✦ The Countries With Seven WarehousesNarrow moat

The most striking thing about Costco's international footprint is how little of it there is. At the third quarter of fiscal 2026: 42 warehouses in Mexico, 37 in Japan, 29 in the United Kingdom, 20 in Korea, 15 in Australia, 14 in Taiwan, seven in China, five in Spain, three in France, two in Sweden, and one each in Iceland and New Zealand¹. Twelve countries, 176 warehouses between them, against 637 in the United States alone.

The financial case for filling those in is better than the American case, and it is visible in the segment table. In fiscal 2025 Other International produced $38,266 million of revenue and $1,656 million of operating income — a 4.33% operating margin — while the United States produced $200,046 million and $6,878 million, a 3.44% margin². Canada, the most mature international market, ran at 5.01%. The pattern is consistent: outside its home market Costco earns more per dollar of sales, presumably because it competes against grocers running far higher margins and because there is less internal cannibalisation.

China is the number that stands out. Seven warehouses in a country of that size, in a format explicitly designed for households buying in bulk, in a market where Costco's openings have produced queues that made international news. Whether the format scales there is genuinely unresolved — it depends on car ownership, apartment storage and a middle class that plans its shopping.

The risks are the ordinary ones of foreign operations and Costco reports them plainly: currency movements reduced fiscal 2025 net sales by approximately $1,943 million, 78 basis points, and reduced gross margin by about $224 million³.

Set Other International's operating margin against the U.S. segment's: 4.33% versus 3.44%. If it converges downward as the base grows, the international premium was a small-numbers effect. If it holds, this is where the next decade of profit growth comes from.