Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST) will raise its quarterly dividend by 14.0 percent to $0.65 per share in the second quarter of 2019. This marks the 15th consecutive year of dividend increases and matches last year's dividend hike from 50 cents to 57 cents.
The next dividend is payable May 24, 2019, to shareholders of record at the close of business on May 10, 2019. The new annualized dividend rate of $2.60 per share yields 1.1% at a stock price of $243.82.
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.