Costco Wholesale Corporation's debt to equity: 5 definitions, 5 answers
Depending on which definition is used, Costco Wholesale Corporation's debt to equity for FY2026 is anywhere from 0.11 to 1.49, every one of them arithmetically correct and all of them out of the same filing.
Computed from Costco Wholesale Corporation's 10-K for fiscal 2026, the year ended 2026-08-30, filed 2026-10-07, 38 days after the books closed. Accession 0000909832-26-000093 Reported in USD.
The same filing, read 5 ways
| Definition | Formula, in filed line items | Measured over | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Long-term debt to equity | longTermDebt / totalStockholdersEquity | One filed fiscal year | 0.11 |
| Borrowings to equity | (shortTermDebt + longTermDebt) / totalStockholdersEquity | One filed fiscal year | 0.17 |
| Total debt to equityours | totalDebt / totalStockholdersEquity | One filed fiscal year | 0.28 |
| Total debt to total equity including minority interests | totalDebt / totalEquity | One filed fiscal year | 0.28 |
| Total liabilities to equity | totalLiabilities / totalStockholdersEquity | One filed fiscal year | 1.49 |
Highest over lowest, a factor of 13.61.
- Long-term debt to equity
- Long-term debt 3.91 bn USD, Total stockholders' equity 35.80 bn USD, giving 0.11. Reading it instead of the one the product prints moves the answer by -0.17.
- Borrowings to equity
- Short-term debt 2.25 bn USD, Long-term debt 3.91 bn USD, Total stockholders' equity 35.80 bn USD, giving 0.17. Reading it instead of the one the product prints moves the answer by -0.11.
- Total debt to equity
- Total debt 10.18 bn USD, Total stockholders' equity 35.80 bn USD, giving 0.28. This is the one the product prints.
- Total debt to total equity including minority interests
- Total debt 10.18 bn USD, Total equity 35.80 bn USD, giving 0.28. Same answer as the one the product prints, to two decimals.
- Total liabilities to equity
- Total liabilities 53.24 bn USD, Total stockholders' equity 35.80 bn USD, giving 1.49. Reading it instead of the one the product prints moves the answer by +1.21.
Our own figure for COST: 0.28. That is the total debt to equity line above.
The definitions disagree by 1.38 on this filer, against 0.71 between the median and the top quartile of the 2320-company cohort. Which definition you happened to read moves the answer further than a quarter of the market does.
Is that a lot
Costco Wholesale Corporation's 0.28 (FY2026, on the definition this product prints) is -0.29 against the 0.57 median of the 2320 filers holding a debt to equity on 2026-10-21. Every mark, and the distance from it:
| Mark | Every filer (2320) | Distance | Consumer Defensive (131) | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| p5 | 0.00 | +0.28 | 0.03 | +0.25 |
| p10 | 0.02 | +0.26 | 0.14 | +0.14 |
| p25 | 0.16 | +0.12 | 0.35 | -0.07 |
| p50 | 0.57 | -0.29 | 0.82 | -0.54 |
| p75 | 1.28 | -1.00 | 1.58 | -1.30 |
| p90 | 2.70 | -2.42 | 2.60 | -2.32 |
| p95 | 4.96 | -4.68 | 4.29 | -4.01 |
A distance is not a verdict. What the marks mean, and what this metric hides
Nothing here is quoted from another publisher, and none of these is called wrong.
What this page leaves out
Evaluated over 11 filed fiscal years, FY2016 to FY2026. Accounts filed before this company began tagging its statements in XBRL are not machine-readable and are outside this page. No share price is involved in any figure here, so nothing on this page is limited by the depth of our price archive.
Filings get mis-tagged and restated, so check a figure against the submission it names. Coverage for a company you own.