The number of shares to be listed and the price of the share that Klarna is aiming for have not yet been determined, the company writes in a press release.
However, in fresh calculations from analysts, the valuation of the entire Klarna is circling around 150 billion kronor, while news agency Bloomberg's sources in August stated that Klarna is aiming for a valuation of around 200 billion kronor in the listing.
Dagens Industri was the first to report on the preliminary application submitted to the SEC on Tuesday.
When market conditions permit
According to Klarna, the listing is expected to take place after the SEC has completed its review process, when market conditions are right. Klarna's co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has previously stated to TT that Klarna is ready for listing and that it's just a matter of timing.
According to press chief Joel Hedin, Klarna will not provide any further details about the plans for the potential listing beyond the information provided in the press release.
Klarna – a financial conglomerate built around the successes of the Swedish buy-now-pay-later solution – has undergone a transformation ahead of the planned listing.
During the year, the company has, among other things, sold the payment service Klarna Checkout and invested in physical payment cards with a connection to Visa, and around a third of transactions are now direct payments.
Klarna now also offers transaction accounts with interest for deposits, transfers, and payments. With transaction accounts, there are also tools for managing cashback offers in online stores.
Ownership dispute ahead of listing
An ownership dispute has also unfolded in Klarna ahead of the listing. This has, among other things, resulted in board member Mikael Walthers – who represented co-founder Victor Jacobsson on the board – being forced to leave his position at a meeting in London in October.
According to the Financial Times, the dispute has, among other things, concerned a bonus program for Sebastian Siemiatkowski and share classes that give greater influence to early investors than other owners after a listing.
Klarna's interim report for the third quarter is expected at the end of November. For the first half of the year, Klarna reported in August an adjusted operating profit of 673 million kronor and a revenue increase of 27 percent to 13.3 billion kronor.
In a financing round in 2021, the financial conglomerate Klarna was valued at 46 billion dollars (approximately 410 billion kronor, calculated at the then-current exchange rate). The following year, the valuation had collapsed to 6.7 billion.
Since then, it has mostly been trending upward. This year, the valuation has been raised by many evaluators. Most analyses seem to be landing around 150 billion, among other things, based on analysts' calculations of the value of Klarna shares controlled by Chrysalis Investment and Blackrock.
According to Bloomberg's information from August, Klarna is now aiming for a valuation of 200 billion kronor when the listing is made.
