What’s more hygienic? Paper Towels or Electric Hand Dryers

First Quarter Highlights • Consolidated revenue of $161.5 billion, up 6.0%, or 5.8% (cc)1, including a benefit of ~1% from an additional selling day • Consolidated gross margin rate up 42bps due to improvements across segments, led by Walmart U.S. • Consolidated operating income up $0.6 billion, or 9.6%; adjusted operating income up 13.7%1 , due to higher gross margins and growth in membership income • Global eCommerce sales grew 21%, led by storefulfilled pickup & delivery and marketplace

Costco Wholesale Corporation reported net sales of $12.92 billion for the month of March, the five weeks ended April 8, 2018, an increase of 10.9 percent from $11.65 billion last year. For the thirty-one weeks ended April 8, 2018, the Company reported net sales of $81.43 billion, an increase of 11.8 percent from $72.82 billion last year. This year’s five-week March retail-month had one fewer shopping day versus last year, due to the calendar shift of Easter. This negatively impacted total and comparable March sales by approximately one to one and one-half percent. Click Read More below for additional information.

Following the House Antitrust Subcommittee’s capstone digital markets hearing, “Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 6: Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google,” three groups representing thousands of authors, publishers, and booksellers in the United States – the Association of American Publishers, Authors Guild, and American Booksellers Association – have sent a joint letter to Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) enumerating a series of anti-competitive tactics that permit Amazon to exercise extraordinary market dominance over the advertising and sale of books in digital markets. Its practices against both book suppliers and book customers have threatened the vitality of the American publishing industry and rendered any meaningful competition from other publishers, booksellers, or emerging platforms impossible. “The Subcommittee’s work has shown that Amazon holds an outsized position of power and control in our country, giving it the ability to interfere with the free flow of information, ideas and literature on a large scale,” the letter tells the Chairman. The full letter can be viewed at: https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Joint-Letter-to-Rep-Cicilline-081720.pdf