Costco’s cheap gas drove traffic to the retailer in 2022

Yahoo Finance’s Ines Ferre joins the Live show to discuss why consumer’s turned to Costco for cheaper gas.

Video transcript

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JULIE HYMAN: Gasoline prices surged in early 2022, peaking in June at just over $5 a gallon, leading consumers to wholesale clubs like Costco for cheaper options. Yahoo Finance's Ines Ferre joins us now with the details and what we've seen. Ines. Our Company of the Year, by the way, Costco, we should mention.

INES FERRE: Company of the Year, that's right. And Costco really has killed it this year when it comes to gasoline sales. And just out of its ancillary businesses, gasoline is the top performer, along with food court, those $1.50 hot dogs, of course, as well. But really, price inflation, when it comes to gasoline, positively impacted the company's latest quarterly sales by 5.5%.

So let's take a look at the footprint of its gas stations, roughly more than 630 stations, gas stations, that it has globally and gas stations at around 90% of US warehouses. Now here's a kicker. Out of-- a little more than 50 people of every 100 people who buy gasoline go into the store and shop. So it is a huge driver of traffic. As people go to fill up their tanks, they also go in and buy goods there.

So the question now is, as gasoline prices have come down a bit, as they stabilize a bit, what will this do for Costco going forward? It will be a benefit. Will it be as much of a benefit as it has been this year? Well, we'll see.

JULIE HYMAN: Yes, we will. Thanks so much, Ines.