By Marie Mannes
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Inter IKEA's annual profit more than doubled as cost pressures eased, the owner of the world's biggest furniture brand said on Friday, allowing it to cut prices and predict more reductions in the months ahead.
The company, which supplies the stores to which it franchises the IKEA brand, made a pretax profit of 1.95 billion euros ($2.07 billion) in the year through August, up from 931 million a year earlier when it struggled with high costs and the effects of closing its Russian factories.
Chief Financial Officer Martin Van Dam told Reuters that results were returning to normal after a disrupted 2022.
"We were trying to make sure the retailer had the right price, and with the delay of (higher) prices we ended up harboring a lot of the costs that year. If you look at FY21, the returns are similar to now," van Dam said.
The company said it would continue to lower prices as long as costs fell further.
"Costs trending downwards should positively affect prices for IKEA customers in the coming year and beyond," it said in a statement.
While Inter IKEA had started lowering prices to its franchisees in the last four months of its financial year, it would take some time before the customers in stores would feel the full effect of the decreases, van Dam said.
($1 = 0.9431 euros)