Klarna lists on the New York Stock Exchange
Shares in buy-now, pay-later lender Klarna founded by Sebastian Siemiatkowski in Sweden in 2005, jumped on their first day of public trading in the US, giving the firm a market value of more than $19bn.
Founded in 2005, the company is known for allowing shoppers to pay for purchases in smaller, interest-free instalments and has proven popular, with more than 100 million active users across 26 countries. The NY stock exchange debut marks a significant milestone for the Swedish lending giant, which has cast itself as a challenger to credit cards and traditional banks.
Klarna is the largest Swedish company to list its shares in the U.S. since Spotify.
The company is trading under the symbol “KLAR”. While Klarna was founded in Sweden and is a popular payment service in Europe, company executives said they made the decision to go public in the US as a signal that Klarna’s future growth opportunities lay with the American shopper.
“It’s the largest consumer market in the world, and it’s the biggest credit card market in the world. It’s a tremendous opportunity, from our perspective,” said CEO and co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski in an interview with The Associated Press ahead of the IPO.
With Klarna going public, its co-founders are now billionaires. At Klarna’s IPO price of $40, Siemiatkowski’s 7% stake in the company is worth around $1bn (€850 million), while Victor Jacobsson, who left the company in 2012, owns an 8.4% stake in the company now worth $1.3bn (€1.11bn). Siemiatkowski said he did not sell shares as part of the IPO.
