Costco gets coronavirus profit boost

Shoppers piled into Costco amid rising cases of the coronavirus.

"February sales benefited from an uptick in consumer demand in the fourth week of the reporting period. We attribute this to concerns over the Coronavirus and estimate the positive impact on total and comparable sales to be approximately three percent" the company said it its earnings release.

WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT COSTCO

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
COST	COSTCO WHOLESALE CORP.	971.88	+10.33	+1.07%

The warehouse retailer reported second-quarter profits of $2.10 per share or $931 million, while sales rose to $39.07 billion. Results exceeded expectations.

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As for the impact of coronavirus on rival  BJ's, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer Bob Eddy said,

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
BJ	BJS WHSL CLUB HLDGS INC	95.21	-1.09	-1.13%

"It's certainly -- probably the most fluid situation I've seen in my history here. We're monitoring it. We've got a team on top of it and we're spending all of our time trying to make sure that we do the right thing for our members and our team members as we go through it.

COSTCO MULLS FOOD COURT BAN ON NON-MEMBERS

We're not going to really talk about in any detail on the comp effect but we are seeing some businesses as some of our members are stocking up on cleaning supplies and can food" he noted on the company's earnings call on Thursday.

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