The Use and Abuse of Profitability Analysis in Excessive Pricing Cases - World Competition View The Use and Abuse of Profitability Analysis in Excessive Pricing Cases by - World Competition The Use and Abuse of Profitability Analysis in Excessive Pricing Cases 49 2 On 23 October 2025, the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) handed down a landmark judgment in Kent v. Apple in which it concluded that Apple had abused a dominant position by charging excessive and unfair prices. In reaching its conclusion, the Tribunal sought to rely on a profitability analysis carried out by the claimant’s experts and rejected Apple’s argument that no meaningful analysis could be carried out. The difficulties in conducting a profitability analyses have been identified many times in UK market investigations, with the issues being particularly pronounced in digital and knowledge-based industries. This article seeks to highlight some of the key challenges in carrying out this type of analysis, which have resulted in the CMA either abandoning or deciding not to pursue the analysis in certain market studies and market investigations, and the relevance of those challenges to excessive pricing cases under the Competition Act 1998. In particular, at what point do the measurement errors become so great that that the results are neither robust nor reliable? World Competition