On Thursday, the largest U.S. warehouse club operator - CostCo Wholesale Corp. - announced a growth of 12 percent for the quarterly profit. They said the increase is owed to the demand of gasoline and food.

The shares of the company were valued at 45 cents per share, indicating a raise up to 215.8 million dollars of the net income, compared to the same period of time from last year, when a share was worth 40 cents and the net income was of 193.2 million dollars.

According to Reuters, analysts were confident when it came to the growth registered by the company, saying that a share was expected to worth up to 45 cents.

The net sales in the quarter gained 12 percent to 12.66 billion dollars, from 11.34 billion dollars last year. Counting the membership fees, the revenue registered by the company reached 12.93 billion dollars, while a year ago the revenues were of 11.58 billion dollars.

CostCo has a very wide range of products that are sold in the stores. Besides the usual goods that can be found in a warehouse, the company has also an offer of luxury goods like diamond rings or Picasso sketches.

One of its strong competitors, Sam's Club, fought back using the same strategy by displaying a 560.000 dollars diamond necklace.

But last week CostCo said that the sales for November were disappointingly low. However, the sales from September and October were better than expected as the purchase of gasoline and food grew.

The company shared nothing about the profit made over the gasoline business, but in the conference call from Thursday they are supposed to provide a little bit more information regarding that matter and also concerning the profit forecast for the following period.

On September 3rd, CostCo said that it plans to open some other 18 to 20 new stores.