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.