From Our Print Edition

“First, the cost increases are real, right? We are seeing it in our supply base. I think they’re seeing it in ingredients, packaging, transportation, labor, and we are seeing it in our own business.

The inflation we have passed through is less than the inflation we’ve incurred. We are judicious about the categories where we pass it through; we don’t pass through as much on the essential categories that customers need every day, and we try to balance that out.

As inflation goes up, you don’t see the same degree of unit growth, but it’s stable. I’ll characterize what we’ve seen over the last several weeks as very stable in terms of total consumption. And we hope as the year goes through, this inflation remains at this level, stabilizes and then hopefully we get something better in the second half.” n

— Vivek Sankaran, CEO, Albertsons Companies, in Jan. 11 conference call with securities analysts