Chapter 12: Costco's Initial Public Offering

Costco was founded in 1976, under the name Price Club. It originally was only open to small businesses, but realized it would have greater success allowing non-business customers to shop also. Costco went public with its initial public offering (IPO) on December 5, 1985, with a stock price of $10.00 per share. The first dividend of  $0.10 per share wasn't issued until May 31, 2004, nearly 19 years later. Since then, every dividend issues has been less than $1 per share with one exception. In December 2012, a dividend of $7.00 per share was issued. After this one incident the price went back to normal. The most recent dividend issued was $0.35 per share.

Chapter 11: Costco's Organization Structure

Costco has what we would consider a multidivisional structure for its company. It has a President and CEO, but it also has directors and Vice Presidents for different regions and different departments. Needless to say, its list of directors and executive officers is very, very long. It also has 6 committee members that are a part of 3 different committees: the Audit Committee, Compensation Committee, and Nominating and Governance Committee. All 6 people are members of at least one committee, but not all committees.