Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST) will raise its quarterly dividend by 7.7 percent to $0.70 per share in 2020. This marks the 16th consecutive year of dividend increases by the membership warehouses company. In 2019 the company hiked its dividend by 14.0 percent.

The next dividend will be payable May 15, 2020, to shareholders of record at the close of business on May 1, 2020. The new annualized dividend rate of $2.80 per share yields 0.9% at a stock price of $312.

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.