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“We have been enjoying 5 per cent to 9 per cent (same-store sales) in local currency in each of the last few years up there, and so it keeps getting stronger.”

Same-store sales are a key indicator of retail strength, tallying performance at units open for more than a year.

In Canada’s mature markets, there might sometimes be cannibalization to older outlets when Coscto adds new stores, Galanti said, but “the business that’s added net of cannibalization, we’ll find that existing members will then be shopping more frequently, because they are closer.”

Costco, whose Canadian members pay a $55 annual membership fee in order to shop there, said about 90 per cent of its members in the U.S. and Canada renew memberships annually. Galanti gave no update on the growth ceiling for the company’s warehouses, though Canadian executives had earlier pegged the number at about 110.

Typically, Costco opens one to three warehouses a year in Canada, notes analyst Keith Howlett of Desjardins Securities, who said the latest news bodes ill for traditional grocery companies, in particular Empire Co., owner of the struggling Safeway business in Western Canada and Sobeys in the East.

“Costco Canada has been an outstanding success and dominates the wholesale club segment,” Howlett wrote in a note to clients Friday.

“The membership warehouse club format remains primarily a threat to conventional supermarkets rather than to the hard discount channel (such as No Frills). Empire, as the largest operator of conventional supermarkets in Canada, would appear to have the greatest exposure to Costco.”