Costco provided discount pricing for its members in exchange for membership fees. For fiscal 2005, these fees comprised 2.0% of total revenue and 72.8% of operating income. Membership fees were such an important factor to Costco that an equity analyst had coined a new price-to-membership-fee-income ratio metric for valuing the company. By 2005, Costco’s sales had grown to $52.9 billion across its 433 warehouses, and its market capitalization had reached $21J billion. Over the previous five years, sales excluding membership fees had experienced compound growth of 10.4%, while membership fees had grown 14.6% making the fees a significant growth source and highly significant to operating income in a low-profit-margin business.