Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO and co-founder of Swedish fintech company Klarna, gives a thumbs up during the company’s IPO on the New York Stock Exchange on September 10, 2025 in New York City, USA.
Brendan McDiarmid | Reuters
Klarna exceeded Wall Street’s third-quarter sales expectations in its first earnings report since going public on the New York Stock Exchange in September.
Here’s how the company performed compared to LSEG’s expectations:
Revenue: $903 million vs. $882 million expected.
Revenue increased 26% from $706 million in the same period last year. The company reported a net loss of $95 million, down from the same period last year, when net income was $12 million.
The buy now, pay later company said it was driven by strong growth in the United States, where total distribution volume increased 43% year-on-year. Total merchandise volume, which represents goods sold, increased 25% to $32.7 billion from $26.2 billion a year ago.
The adoption of features such as Klarna Card and FairFinance, which offer longer installment options for larger purchases, has contributed to US profits. The feature offers a variety of interest rates, and total circulation has more than tripled from a year ago.
Since launching in July, the fintech company announced that Klarna Card has reached more than 4 million customers and accounted for 15% of transactions by October.
CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said fair lending had doubled the number of users from a year ago, but only about a fifth of merchants. That creates a “tremendous opportunity” for Khurana, he told CNBC.
“We want to be there to help people save time, save money and manage their finances, but that’s clearly not what we’ve been about,” he said, adding that Klarna would continue to strive for that reputation.
Although the number of merchants increased 38% to 850,000 from 616,000 in the same period last year, average revenue per active customer decreased by about 10%.
Klarna went public on the New York Stock Exchange about two months ago after postponing plans for an initial public offering in April as President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff plans roiled financial markets.
Stocks have fallen in recent weeks as concerns have grown over the possibility of an AI bubble with soaring valuations. There are also growing concerns about a slowdown in consumer spending.
Klarna shares have fallen by more than a third from their highs.
Siemiatkowski said the company has not yet seen “significant differences” in collections or spending habits due to microenvironment, but is keeping an eye on the wave of AI that is slated to impact more white-collar careers.
Klarna has been betting big on artificial intelligence for years. Simiyatkowski told CNBC in May that the technology, combined with layoffs, has allowed fintech companies to reduce their workforce by 40%.
According to him, natural attrition is as high as 20%.
Khurana is not alone. Palantir, sales force and Amazon The company has warned that it plans to cut staff and slow hiring as a result of adopting AI.
Simiyatkowski said AI ties in with the company’s “customer-focused” ethos and has reduced the average time to resolve customer service issues to less than two minutes.
Companies that only use AI or robots to interact with customers are “making a big mistake because they want to have that human connection,” Siemiatkowski said. “There’s great value there.”
