Costco cash pile hits record high, fueling special-dividend speculation

Costco’s cash and cash equivalents plus short-term investments reached $19.996 billion at May 10, 2026, a record that has revived talk of another special dividend. The balance sheet matters because Costco has treated excess cash as a separate question from its regular quarterly payout, and the latest pile-up comes as the company keeps generating more operating cash.

The operating results behind that cash were strong. For the third quarter of fiscal 2026, Costco posted net sales of $69.15 billion, up 11.6% from a year earlier, and net income of $2.19 billion, or $4.93 a diluted share. Digitally enabled sales rose 21.5% in the quarter, and Costco said it was operating 931 warehouses worldwide, including 639 in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. The company scheduled a conference call for 2:00 p.m. PT on May 28 to discuss the results.

For front-end assistants, stockers, forklift operators, meat and bakery employees, optical staff and warehouse managers, the more immediate question is what Costco does with the cash before it ever becomes a dividend debate. Costco still describes the business as built around low prices, rapid inventory turnover, efficient distribution and reduced handling in no-frills, self-service warehouses, which means extra cash can just as easily go into remodels, traffic-flow fixes, more floor space, supply-chain support and systems upgrades as it can into shareholder payouts. That is the read-through employees watch: whether sales growth brings better buildings and fewer bottlenecks, or just another headline about capital returns.

Costco’s history explains why the speculation keeps coming back. The company went public on December 5, 1985, at $10 a share before stock splits, and it did not start paying a regular quarterly dividend until May 31, 2004, with a first payout of 10 cents a share. The special dividends have arrived irregularly since then: $7 a share in April 2017 for about $3.1 billion, $10 a share in November 2020 for about $4.4 billion, and $15 a share in November 2023. Richard Galanti said in 2017 that the move was part of Costco’s effort to return capital while preserving financial and operational flexibility.

Costco’s June 3, 2026 10-Q and automatic shelf registration filing left the company with plenty of room to maneuver, which is why investors keep watching the cash pile and why employees do too. A special dividend would be a notable windfall, but the longer-running story inside the warehouses is whether Costco keeps turning record cash into more capacity, smoother operations and the investment needed to support the people moving freight, running registers and keeping the clubs open.