic growth
I kept going with a few more samples, but the results were incredibly consistent
I'm sure there are counterexamples out there, especially if you look at spans based on mid-year dates instead of full calendar years, but the pattern is
Costco rarely underperforms the S&P 500 in any given three-year period
Image source: Getty Images
How Costco's secret sauce keeps working Past performance should never be seen as a guarantee of upcoming results
Always in motion, the future is
Even so, Costco keeps ving that the company can der strong results in different
There are many reasons for Costco's resilience
For example: Low prices make Costco a shopping destination when budgets are tight
The membership model lets Costco sell goods with very low gross fit margins, leaving the heavy bottom-line lifting to those annual fees
That revenue is pretty much pure fit, with very predictable annual and quarterly volumes
The Kirkland store brand is more than just another cost-cutting supply chain adjustment
Costco puts in a lot of work to ensure that the Kirkland ducts are competitive with the best name-brand alternatives, and you won't see this brand in where the re and development team can't check all the right boxes
For example, co-founder Jim Sinegal turned down the idea of selling Costco-branded gas 8 times over several years
Now, the gas pumps account for a substantial portion of Costco's total sales
That's just a handful of stabilizing qualities
Overall, Costco is an incredibly well-run that can roll with lots of different punches
And that's why the stock keeps outperforming even the high-quality names of the S&P 500
Why betting against Costco is usually a bad idea Based on Costco's history of stellar and predictable returns, I'm confident that the stock should keep up with the market over the next three years as well
The model is both flexible and robust -- a rare combination that spells success under most circumstances
On the downside, Costco's top-notch is no secret
You've seen the stock chart already, and s are changing hands at the lofty valuation of 56 times earnings
I keep kicking myself for not picking up a few Costco s years ago, when they were more affordable
Again, the stock price more than doubled since July 2022
Chances are, there'll be more kicking to do in 2028 if I don't grab some Costco stock this summer
Truly great companies can be worth a premium price tag, and Costco belongs in this category
Anders Bylund has no position in any of the stocks mentioned
The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Costco Wholesale
The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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