Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST) will hike its quarterly dividend by 12.9 percent to 79 cents per share in 2021. Last year the membership warehouse giant also paid a special cash dividend of $10.00 per share and raised its quarterly dividend by 7.7 percent to $0.70 per share. This 2021 dividend increase marks 17 straight years of dividend increases by Costco.

The next dividend is payable May 14, 2021, to shareholders of record at the close of business on April 30, 2021. The new annual dividend rate of $3.16 for Costco yields 0.9% at a stock price of $363.

If this new dividend hike is included Costco's estimated regular annual dividend payment to shareholders jumps from $1.24 billion to $1.4 billion. The average dividend growth rate based on the last five years is 11.9 percent (annually) for Costco Wholesale.

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.