NEW YORK — Costco Wholesale Corp. beat Wall Street’s expectations with a 5% same-store sales gain in March.

Costco Wholesale Corp. beat Wall Street’s expectations with a 5% same-store sales gain in March.

Analysts had anticipated a 3.5% rise for the five weeks ended April 6.

The chain was helped by an extra day in the period and by Easter falling three weeks later than last year.

The calendar shift positively impacted this year’s net and comparable sales by an estimated 1 to 1.5 percentage points, according to Costco assistant vice president of finance and investor relations Jeff Elliott. The extra day outweighed the shift of holiday sales into April, he says.

Excluding the negative impact of foreign exchange rates and gasoline prices, same-store sales rose 7%. International same-store sales, excluding fuel, jumped 9%. The chain’s total sales rose 8% to $10.43 billion.

The retailer’s best-performing categories included candy; chilled, frozen and fresh food; office supplies; auto parts; hardware; small appliances; house-
wares; domestics; and apparel. Sales of consumer electronics were flat.

The loss of a selling day in April will hurt sales by 1.5 to 2 points, Elliott says.

"While Costco’s traffic counts remain strong relative to retail peers, it appears that the retailer is not completely immune to the muted retail environment," comments Mark Miller, an analyst at William Blair & Co. "Nonetheless, we continue to believe Costco is better positioned than most to achieve solid growth, aided by a relatively low e-commerce risk profile and the company’s compelling value proposition."

Among drug chains, Walgreen Co. posted a 3.5% same-store sales increase for March. Calendar day shifts positively impacted total comparable sales by 0.6 points. Generic drug introductions in the previous 12 months negatively impacted total comparable sales by one point, while the lower incidence of flu negatively impacted total comparable sales by 0.2 points.

At Rite Aid Corp., for the four weeks ended March 29, same- store sales edged up 0.7%. March front-end same-store sales decreased 5%, with 4.1 points attributed to the shift in the timing of Easter. Pharmacy same-store sales, which included a negative impact of about 133 basis points from new generic introductions, increased 3.5%. The prescription count at comparable stores increased 1.1%.