On the day of its debut on the New York Stock Exchange, shares of Swedish online bank Klarna jumped 43% from the initial public offering price, and ended trading up almost 15%. The capitalization of the fintech startup was $17 billion. Klarna's successful IPO was another sign of Wall Street's growing interest in new issuers, according to CNBC.

Details

During the first trades Klarna shares jumped by 43% from the set IPO price - up to $57.2, but by the end of the session the growth of quotations slowed down. The shares ended the day at $46.4. This is 14.6% higher than the initial price. The whole company was valued at $17.3 billion by the closing.

Klarna, known for its popular buy-now-pay-later products, offered 34.3 million shares at $40 a share, well above the top end of its stated price range ($35-37). As a result, the IPO raised $1.37 billion.

"This is a really significant milestone for me," Klarna co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told CNBC. - It's a little bit like a wedding. You spend a long time preparing, planning everything, throwing a party. But in the end - family life begins."

Who gained and who lost from the IPO

The offering will bring billions of dollars of profit to Klarna's longtime investors. They are the ones who brought to the market the main part of securities - 28.8 mln shares. At the offering price of $40, this is equivalent to more than $1.2 billion. The company itself raised $222 million.

Sequoia Capital, which first invested in Klarna in 2010, invested a total of $500 million. At the IPO, the venture fund sold 2 million of its 79 million shares, earning about $2.65 billion based on the offering price, CNBC calculated.

But not all investors have been so lucky. Japan's SoftBank led Klarna's funding round in 2021, when the company was valued at $46 billion. Since then, the value of its stake has plummeted.

Context

The Klarna IPO continued a string of high-profile public offerings by tech startups this year, signaling Wall Street's growing interest in new securities, CNBC noted. Earlier, shares of companies such as steiblecoin issuer Circle and design platform Figma rose sharply in value. Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini is expected to IPO on Sept. 12. Klarna's listing was the fourth largest fundraising in New York in 2025 after Venture Global ($1.75 billion), CoreWeave ($1.5 billion) and SailPoint ($1.38 billion).

Klarna's going public will be a test of how much Wall Street believes in the future development of the business, the channel said. In recent months, the company has focused on expanding its banking services, launching a debit card and personal savings accounts in the US.

The company may face regulatory difficulties, warns CNBC. For example, in the UK, the authorities have proposed new rules that would formally subject the BNPL loan market to supervision in order to combat the possible inaccessibility of such services to consumers.

According to the IPO prospectus, in the first half of 2025, the company's revenue increased by 15% to $1.5 billion. Net loss for the half-year amounted to $152 million - almost 5 times more than a year earlier. At the same time, the startup ended 2024 with a profit of $21 million against a loss of $244 million in 2023.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor

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