Klarna Group Plc and some of its shareholders are seeking to raise as much as $1.27 billion as the financial-technology company revives a New York initial public offering that was delayed earlier this year amid market volatility.
The company and some of its backers are offering 34.3 million shares for $35 to $37 apiece, according to a filing Tuesday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. At the top of the range, the company would have a market value of about $14 billion based on the outstanding shares listed in the filing.
Klarna plans to sell 5.6 million shares in the offering, and selling holders — including executives, co-founder Victor Jacobsson, entities related to Sequoia Capital and Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen’s Heartland A/S — are set to offer 28.8 million shares. The IPO is expected to price Sept. 9, according to terms of the deal seen by Bloomberg News.
The US IPO market is poised to continue a hot streak of recent activity into the coming months. First-time share sales have raised $24.3 billion this year, excluding closed-end funds and other financial vehicles, comfortably ahead of the $20.4 billion raised in the same period in 2024, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Along with Klarna, Gemini Space Station Inc., the crypto exchange led by the billionaire Winklevoss twins, Blackstone Inc.-backed engineering firm Legence Corp. and Black Rock Coffee Bar Inc. kicked off formal marketing of their listings on Tuesday.
Klarna filed publicly for its IPO with the US SEC in March, but paused its plans as US President Donald Trump’s trade war shook markets in April. Other fintech firms that delayed IPOs have since gone ahead with them, including EToro Group Ltd. and Chime Financial Inc.
Sequoia Capital is expected to have about 22 percent of the voting power after the offering, the filing shows.
Digital Bank Push
Founded in Stockholm, Klarna rose to prominence as a provider of so-called buy now, pay later financing, which grew in popularity during a pandemic-era boom in online shopping. Under chief executive officer Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the company is making a push to become a global digital bank, aiming to sign customers up for debit cards and other products.
Shares of rival Affirm Holdings Inc. have rallied 45 percent this year.
While Klarna is best-known for its short-term loans, it’s been expanding its offering of its “fair financing” product, which allows customers to pay off larger-ticket items over a longer period of time.
For now, such loans amount to about 2 percent of Klarna’s total transactions. The company expects that share to grow after the number of merchants offering the fair financing loans doubled in the last two years.
Klarna is required to book larger provisions for potential credit losses on the longer-term loans, which has weighed on its reported results in recent quarters. It warned in Tuesday’s filing that it expects the expansion of the fair financing product to have a near-term negative impact on results.
The company had a net loss of $153 million on total revenue of $1.52 billion for the six months ended June 30, compared with a net loss of $38 million on total revenue of $1.33 billion in the corresponding period a year earlier, according to the filing.
The offering is being led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley and lists 11 other firms working on the deal, the filing shows. Klarna plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol KLAR.
By Matthew Griffin and Aisha S Gani