Hi, Rachel Pupazzoni jumping in with some news on the cost of living.

Higher prices to consumers has lifted Woolworths Group's profits in the first six months of the financial year.

The group's businesses include Woolworths, Big W, Pet Culture and Healthy Life.

The company's net profit after tax was up 14 per cent to $907 million.

But net profit from continuing operations was up 25 per cent to $845 million.

The numbers can get a little confusing, and a big part of that is because Woolworths split off Endeavour Group — its alcohol and pubs business — which was reflected in the prior results.

But this table from their results presentation is pretty telling.

The table above separates out the food part of the business.

You'll see in the table an 18.2 per cent increase in earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) for the category.

Gross margins rose (up 0.48 of a percentage point) while the cost of doing business (CODB) fell (0.3 of a percentage point).

That meant the supermarket earned more profit for each dollar of sales it made (the profit to sales ratio jumped by 0.78 of a percentage point to 5.9 per cent) as it imposed price increases on consumers.

These sound like small numbers, but they add up when you are making more than $24 billion worth of sales.

In presenting the results, Woolworths chief executive officer Brad Banducci noted the impacts of COVID have been replaced by rising inflation.

Like Coles yesterday, Woolworths noted price inflation was up 7.7 per cent  in the second quarter of the half.

"Cost of living pressures are being felt by our customers due to industry-wide inflation," Mr Banducci noted.

"Delivering value is our priority."

He said there's been a noticeable reduction in red meat sales, replaced with chicken, as people change their shopping behaviors to offset rising costs.

I'll be looking more at this story for The Business and ABC News tonight, so once you've logged off the blog at the end of today, tune in on your TV tonight for more.