Costco, TJX, Walmart, Five Below, Ulta: Retail Stocks Ranked

Costco reports its fiscal fourth quarter on 2026-09-24, and the stock changes hands around $895.31 as I write this, which is 45.0 times trailing earnings of $19.88 a share. Two days out, that is a lot of expectation resting on one warehouse chain.

Retail is the one sector where “everyone shops there” and “good investment” have almost nothing to do with each other. A packed parking lot says the store is popular. It says nothing about whether the shares, at today’s price, pay you for owning it. So the ranking below is built on a single idea: the best retail stock right now is the one where the business is solid and the price has already flinched, and the worst is the one where perfection is fully paid for in advance. By that test I put TJX first, Costco second, Ulta third, Walmart fourth and Five Below fifth, and the order has more to do with valuation and volatility than with which company I would rather shop at.

Why TJX comes first

TJX (T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods) trades around $127.24, 24.9% under its 52-week high of $169 and only 4% above the low of $123. The trailing P/E is 23.6, against a five-year average of 28.1. The forward multiple, using expected earnings of $5.61 a share, is 22.7. That is a business that grew revenue 7% to $60.4 billion in fiscal 2026, with an operating margin near 12.2% and a gross margin that edged up from 30.6% to 31.0%, priced at a discount to its own past.

Off-price retail has a built-in reason to hold up when shoppers feel squeezed. A customer who trades down from a department store lands in a T.J. Maxx aisle, and the buyers there get their best selection when other retailers are stuck with excess inventory. I read that as a structural edge rather than a cyclical accident, though I would not pretend the stock has been rewarded for it lately.

The stock fell 4.2% on its report of 2026-08-19, and latest-quarter revenue of $15.2 billion was up only 5% on the year, slower than the 7% full-year pace. That deceleration is the first thing I would want explained. If quarterly growth stays at 5% or below for two more reports, the market is right to pay less than the five-year average multiple, and my ranking is wrong.

Analysts are far more upbeat than the tape: 17 cover it, 82% rate it a buy, and the average target of $173 sits 36% above the price. Targets lag prices, so I treat that as a mood indicator rather than evidence.

Costco is a great business at a full price

Costco does not really sell groceries. It sells a membership, and the company has reported renewal rates above 90% in the US and Canada, which is the kind of recurring stickiness you would expect from software. Revenue reached $275.2 billion in fiscal 2025, up 8%, and the latest quarter of $70.5 billion was 12% ahead of a year earlier. Gross margin has crept from 12.6% to 12.8%, which sounds trivial until you remember that Costco’s whole pitch is that it keeps markups thin.

The trouble is the price of admission. At 45.0 times trailing earnings the stock is close to its own five-year average of 46.9, so it is not expensive against its history, but it is expensive against every other name in this list except Walmart. The forward multiple of 41.3 implies earnings growth of about 9%. For a stock that sits 18.2% below a 52-week high of $1,095, the market has already taken a bite out of the premium, and it has not taken the whole thing.

I wrote about the arithmetic behind multiples like this in What a P/E of 35 Actually Requires. The short version for Costco: at 45 times earnings, a holder is relying on high-single-digit earnings growth for years, with the multiple drifting lower at the same time. That is achievable for this company. It is not a margin of safety.

The average earnings-day move has been 2.1%, and the last one, on 2026-05-28, was -3.9%. Small moves on big reports tell me the stock is held by people who do not trade it. That can change quickly if a report shows membership fee income slowing, and that is the number I would read first on 2026-09-24.

Ulta, priced on execution

Ulta Beauty I can only judge from the company’s own numbers. In its second quarter of fiscal 2026, ended August 1, net sales were $3.04 billion, up 8.9%, comparable sales rose 3.8%, and diluted earnings per share increased 13.3% to $6.55, according to the company’s results release. Management raised its full-year outlook: comparable sales of 3.2% to 3.7% (from 2.5% to 3.5%) and earnings of $28.70 to $29.00 a share.

Two details matter more than the headline. Growth came from fragrance and haircare while makeup was about flat and skincare and wellness slipped, which tells me the beauty boom is narrower than the sector’s reputation. And part of the sales gain came from the acquired UK retailer Space NK, so organic growth is the 3.8% comp figure, not the 8.9%.

I like the loyalty program for the same reason I like Costco’s membership, and I would rank Ulta third mostly because a raised guide from a company that beats its own numbers is the cleanest positive in this group. The catch is that I have no verified multiple for it, so check the current price against that $28.70 to $29.00 earnings range yourself before acting on my ranking.

Walmart earns its multiple, barely

Walmart is a $713.2 billion revenue business, up 5% in fiscal 2026, with a 4.5% operating margin. It trades around $106.73, 20.8% below its 52-week high of $135, at 38.7 times earnings, against a five-year average of 36.8. So it is priced a little above its own history, for a company whose gross margin was flat at 24.9%.

The case for that premium is advertising and membership income, which carry far higher margins than groceries. I laid out how big that pool has become in Walmart’s ad and membership income piece. The case against is that the premium leaves little cushion. Walmart moved -9.2% on its last report (2026-08-20), versus an average earnings-day move of 6.1%, so the stock does react when the story wobbles.

Analysts are strongly bullish here (90% buys among 31, average target $129), and the stock has still slid. I read that as the market unwinding a re-rating rather than punishing the business. If Walmart’s operating margin drifts back toward 4% from 4.5%, the premium multiple has nothing left to stand on.

Five Below is the volatile one

Everything here starts at $5, which sounded like a gimmick to me. It stopped sounding like one this year.

Five Below sells things that cost $5 and up, and I was slow to take it seriously because that sounded like a gimmick waiting for inflation to squeeze it. The company’s first-quarter fiscal 2026 report says otherwise: net sales rose 32.5% to $1,285.6 million and comparable sales jumped 22.7%, with 49 net new stores taking the count to 1,970, per its investor site. Adjusted EPS was $2.22.

A 22.7% comp is unusual enough that I would treat it as a peak rather than a run rate, and the company agrees: it guides second-quarter comps to a 7% to 9% increase and the full year to 6% to 8%. That gap tells you what is being priced. Simply Wall St reported the stock down about 16% after the company raised its guidance while flagging pressure on lower-income shoppers, which is a good reminder that a beat is not the same as a rerating.

I rank it last for that reason. The business is executing and store growth of roughly 8% a year is a real runway, but a stock that can fall 16% on good news is one where you need to size the position for the drops. I have no verified valuation figure for it either, so the same warning as with Ulta applies.

The five side by side

Stock	Price	P/E (TTM)	Off 52-week high	Latest full-year revenue growth
TJX	$127.24	23.6	24.9%	7%
Costco	$895.31	45.0	18.2%	8%
Walmart	$106.73	38.7	20.8%	5%
Ulta	see text	see text	see text	8.9% (Q2 sales)
Five Below	see text	see text	see text	32.5% (Q1 sales)

What would change the order

The counter-case to my top pick is simple: TJX is cheap because growth has slowed and the market expects it to slow further. If its next report shows quarterly revenue growth under 4%, I would move it below Costco. If Costco’s report on 2026-09-24 shows a decline in membership fee income growth, I would move Costco down a place to make room, because a 45 times multiple has no room for that.

The point of the list is the ordering. For income seekers, none of these five is a yield play (Costco yields 0.60%, TJX 1.38%, Walmart 0.90%), and I would send that reader to dividend stocks built for durable income instead. The number I would watch next is TJX’s forward multiple of 22.7: if it falls under 21 without a cut to earnings estimates, the discount to its own history is real, and that is the moment the case gets most interesting.

Analysis and opinion only, not investment advice. Figures come from company filings on SEC EDGAR (Costco, TJX, Walmart) and investor sites for Costco and Walmart; valuation multiples are approximate and were checked on September 22, 2026.