Whirlpool CEO Says Company Is About To Run Face-First Into $1 Billion In Inflation Costs

Whirlpool is the latest in a growing line of companies publicly stating that inflation has been a headwind for their business. Whirlpool CEO Marc Bitzer said yesterday that his company is going to run face first into $1 billion worth of inflation this year. 

“We have raised prices across the globe and we feel we are in a pretty good position to mitigate the effects of raw materials,” Bitzer said yesterday, according to Yahoo.

He noted that “peak increases” due to inflation would be materializing in the current quarter. 

Despite the headwind, Whirlpool is aiming to try and not raise prices with hopes that inflation could subside heading into 2022. Good luck with that.

Bitzer continued: “Right now we feel like we are in a good position to deal with what we saw coming. We have been pretty predictable in terms of raw materials and pretty stable in terms of our outlook.”

He also commented that “we don’t feel good, we are letting consumers down,” when asked about issues the company was having meeting demand. 

Bitzer concluded: “They need new appliances because for many people right now they have been using appliances a lot more in the last year than any time before. You have high consumption. People need to replace certain appliances and we of course, feel really bad about having so many consumers waiting for our appliances.”

 “If current trends persist, there will be a carryover of inflation to next year. At the appropriate point, we will quantify how much of a carryover will be there.”

Recall, we noted just days ago that automaker Stellantis’ CEO said he could see inflationary pressure “very clearly”. His exact words were: “I see the inflationary pressure very clearly. I see inflation coming from many different areas.”

Days before that we wrote about how paint company PPG, who supplies to major manufacturers like Ford and Boeing, is raising the prices of its paint and coatings solely as a result of “inflation in raw material and logistics costs”.

PPG’s CEO commented earlier this month: “What we’re obviously studying now is the need to be out with a third set of price increases. Inflation is across-the-board, it’s obvious and customers don’t have a lot of good ways to counter the argument that we need to have price relief.”

And it isn’t like PPG is just a localized business experiencing a one-off in costs: the company is in more than 70 countries and is still “feeling the pinch from the prices of oil, freight and distribution going up and raw materials running scarce”. 

Chief Executive Officer Michael McGarry continued: “I’m not seeing this as transitory. This work-from-home phenomenon is going to lead to additional wage inflation, because people are going to have the opportunities to figure out where they want to work.”