Costco stock: 5 takes from Wall Street analysts

No doubt that Costco has had a pretty good year.
For one thing, Yahoo Finance's 2022 Company of the Year has outperformed the bearish market — the stock so far this year is down 13% to about $495 a share compared to a decline of 15% for the S&P 500 (^GSPC) as of December 2. In addition, many investors love the big box retailer because of its fanatic customers and strong balance sheet.

So what are COST's prospects?
Ivan Feinseth，Tigress Financial Partners
The company consistently reports strong same-store sales growth in both good and difficult retail environments.
In difficult economic times consumers look for bargains. You can see that by the strength of memberships, which continue to grow.
Rating/Price Target: Buy/$678
Oliver Chen, Cowen
key debates around Costco remain:(1) the emergence of tougher comparable metrics as the company continues to drive consistent growth; (2) evolution of consumer behaviors and the company’s ability to maintain loyalty and sticky membership metrics; (3) high valuation given current price to earnings ratio, which has contracted by five percent from its three-year mean.
Rating/Price Target: Outperform/$650
Michael Baker, D.A. Davidson
Positives for the stock would include outsized and consistent same-store sales growth.
Rating/Price Target: Neutral/$455
Chuck Grom, Gordon Haskett Research Advisors
Consistency of the core comp business month-to-month, which has usually been led by healthy traffic trends. Also, the membership fee stream is an annuity with a long duration. The balance sheet is also very healthy with low leverage and ample cash.
Rating/PriceTarget: Buy/$600
Corey Tarlowe, Jefferies
It has had a really strong year this year. So lapping this year might be a little bit of a difficult hurdle next year. But it's nonetheless something that I think Costco will be able to achieve.
Rating/Price Target: Buy/$610
Will Costco beat analysts' expectations with this earnings report?