Costco Wholesale (COST) will raise its quarterly dividend by 14.5 percent to $0.355 per share in 2014. This follows last year's dividend hike from 27.5 cents to 31 cents per share quarterly.

Costco Wholesale Corporation operates membership warehouses, offering its members low prices on a limited selection of nationally branded and private-label products. The company has operations in the United States and Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Australia, Spain, and Iceland and France. Costco also operates e-commerce sites in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Korea, and Taiwan. Costco Wholesale Corporation began operations in 1983 in Seattle, Washington. In October 1993, Costco merged with The Price Company, which had pioneered the membership warehouse concept in 1976, to form Price/Costco, inc., a Delaware corporation. In 1997 the company changed its name to Costco Companies, Inc. and in 1999, the company changed its name to Costco Wholesale Corporation.