After hiking prices a shocking five times in the past year, earnings data released by General Mills reveals the food manufacturing giant saw its fourth-quarter profits skyrocket 97% to $823 million.
For its 2022 fiscal year, the company’s profits jumped 16% to $2.7 billion. General Mills also spent over $2 billion on shareholder handouts and boosted its stock buybacks by 191%.
The corporation’s massive profits reaffirm ongoing research from Accountable.US exposing how major companies across several industries are using inflation and pandemic uncertainty as an excuse to increase their wealth and line their shareholders’ pockets at the expense of working families.
During its earnings call this week, General Mills’ CEO touted its “fourth consecutive year that we’ve delivered results that met or exceeded our targets for top and bottom-line growth and cash generation” as the company continues to upcharge working families despite its increased bottom line.
Liz Zelnick, spokesperson for Accountable.US, stated:
“After marking up prices on working families not once, but five times, General Mills enjoyed a stunning 97% boost in profits — making it painfully obvious the food giant did not need to dig deeper and deeper in the pockets of everyday consumers.
“This behavior is emblematic of the corporate greed run amok across several industries, where highly profitable companies are choosing to squeeze the maximum amount of profits out of consumers while falsely claiming market forces drove them to it.
“If billion-dollar corporations like General Mills continue to make inflation challenges worse through blatant profiteering, lawmakers must act to rein in these greedy practices, starting by ensuring they finally pay their fair share in taxes.”
See more examples of pandemic profiteering in grocery stores:
- In its earnings data, Hormel Foods — which planned on hiking prices not once, but twice, in 2021 — touted “its fifth consecutive quarter of record net sales” and $132 million in first-quarter shareholder dividends.
The company is doing so well that it completed a $3.35 billion acquisition of Kraft Heinz’s Planters peanuts — the largest acquisition in its history. CEO Jim Snee even admitted that this acquisition was a “catalyst for earnings growth.”
- After Mondelez — whose brands include Oreo, Ritz, Wheat Thins, and Triscuits — saw its gross profit increase by over $800 million in 2021, the company still increased prices by up to 7% in January 2022 and is leaving the door open to raising them again despite spending nearly $4 billion on stock buybacks and dividends in 2021.
- In December 2021, Kroger’s chairman and CEO said the company was “in a position of strength” as the grocery chain reported a third-quarter operating profit of $868 million and spent $297 million on quarterly stock buybacks just months after it said it was “passing along higher cost to the customer.”
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Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/profiteering-general-mills-profits-price-hikes/
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I don’t understand any of this!!! Why are parents still feeding their children General Mills products even after the fact of a known carcinogen, glyphosate, in their products? This was discovered years ago and so there is absolutely nothing healthy about General Mills anything even as they tout Cheerios to be heart healthy when glyphosate is all up in the box trying to fill folks with cancer. What the hell?!!! Not only should General Mills be bankrupt, so should the milk industry since millions of people are lactose intolerant. I just don’t get it. I used to live in Minnesota where General Mills is headquartered and I cannot tell you how many times I have driven by there and looked over at it with a look of sheer disgust on my face, but never would I pick up any product made by General Mills or any other company if I knew that company’s products were lethal and General Mills products are indeed, lethal.
General Mills beats lawsuit alleging traces of glyphosate in Cheerios
https://www.reuters.com/article/generalmills-cheerios-lawsuit-idUSL2N23P01B
A federal judge in Miami has dismissed a proposed class action accusing General Mills of selling Cheerios cereal with trace amounts of the weedkiller glyphosate, ruling that the named plaintiff failed to show how she was harmed.
Plaintiff Mounira Doss of Broward County, Florida alleged that trace amounts of glyphosate have been found in some Cheerios, but she failed to allege that the Cheerios she actually bought had the chemical, U.S. District Judge Robert Scola ruled on Friday. Even if her cereal had glyphosate in it, Doss does not allege that she ate it and thus did not establish that her health was harmed, Scola said.
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So, the judge basically threw out the lawsuit because he says the plaintiff bought the cereal so that she could just sit it on her shelf and look at, that she had no intentions on eating it or that she never ate it and so therefore, it could not have harmed her? I’m done! Stick a fork in me, I am SO done!
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Wow, thanks for updating me on the legal saga, Shelby. The latest I heard the Supreme Court had thrown out Bayer/Monsanto’s appeal on the original case. I guess the Roundup wasn’t killing people quickly enough so they had to find something more lethal.
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