Klarna worth $ 31 billion after financing round
No time right now?
Klarna is said to be about to complete a financing round that would bring a billion US dollars into the coffers of the Swedish fintech. Klarna would then be worth 31 billion.
In September 2020 Klarna had raised $ 650 million in the last financing round to date. The payment service provider from Sweden was valued at eleven billion dollars. A new round of financing, which is to be completed in the next few days, would now value Klarna at $ 31 billion. A number of investors are said to be pumping another billion into the fintech.
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How initially Bloomberg and now also CNBC citing company insiders report, the billion dollar capital injection should have been filled within just one week. The interest was huge, as they say. The financing round is to be officially announced in the coming days. Then Klarna would be Europe’s largest unicorn by far. So far, this is the title of the British payment service provider Checkout.com, which is worth around 15 billion dollars.
It is not yet known who the investors are. According to Bloomberg, these should (also) be existing investors. The largest shareholders to date include Atomico, Sequoia Capital, Blackrock, the Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and HMI Capital. In addition, H&M as well as Snoop Dogg and the Chinese Ant Group are also involved in Klarna. Early investors like Sequioa in particular are likely to bet on cashing in on a possible IPO.
Klarna aims to go public in 2021 or 2022
Klarna could go public this year, as founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told CNBC. But it is also possible that the IPO will not take place until 2022. An IPO is being planned, but the official process has not yet started. How quickly the IPO takes place depends on how quickly the new CFO, the former HSBC manager Niclas Neglen, has found his way into his role.
Klarna posted sales of one billion dollars for the first time last year. The operating income was therefore $ 1.2 billion. Because of the cost of international expansion, however, losses have also increased – by 53 percent to around $ 109.2 million. Founded in 2005, the Swedish fintech makes its living by charging traders a fee for processing transactions. Klarna recently launched its own checking account in Germany.
