If a company says the reason is inflation they can only maintain that pricing power if every other firm does the same thing. If no firm decides to keep prices the same, to steal more of the market, that suggests to me that either inflation is real (perhaps in a harder to quantify way than just supplies) or companies have much more consolidated competitors than they used to (perhaps start up costs are now high so new entrants become impossible).
empirically, this is what's effectively happening in multiple instances
given the content of the article of this post, I'm not convinced anyone can reasonably conclude that profit increases aren't accounting for a large portion of inflation: such a conclusion is unpersuasive given said content
the questions of "why now" etc. are interesting, and I encourage you to seek answers on them, but answers to them aren't necessary to observe reality, a reality the article helpfully illustrates
why did I decide on coffee this morning instead of tea? another similarly interesting question, but the answer, or lack thereof, similarly doesn't change the fact that that's what happened.
When the public perception is an environment of inflation, I think it unintentionally creates cartel power dynamics.
You don't need to collude with your competition on price fixing if the news is telling you that prices are going up for everything.
To me this highlights more companies realizing they have pricing power similar to monopoly power or cartel power. A company that has lots of competition can't raise its profit margins. But a company with a moat, where no competitors are able to fund the capital needed to compete, can raise profits.