Costco’s published build plan for fiscal 2027 is 33 warehouse openings, of which five are relocations, which nets out to 28 new buildings by the time the year closes on 29 August 2027. The signals assembled below point to that number landing short: the base case here is 24–26 net new warehouses, taking the worldwide count to roughly 963–965 rather than the 967 the plan implies. The more useful call is on timing, because the pattern suggests a downward revision appears on the Q2 or Q3 fiscal 2027 earnings call, in March or late May 2027, rather than as a surprise at the year-end count. None of this is a demand problem, and that is precisely what makes it interesting.
In short
- The prediction: Costco likely ends fiscal 2027 with fewer than 967 warehouses worldwide, base case 963–965, which is 24–26 net new against a stated plan of 28.
- The timeframe: resolved by the fiscal 2027 annual report, expected October 2027, with an earlier tell on the Q2 call around early March 2027 and the Q3 call in late May 2027.
- Signal 1: the fiscal 2027 plan of 33 openings is 28 net new, and Costco has not posted 28 or more net new buildings in any year of the last decade except fiscal 2024.
- Signal 2: the fiscal 2026 plan was marked down twice on the record, from 30 net new to 28 to 26, and then delivered 25.
- Signal 3: the quiet shutdown of Costco Next in early September 2026 signals that the digital share of the record $7.5bn capital budget is going into first-party app, depot and delivery capacity rather than marketplace breadth.
Why this matters now
Costco closed fiscal 2026 on 30 August 2026 with net sales of $297.2bn, up 10.1%, and a total company comparable sales number of 8.4%. The fourth quarter was stronger still at $93.9bn and a 9.4% comp, helped by a non-recurring benefit of $0.15 per diluted share from tariff refunds. Full-year net income reached $9.226bn, or $20.76 per diluted share. On any trading screen this is a company with no visible problem.
The warehouse count is where the tension sits. Costco operated 939 warehouses at the fiscal 2026 close, against 914 a year earlier and 890 the year before that. Unit growth is therefore running at roughly 2.7%, contributing somewhere under three points of the ten points of top-line growth. The rest is comp, and comp at this level is not a renewable resource.
That is the real stake in the opening count. Chief financial officer Gary Millerchip framed the build explicitly as a long-duration commitment on the September call, saying the company has “a path for the next 5 to 10 years of targeting that 30 new warehouses a year, which is why we continue to increase the capital investment towards that goal.” The capital is being raised against the target, not against last year’s delivery. Our preview of the September quarter flagged the membership and comp bar; the build rate is the part the market has largely waved through.
A three-building shortfall is financially trivial, worth a fraction of a point of unit growth. It matters because it is the leading indicator on whether the 30-per-year path is a plan or an aspiration. Four consecutive years of landing two to five buildings short would reprice the terminal store count, and the terminal store count is most of the equity story.
Signal 1: the fiscal 2027 plan is 28 net new, not 33
Most of the coverage that followed the late-September announcements settled on a headline number of 33. That figure is the gross opening count. Chief executive Ron Vachris was precise on the call: “Our current plan is to open another 33 warehouses in fiscal year 2027, of which five are relocations, as we build towards our goal of opening 30 net new warehouses per year.”
Subtract the relocations and the plan is 28 net new buildings, not 33 and not 30. The 30 is the destination, and fiscal 2027 is explicitly described as building towards it. This distinction matters because relocations consume construction management, capital and opening-crew capacity without adding a single unit to the count that drives revenue growth.
Set 28 against the record. Costco has added between 13 and 29 net new warehouses in each of the last ten fiscal years, and has cleared 28 exactly once.
| Fiscal year | Warehouses at year end | Net new |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 741 | +26 |
| 2018 | 762 | +21 |
| 2019 | 782 | +20 |
| 2020 | 795 | +13 |
| 2021 | 815 | +20 |
| 2022 | 838 | +23 |
| 2023 | 861 | +23 |
| 2024 | 890 | +29 |
| 2025 | 914 | +24 |
| 2026 | 939 | +25 |
The ten-year mean is 22.4 net new per year and the five-year mean is 24.8. The fiscal 2027 plan asks for 28, which would be the second-best year in a decade and roughly 13% above the recent run rate. Hitting it is possible; the base rate says it is not the way to bet.
The geographic mix inside the plan is also thinner than the headline suggests. Vachris named “four buildings in Europe, five in Canada and one in Mexico” for fiscal 2027, with “a strong pipeline of new warehouses planned for Asia, Australia and other international markets in fiscal year 2028.” Ten named international buildings out of 33 openings leaves the United States carrying roughly two thirds of the program, which is consistent with fiscal 2026, when 18 of the 25 net new buildings were domestic.
Signal 2: the fiscal 2026 plan was marked down twice before it missed
The second signal is the cleanest, because it is a complete and fully documented cycle from plan to outcome. The relevant point is not that Costco missed, but the shape of how it missed and the dates at which it told the market.
On 25 September 2025, Vachris set the fiscal 2026 plan: “We plan to open another 35 warehouses in fiscal year 2026, of which five are relocations.” That is 30 net new. By the Q2 call on 5 March 2026 the number had moved, and the reason was named: “While delays with a couple of our buildings in Spain resulted in us revising our planned net new openings for fiscal year 2026 down to 28, we continue to plan for 30-plus net openings per year in future years.”
Three months later the plan moved again. On the Q3 call of 28 May 2026 the company said it “currently expect[s] to have 26 net new openings in fiscal year 2026, down two buildings from the prior call, with those two buildings now set to open in fiscal year 2027.” The year finished at 25 net new, from 28 gross openings including three relocations.
| Date | Event | Stated fiscal 2026 net new | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Sep 2025 | Q4 FY2025 call, plan set | 30 | baseline |
| 5 Mar 2026 | Q2 FY2026 call, Spain delays named | 28 | −2 |
| 28 May 2026 | Q3 FY2026 call, two buildings pushed to FY2027 | 26 | −2 |
| 24 Sep 2026 | Q4 FY2026 call, actual result | 25 | −1 |
Two features of that table carry forward. First, the full shortfall was 5 buildings, or 17% of the original plan, and every single revision moved in the same direction. Second, the markdowns clustered in the middle two quarters, which is when a building that has not broken ground can still be re-dated without embarrassment.
A third feature sits underneath the markdown chain: the program is heavily back-loaded. Of the 28 warehouses Costco opened in fiscal 2026, 12 opened in the fourth quarter alone, including a relocation in Taiwan, ten new US buildings and the company’s 43rd warehouse in Mexico. When 43% of a year’s openings land in the final sixteen weeks, a single construction or inspection delay in the spring converts directly into a missed annual number.
That back-loading also explains why the revisions arrive when they do. A building scheduled for August can be confidently reaffirmed in December and is only honestly re-dated in March or May, once the critical path is visible. The pattern suggests the fiscal 2027 plan will look intact through the December 2026 call regardless of how it is actually tracking.
The capital line behaved very differently from the opening line. Costco told the market at the Q3 call that it estimated “CapEx for the full year will be approximately $6.5 billion,” and the year landed at $6.4bn, a miss of under 2%. Openings missed the original plan by 17% while capital landed within rounding of its own estimate. That asymmetry is the heart of this forecast, and it is visible in the audited numbers filed with the fiscal 2026 annual report.
Capital spending has grown from $4.71bn in fiscal 2024 to $5.50bn in fiscal 2025 to $6.43bn in fiscal 2026, and is guided to roughly $7.5bn in fiscal 2027. Millerchip indicated that the rate of capital growth is expected to slow after fiscal 2027, following three years of outsized increases that began in fiscal 2025. Money is not what is late. A similar divergence between announced capital intent and delivered physical capacity sits behind our read on Walmart’s capex peak slipping again, though the mechanism there is different.
Signal 3: Costco is subtracting digital surface area, not adding it
In the first days of September 2026 the Costco Next page began telling members that “access to Costco Next storefronts is no longer available.” There was no press release and no advance notice. Roughly 60 partner brands, which had used the curated storefront to reach Costco members at member pricing while fulfilling orders themselves, lost the channel overnight.
Millerchip addressed it on 24 September, three weeks after the fact: “As our digital capabilities mature, we believe that integrating the most popular items and brands from Costco Next more seamlessly into the Costco App and website provides a better member experience and will increase sales. This change is not material to our results.” The second sentence is the operative one. A program that ran for most of a decade was wound down without a financial footnote.
Read alongside the build plan, this is a coherent allocation decision rather than a retreat. Digitally enabled sales, which Costco defines to include third-party delivery, exceeded $33bn in fiscal 2026 and grew more than 20%. The growth is coming from first-party assortment and from delivery partnerships: the Uber Eats arrangement expanded from 17 states to the entire United States, the DoorDash partnership was extended to the US, and Costco said average delivery times across its three platforms run under an hour.
That is the opposite of what the rest of large US retail is doing. Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Kroger have all been widening third-party seller surface area, because marketplace SKUs are the cheapest way to add assortment without adding working capital. Costco is deliberately narrowing to a first-party catalogue of roughly four thousand items and renting the last mile instead of owning it, a logic we traced when arguing that Costco UK likely lands on a delivery aggregator rather than building its own fleet.
The signal this carries for the build forecast is about where the $7.5bn goes. Depot network expansion, remodels of high-volume buildings and digital member experience were all named as capital priorities alongside new warehouses. A capital budget that is up 17% while the opening plan is up 12% has slack in it, and the slack is not earmarked for buildings.
What the pattern suggests
Three independent signals, three different source types, one direction of travel.
| Signal | Date | Source type | What it implies |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2027 plan of 33 openings, five relocations, 28 net new, ~$7.5bn capex | 24–25 Sep 2026 | Earnings call and upcoming-location disclosures | Plan sits ~13% above the five-year delivery run rate |
| FY2026 markdown chain: 30 to 28 to 26, delivered 25, while capex landed within 2% of estimate | Sep 2025 to Sep 2026 | Four consecutive earnings calls plus the annual report | Entitlement and construction timing bind before capital does |
| Costco Next wound down with no notice; delivery partnerships widened instead | 1–24 Sep 2026 | Site change plus CFO commentary | Digital budget routed to first-party, depots and last mile, not assortment breadth |
The synthesis is that Costco’s binding constraint is not capital, demand or ambition. It is the supply of entitled, buildable, correctly located sites, and that constraint does not respond to a larger budget on a one-year cycle. The annual report makes the point structurally: Costco owns 536 of its 647 US and Puerto Rico warehouses and 123 of its 177 other-international buildings. This is a company that buys land and builds on it, which means it sits inside local planning processes rather than inside a leasing market.
The capital intensity per building tells the same story from the other side. Costco spent roughly $162m of capex per net new warehouse in fiscal 2024, $229m in fiscal 2025 and $257m in fiscal 2026, and the fiscal 2027 guide implies about $268m. Construction cost inflation explains part of a 59% rise over two years, but not most of it. The rest is depot network, remodels of high-volume buildings and digital investment, which is to say that a growing share of a growing capital budget is not buying new warehouses at all.
Spain was the illustration in fiscal 2026. The fiscal 2027 risk is better distributed, with Canada carrying five of the ten named international buildings, but the United States still carries roughly two thirds of the program and US entitlement timelines have not become faster.
| Scenario | FY2027 net new | Warehouses at 29 Aug 2027 | Rough likelihood | What would have to be true |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plan met or beaten | 28–30 | 967–969 | ~25% | The two buildings carried over from FY2026 open early and no US site slips |
| Base case: modest shortfall | 24–26 | 963–965 | ~50% | One markdown at Q2 or Q3, two or three buildings re-dated into FY2028 |
| Larger shortfall | 20–23 | 959–962 | ~20% | A repeat of a Spain-style multi-building international delay |
| Metric flattered by relocation deferral | 29+ reported | 968+ | ~5% | Planned relocations slip while new builds hold, lifting net new mechanically |
The checkpoint schedule is as useful as the number. Costco revised the fiscal 2026 plan at Q2 and again at Q3, which maps to early March 2027 and late May 2027 for the current year. A plan still standing at 28 net new after the May 2027 call would be genuine evidence against this forecast.
Wider context: the comp engine is doing the heavy lifting
Costco’s growth arithmetic in fiscal 2026 was roughly 2.7 points of unit growth and the balance from comparable sales, which ran 8.2% in the US, 7.8% in Canada and 9.8% in other international markets. Membership fee revenue of $5,907m flowed from 84.1m paid members and 150.4m cardholders, with renewal at 92.3% in the US and Canada and 89.8% worldwide. Those renewal rates are close to a practical ceiling.
When renewal is maxed and comp is running near 8%, the only lever with multi-year duration is the number of buildings. This is why the opening count deserves more scrutiny than it usually receives in a quarter where everything else looks excellent. The membership economics that make each new building work are well understood and remarkably durable, as our explainer on why shoppers pay for the right to shop sets out.
There is also a competitive asymmetry worth naming. Costco’s rivals in the club channel operate smaller footprints and can lease into existing boxes, while Costco’s format requires large parcels with heavy parking and fuel-station entitlements. The scarcity is specific to the format, not to the sector.
Investors should be careful not to read a slipped opening as a demand signal. In fiscal 2026 the buildings that slipped were in Spain, a market where the evidence points to Costco wanting to open faster than the permitting environment allowed. Delay caused by excess appetite looks identical in the count to delay caused by weak appetite, and the two have opposite implications.
Implications for brands, developers and investors
For the roughly 60 brands that lost Costco Next, the practical consequence is that the only remaining route to Costco’s membership base runs through first-party buying. That is a materially higher bar: a catalogue of around four thousand items, pallet-level volume commitments and Kirkland Signature competing for the same shelf. Brands that treated Costco Next as a low-commitment test channel no longer have a low-commitment option.
For developers and landowners, the fiscal 2027 and fiscal 2028 pipeline is the demand signal, and it points to Canada, Europe and, from fiscal 2028, Asia and Australia. The named FY2027 international program is modest, which suggests site acquisition rather than construction is where the pipeline is currently thin.
For the club channel more broadly, a Costco that adds 25 buildings a year rather than 30 leaves marginally more oxygen in contested metros than its stated plan implies. That is a thin edge and not a strategy, but operators planning site acquisition against Costco’s published pipeline should discount it by the historical delivery rate rather than taking the opening list at face value.
For investors, the recommendation implicit in this analysis is to watch the Q2 and Q3 fiscal 2027 calls rather than the year-end count, because that is where the information arrives. A plan that holds at 28 through late May 2027 is a genuine change in Costco’s delivery capability. A markdown to 26 in March 2027 would be a continuation of the existing pattern and should not be treated as news.
For the margin story, the mechanics are unchanged. Costco’s practice is to route windfalls into price rather than into the P&L, as it did when it pushed $184m of tariff refunds into produce and meat prices, and a few deferred buildings do not alter that. If anything, a year in which capital spend lands on plan while openings run light produces a modest working-capital benefit rather than a cost.
Caveats: what could go wrong with this call
The strongest argument against this forecast is that fiscal 2027 starts with inventory. Two buildings that were scheduled for fiscal 2026 were explicitly pushed into fiscal 2027 and were presumably well advanced when they slipped. A plan that begins with two near-complete sites has a materially better hit rate than one starting from raw land.
The second counter-signal is the geographic mix. Spain was the named cause of the fiscal 2026 markdown, and the fiscal 2027 international program leans on Canada, where Costco has operated since 1985 and understands the entitlement process intimately. Deferring the Asia and Australia wave to fiscal 2028 reads as deliberate sequencing, and it removes the category of risk that caused last year’s miss.
Third, the precedent is not unanimous. Costco added 29 net new warehouses in fiscal 2024, so 28 is within demonstrated capability rather than beyond it. One year of proof does not make a run rate, but it does mean the plan is not arithmetically unreasonable.
Fourth, and most awkward for anyone forecasting this metric, net new is partly a reporting artefact. The plan contains five relocations, and a relocation that slips while the new builds hold would raise reported net new without any change in construction pace. A reader checking this prediction in October 2027 should look at gross openings and the relocation count, not only at the headline difference between 939 and whatever the new number is.
Fifth, the capital leg of the prediction could fail in the other direction. Depot network and remodel spending is lumpy, and an acceleration there could carry fiscal 2027 capex above $7.6bn even with light openings. That would not falsify the opening call, but it would weaken the claim that capital and buildings move together.
Finally, the Costco Next reading could be wrong. If the “integrating the most popular items and brands” language turns into a structured vendor-direct program with seller-style onboarding, that would be a marketplace by another name, and the tertiary prediction here would fail even if nothing is ever branded as a marketplace.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly is being predicted, and when can it be checked?
That Costco ends fiscal 2027 with fewer than 967 warehouses worldwide, base case 963–965 against a plan implying 967. The fiscal year ends 29 August 2027 and the count is disclosed on the Q4 call in late September 2027 and in the annual report that follows in October 2027. Earlier evidence should appear on the Q2 call around early March 2027 and the Q3 call in late May 2027.
Is 33 openings or 28 net new the right number to track?
Both, and the distinction is the point. The 33 figure is gross openings including five relocations, while 28 is the net addition to the warehouse count. Revenue growth responds to the net figure, so that is the one this prediction is framed against.
Why not simply read a missed opening as weak demand?
Because the evidence points the other way. Comparable sales ran 8.4% for the company in fiscal 2026 and renewal rates are near their practical ceiling, so the constraint sits on the supply side of real estate. The fiscal 2026 delays were attributed to buildings in Spain, a market Costco has said it wants to grow faster than permitting allows.
Could Costco simply spend its way past the problem?
The fiscal 2026 record suggests not, at least not inside one year. Capital spending landed within 2% of the company’s own Q3 estimate while openings came in 17% below the original plan. Entitlement, construction and local approval timelines do not compress in response to a larger budget.
What is the strongest argument that this prediction is wrong?
That fiscal 2027 inherits two buildings already pushed out of fiscal 2026, which were presumably close to complete. Combined with an international mix weighted toward Canada rather than newer European markets, that materially improves the odds of the plan holding. If the plan survives the May 2027 call unrevised, this forecast should be considered broken.
Does the Costco Next shutdown mean Costco is retreating from e-commerce?
The evidence suggests reallocation rather than retreat. Digitally enabled sales exceeded $33bn in fiscal 2026 and grew more than 20%, while the Uber Eats partnership expanded from 17 states to the entire US and the DoorDash partnership was extended to the US. What Costco removed was third-party assortment breadth, not digital capability.
Why is Costco narrowing assortment when rivals are widening theirs?
The club model depends on a deliberately short catalogue, in Costco’s case roughly four thousand items, because scarcity of choice is what produces the pallet volumes behind its buying power. A marketplace with long-tail assortment would undermine the mechanism that makes the price proposition work. The pattern suggests Costco views that trade as unattractive, which is a defensible position rather than an oversight.
How much does a three-building shortfall actually cost?
Very little in the year it happens, on the order of a few tenths of a point of unit growth against a base of 939 warehouses. The significance is cumulative. Four consecutive years of landing two to five buildings short of a 30-per-year target would change the terminal store count that supports the long-term valuation.
What would make this prediction look conservative rather than wrong?
A repeat of a Spain-style delay in more than one international market, which would push the result toward 20–23 net new. That scenario is less likely than the base case because the fiscal 2027 international program is smaller and concentrated in Canada, but it is the tail that the fiscal 2026 experience makes impossible to dismiss.