Swedish buy now, pay later startup Klarna and its shareholders are reviving its initial public offering. The company hopes to raise as much as $1.27 billion in a listing that would value it at up to $14 billion.
The company and some of its shareholders are together selling approximately 34.3 million shares, priced between $35 and $37 each. Klarna would receive proceeds from about 5.6 million shares, while its shareholders are offloading nearly 29 million shares. The company plans to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol KLAR.
Klarna has long been expected to go public, thanks to the massive success of its lending model following the post-pandemic boom. Six years after launching in the U.S., the company hit a valuation of more than $45 billion in 2021. However, Klarna postponed its IPO plans as the market turned at the end of the zero-interest rate period era. Its valuation declined by 85% to $6.5 billion when the 2021 venture capital valuation bubble burst.
Despite this, Klarna has been growing well. Its revenue rose 54% to $823 million in the second quarter compared to a year earlier, thanks to a 14% increase in its gross merchandise value to $6.9 billion. The company’s bottom line remains in the red, with a net loss of $53 million. However, that figure is 42% less than its net loss of $92 million a year earlier.
Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley are leading the offering. Several other banks are also working on the deal, including BofA Securities, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, and UBS.