Everyone tries to get ahead of inflation. In normal inflationary environment, intelligent consumers would stock on non-perishable goods to avoid rising prices. But that too would increase corporate profits, for a while.

Of course right now everything is complicated by the fact officials lied to us that inflation is "transitory". As you can imagine, corporations don't take officials at their word, they can hire economists that double check their claims[1]. The media is supposed to do that in service of ordinary people, but for some reason I don't think it did in this inflationary period.

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[1] And corporations who blindly take officials at their words, like the late Silicon Valley Bank, simply enter liquidation.

They are only record profits when you don’t adjust for inflation. Companies in Zimbabwe were making record profits every year, what a booming economy!!!