A Guardian analysis uncovers how companies enriched themselves and their investors while boasting about jacking up prices
Highlights
- Analysis of 100 US corporations finds profits up by 49% and 111,000%.
- All but ten executed massive stock buyback programs or bumped dividends to enrich investors.
- Hershey’s net profits spiked 62% between the fourth quarters in 2019 and 2021, its operating margin widened.
- Inflation, meanwhile, rose to 8.5% year over year in March; inflation hit a new peak in March, eating into most Americans’ wages and further imperiling the financially vulnerable.
- In earnings calls, executives detailed how even as demand and profits rose post-vaccine, they passed on most or all inflationary costs to customers via price increases, and some took the opportunity to add more.