Costco Revenues Slip

First-quarter same-store sales at Costco (Issaquah, Wash.) dropped 1 percent in the company’s first fiscal quarter. It is the retailer’s first quarterly drop in same-store sales since 2009.

Analysts at The Wall Street Journal point toward the valuation of the dollar and a drop in gas prices as reasons for the decline. Average purchases per shopping trip, they point out, rose 2.5 percent.

Sales of memberships, the retailer’s major source of revenue, rose to $584 million from $561 million over the same period. Costco is expanding rapidly outside the U.S., primarily in Canada, Mexico and the U.K. The company says it will open 14 new stores this year, half of them in the U.S.