SWISS food giant Nestle SA is unlikely to raise sales prices further in the near term as costs of many ingredients have already peaked, its chairman said yesterday.
"You are now seeing the impact of price increases which were done some months ago," Peter Brabeck-Letmathe said in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires. "I would expect this to flatten out over the next several months and not increase any more as our costs have come down."
Brabeck-Letmathe, who recently stepped down as CEO of the Switzerland-based food-product maker, said "the worst is probably past" for prices of raw materials such as coffee, cocoa, and milk.
He also said the company is unlikely to make acquisitions any larger than US$200 million to US$300 million in the near term because of the scarcity of attractive targets.
Nestle has no firm plan to sell its 29-percent stake in cosmetics giant L'Oreal, but Brabeck-Letmathe said management will review such a possibility after a lockup agreement expires next year.