YES
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/26/food-price-inflation-corporate-profit
It reveals that while you may be feeling the pain from high prices at restaurants and supermarkets, many companies making and selling the products are doing remarkably well. Most have seen their profits jump as they continue raising prices on customers, the analysis found.
Some companies say they have no choice but to pass inflationary pain on to consumers. Others, however, acknowledge they are exploiting the inflationary atmosphere to raise prices, or to shrink product sizes, a strategy dubbed “shrinkflation”.
Meanwhile, companies spent billions rewarding investors with stock buybacks that drive up stock value.
Menu and grocery store prices may remain elevated. In earnings calls, executives detail plans to maintain high prices even as some costs are falling.
This is a good point to emphasize when explaining capitalism to liberals. It does not work how the liberal canon says it does. Monopoly and monopsony are the natural state of capitalism, it is its trajectory in any industry, and the combination of profits that tend to fall and financialization means that, increasingly, capital only searches for monopolies and rent as the way to extract profit. “Competition” lmao, more like jockeying for monopoly and then charging you into oblivion.