Costco saw ‘abnormal’ shopping behavior due to Hurricane Helene and the US port strike

Pallets of bottled water at Costco in New York City.

Shoppers turned to Costco to prepare ahead of hurricanes and the US port strike.

In reporting its sales results for September — as it does every month — the wholesale club included the following notable tidbit:

“This year’s total and comparable sales for the retail month of September benefitted by approximately two percent in the U.S. and one and one-half percent worldwide as a result of the increased sales in the final week of the month due to abnormal consumer activity associated with Hurricane Helene and port strikes,” the company said in a statement.

In a quirk of Costco bookkeeping, the final week of the retailing month of September actually ended on October 6. Helene had already come and gone, the strike lasted from October 1 through October 3, and Milton was just getting started.

But all that panic-buying of toilet paper and bottled water — two products that are mostly produced domestically — and other supplies last week has had a measurable impact on monthly sales for the wholesale club.

Ahead of the dockworkers strike along the Eastern ports, which has since been suspended, Costco said that it had done all it could to ensure the availability of merchandise.

“The port strike is something we’ve been watching very closely for some time,” CEO Ron Vachris said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, noting that only about a quarter of Costco’s products are imported.

“We have done a little bit of everything,” he added. “We’ve cleared the ports, we’ve pre-shipped, we’ve done several different things that we could to get holiday goods in ahead of this timeframe, and looked at alternate plans that we could execute with moving goods to different ports and coming across the country if needed.”

The stoppage was relatively short-lived, and those preparations could minimize disruption for Costco as the ports work through any remaining backlogs.