A renewed rise in shop prices would normally spell trouble for shoppers, but Shore Capital, the broker, reads August's pick-up as a welcome positive for Britain's supermarket shares.
The monthly BRC-NIQ Shop Price Index, an industry measure of prices across UK retailers, climbed to 1.5% in August, up 60 basis points on July.
For Clive Black, the analyst behind the note, the significance lies less in the headline figure than in what it says about the grocery sector's punishing summer.
Black had been surprised by how shallow food inflation stayed through the warmer months, which he puts down to fierce competition among the big grocers squeezing margins.
On that reading, the August uptick marks a return towards normality, with food inflation edging back to the broker's 3.0% to 5.0% forecast for the second half.
The standout detail sits in non-food, where Shore Capital flags the global artificial intelligence boom feeding through to the price of household electricals.
Rising demand for memory chips and data storage, driven by the AI build-out, is lifting component costs and, in turn, what shoppers pay for electronics.
Clothing tells the opposite tale, with discounting evident before the back-to-school season after a testing year for the British high street.
Pressure is building elsewhere too, with Brent crude still near $86 a barrel and household energy bills set to rise about 4% from October.
Black warns that oil costs, absorbed so far by earlier hedging, will start to bite as those hedges roll onto higher terms into 2027.
He sees the pressure lifting wider consumer price inflation towards 3.0% to 4.0%, even as the Bank of England holds interest rates to the year-end.
The backdrop for spending, though, looks firmer than the political mood implies, with June pay awards of 4.1% running ahead of inflation of 2.9%.
That gap prompts Black to question the familiar cost of living crisis framing, at least for households above the very lowest earners.
For Andy Burnham, six weeks into his premiership, the mix is awkward, with dearer essentials and an October Budget hanging over a fragile revival in consumer confidence.
