STRATEGY
IKEA cut prices while rivals chased the affluent, and profit rose
Ingka Group, the largest IKEA franchisee, absorbed a 0.9% revenue decline to 41.5 billion euros in fiscal year 2025 while deliberately cutting prices, yet operating income rose 16.8% to 1.46 billion euros and store visits reached 736 million. Chief Executive Juvencio Maeztu said the main measure of success is not top-line revenue but the number of homes the company is present in.
Maeztu noted that IKEA's founder instructed the company to think 200 years out, a horizon that reframes what a price cut is for. Competing firms responded to a squeezed American middle class by tailoring offerings to affluent buyers and using artificial intelligence to defend margins, a sequence that answers the immediate pressure on the quarter rather than the shape of the customer base a business intends to still have.
Source: Fortune · September 15, 2026