Building report
Building report
Costco Wholesale Corp · CONSUMER DEFENSIVE
Traeva scores Costco Wholesale Corp (COST) 85 out of 100 as of Sep 29, 2026, a rating of Strong Buy — the strongest rating it issues. Its EV / EBITDA of 28.4× sits roughly in line with the 30.2× its own fundamentals predict. The score measures valuation lag, trajectory, structural quality and balance-sheet risk. It describes the present rather than forecasting a share price, and is not investment advice.
Improving fundamentals, and the price has not caught up yet.
Valuation gap
COST trades at 28.4× EV / EBITDA, against implied by its own fundamentals — .
The implied multiple comes from a rolling regression of this company's own multiple against its growth, margins and returns on capital — not from a peer group. A gap below it is what this model looks for. It is not a promise the market will close it.
What drives the score
How far price has drifted from what the fundamentals support. Weighted heaviest, because finding that gap is the whole point.
Whether revenue, margins, free cash flow and returns on capital are trending up or down.
Whether the business turns revenue into cash reliably rather than occasionally.
Whether the debt load leaves room to survive a bad year.
Wall Street's average price target is $1067.09. Traeva's score is computed independently of it.
The full report opens the series behind every factor, the exit boundaries, and every quarterly figure the score is built from. Signing up is free and includes three complete reports.
Open the full reportTraeva scores Costco Wholesale Corp (COST) 85 out of 100 as of Sep 29, 2026, a rating of Strong Buy — the strongest rating it issues. Its EV / EBITDA of 28.4× sits roughly in line with the 30.2× its own fundamentals predict. The score measures valuation lag, trajectory, structural quality and balance-sheet risk. It describes the present rather than forecasting a share price, and is not investment advice.
Its strongest factor is balance-sheet strength at 100 out of 100, and its weakest is trajectory at 50. A headline score is an average of measurements that frequently disagree, so the individual factors are more informative than the single number.
85 out of 100 places Costco Wholesale Corp in the strongest band of Traeva's coverage. Scores above 70 indicate a company measuring well across all four factors; below 50 indicates at least one material weakness — deteriorating trajectory, thin or unstable margins, balance-sheet strain, or a price well above what the fundamentals support. The score is not a probability and not a price target.
Scores are recomputed daily. Most day-to-day movement comes from price, because fundamentals only change when the company reports — roughly once a quarter. A score that moves without an earnings release has almost always moved because the share price did, not because the business changed.
Traeva does not answer that and is not a registered investment adviser. This report is a quantitative measurement of four specific factors drawn from public filings, published as research. It does not account for anything outside the financial statements, the model can be wrong, and a valuation gap can persist for years or close because fundamentals fell to meet the price rather than the price rising.
Data as of Sep 29, 2026
Browse every company →Traeva is research tooling, not financial advice. Scores are generated from public filings by a model that can be wrong. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any security.