A Guardian analysis uncovers how companies enriched themselves and their investors while boasting about jacking up prices
Highlights
- Inflation hit 8.5% year over year in March, but for many US companies and their shareholders it has been a very different story.
- A Guardian analysis of 100 US corporations found net profits up by a median of 49%, and in one case by as much as 111,000%.
- Margins – the share of sales converted into profits – also improved for the majority of the companies analyzed.
- All but ten executed massive stock buyback programs or bumped dividends to enrich investors.
- 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 on top.