Costco Wholesale Corporation

Good afternoon and thank you for standing by. My name is Abby and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Costco Wholesale Corporation first quarter fiscal 2025 conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star 1 a second time. Thank you, and I would now like to turn the conference over to Gary Miller-Chip, Chief Financial Officer. You may begin.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining Costco's first quarter 2025 earnings call. I'd like to start by reminding you that these discussions will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual events, results, and or performance to differ materially from those indicated by such statements. The risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those outlined in today's call, as well as other risks identified from time to time in the company's public statements and reports filed with the SEC. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and the company does not undertake to update these statements except as required by law. Comparable sales and comparable sales excluding impacts from changes in gasoline prices and foreign exchange are intended as supplemental information and are not a substitute for net sales presented in accordance with GAAP. Before we dive into our financial results for the quarter, I'm delighted to say that Ron Vakris is joining us for today's call. I'll now hand over to Ron for some opening comments.

Thank you, Gary, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. As we wrap up the first quarter of fiscal 2025, let me make a few brief comments on some of the highlights since we last spoke in September. In the first quarter of fiscal 25, we opened seven new warehouses. This included one relocation and resulted in six net new buildings, of which four were outside of the US. Additionally, after the end of the quarter, on the day before Thanksgiving, we opened our 897th warehouse in Pleasanton, California. That opening had the highest ever opening day sales for a US warehouse at $2.9 million that day. We continue to project 29 openings during fiscal year 25, of which three will be relocations, and so 26 net new buildings. 10 of those warehouses will be outside of the US. Gary will speak to a more detailed review of our results in a few moments, but I wanted to share some fun facts regarding our growth across the business. Our U.S. bakery division has reached new records of 4.2 million pies being sold the three days prior to Thanksgiving. In our U.S. food courts on Halloween day, we set a new record of 274,000 whole pizzas being sold. That was an increase of 21%. Our U.S. pharmacy business has prescription growth exceeding 19% for the first quarter, setting new volume records for that business. And lastly, we continue to gain market share with our e-commerce big and bulky fulfilled by Costco Logistics. Costco Logistics completed nearly 1 million deliveries in Q1 and over 196,000 deliveries last week alone. That was a new record as well. The majority of these deliveries were completed in four days from the members ordering their merchandise online. All of these milestones reflect a continued strength of our business across the membership offering. These great results are a reflection of the outstanding work done by our over 330,000 employees around the world. Their commitment to our company and the Costco experience for our members is truly inspiring. I'd like to thank all of our people for their outstanding work this year and especially during our busiest time of the year. As we approach our annual shareholders meeting in January, I also wanted to mention that our annual update to the Costco sustainability commitments was just made available online today. This report provides a comprehensive review of the progress we're making towards our sustainability objectives, and I would encourage all of you to take a look. With that, I'll turn it back over to Gary to discuss the results of the quarter, and I'll jump back on during Q&A to field some questions. Thank you.