Ikea’s new CEO Juvencio Maeztu is calling to tell me about the Ingka Group’s latest earnings (that’s the parent company behind Ikea). As it turns out, there are worse fates than a company making a little less money than it did last year.
In August, Ingka Group announced that its long-time CEO Jesper Brodin would be stepping down, as Maeztu took the role. An economist by training, Maeztu has worked at the company for more than 25 years, and brings a powerful international perspective to the position—having started as a store manager in Madrid, before eventually taking over as CEO of Ikea India. For the past seven years, he’s served as deputy CEO and CFO under Brodin.
We spoke around the release of Ingka’s 2025 financial earnings, which Maeztu characterizes to me as “mostly flat.” Revenue is down 0.9% (to €41.5 billion) as the company fights inflation to keep prices low. Tariffs have yet to fully enter the equation in these figures—but Trump’s 50% tariffs on furniture announced in September were significant enough that Ikea raised prices to help offset them.
On the brighter side, store traffic was up 1.3%, online sales were up 4.6%, and overall item sales grew 1.6%.
In our conversation—representing some of Maetzu’s first public comments since being appointed to the position—he detailed his biggest priorities for the company, while addressing the challenges of operating a budget-friendly furniture business in a volatile global economy.
