https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/29/business/egg-profits-cal-maine/
Price gouging! Profit is king even if it kills people. The inflation the US is experiencing is mostly being caused by greed and unheard of profit by major companies doing price gouging. Yet few elected officials are talking about it and few news organizations are reporting it. Instead, even when hit with it during a congressional hearing Jerome Powell insists that the rates hikes will keep going until there is a return to large unemployment. Why? Because the wealthy are terrified of the power working people have right now in the labor market. They want that quashed, stomped down until the old status quo returns where companies could set any low wage and bad working conditions and the workers had to accept that. That is what the rate hikes are about, and Powell even admits that he wants high unemployment even as it hurts the working people and the poor. Now it is starting to be made more public how corporations have been raking in record profits including the big oil companies that kept gas prices as high as possible, including railroad companies even as they cut the work force to the bare minimum to the point of only having two workers for even miles long trains, and it also includes food producing companies. Stop to think of how everything people need and use went up in price the companies blamed it on everything from supply issues to in the case of eggs / chick on bird flu / death of the chickens. Yet these same companies have kept raising prices even as all the issues they claimed were causing the price increases have been solved and gone away. Hugs
Cal-Maine Foods, the largest egg producer in the United States, reported revenue doubled and profit surged 718% last quarter because of sharply higher egg prices.
The company, which controls about 20% of the US egg market according to Reuters, said its average selling price for a dozen eggs in the quarter ending February 25 was $3.30, more than double the average of $1.61 a year earlier. Despite the higher prices, the total number of eggs it sold edged up 1%, so its overall revenue rose 109% to $997.5 million.
That doubling of revenue was nothing compared to its profits, however. Net income soared to $323.2 million from only $39.5 million a year ago.
The jump in revenue and profit had been expected but easily topped forecasts. Shares of Cal-Maine (CALM) were up 4% in premarket trading.
A deadly and highly infectious avian flu has forced US farmers to kill millions of egg-laying hens, reducing the country’s egg supply and driving up prices. But Cal-Maine said in its earnings statement that there have been no positive tests for avian flu at any of its owned or contracted production facilities.
Egg producers’ pricing decisions have been criticized by some politicians, who accuse them of profiteering and price gouging.
“American families working to put food on the table deserve to know whether the increased prices they are paying for eggs represent a legitimate response to reduced supply or out-of-control corporate greed,” said a letter sent by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Katie Porter to Cal-Maine and other major egg producers last month.
Cal-Maine did not immediately respond early Wednesday to a request for comment about the letter.
Egg prices did start to retreat slightly in the government’s most recent inflation reading for February, but are still up more than 55% from a year earlier.
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