CEO Says He's Been "Praying for Inflation" Because It's an Excuse to Jack Up Prices

[ck4829]

The CEO of Iron Mountain Inc. told Wall Street analysts at a September 20 investor event that the high levels of inflation of the past several years had helped the company increase its margins — and that for that reason he had long been “doing my inflation dance praying for inflation.”

The comment is an unusually candid admission of a dirty secret in the business world: corporations use inflation as a pretext to hike prices. “Corporations are using those increasing costs – of materials, components and labor – as excuses to increase their prices even higher, resulting in bigger profits,” Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under Clinton, recently argued. Corporate profits are now at their highest level since 1950.

Iron Mountain is a data storage and management company based in Boston with a current market capitalization of $12 billion. According to its website, over 95 percent of the Fortune 1,000 are Iron Mountain customers. The company’s founder originally bought its first site, an exhausted iron mine, to grow mushrooms.

It wasn’t a one-off comment by the Iron Mountain CEO, William Meaney. On a 2018 earnings call, he invoked a Native American ritual, telling participants that “it’s kind of like a rain dance, I pray for inflation every day I come to work because … our top line is really driven by inflation. … Every point of inflation expands our margins.”

https://theintercept.com/2022/09/28/inflation-prices-investors-iron-mountain/

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23074979-iron-mountain-inc-investor-day-final

[Irish_Dem]

1. We are supposed to be grateful that the GOP/oligarchs let us have indoor plumbing.

Unlike their Russian counterparts.

[dchill]

2. Guy wears his pride in his greed like a Nazi armband.

Karma awaits.

[Zambero]

3. G.O.D.

$$$$$ Greed Over Decency $$$$$

Whenever 12 billion in market assets isn't quite enough, pray to Lord Republican Jesus for a boost in profits at the expense of others who are "less worthy".

[patphil]

4. Yeah, profit is everything.

When I worked for Lederle Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company, many years ago, a company vice-president addressed the Quality Control/Quality Assurance staff and told them, "We don't want to find a cure for diseases. Do that and you lose a customer. What we want is to create a medication that relieves symptoms and provides for a reasonable quality of life, but needs to be taken for the rest of their life".
That amounts to 10's of thousands of dollars as opposed to perhaps 100 dollars.

This is the corporate mentality...profit above all else.

[appalachiablue]

6. True greedhead, what I've always thought about pharma. For shame.

[SWBTATTReg]

5. Ah, predatory capitalism at its' best!

Disgusting.