Klarna hits 100 million users as revenue and onetime costs jump

Klarna Group Plc reported a $92 million pretax loss for the first three months of the year due to onetime costs such as staff share awards and preparations for its now-paused initial public offering.

The Stockholm-based fintech said Monday its like-for-like revenue rose 15% from the same period last year to $701 million. On an underlying basis, Klarna said it’s had four consecutive profitable quarters. 

Klarna now has 100 million active customers using its buy-now-pay-later and other services, along with 724,000 merchant partners. In the US, its largest market, Klarna reported a 33% rise in quarterly revenue compared to a year ago. 

“AI is helping us work smarter, scale faster and deliver more value, from customer support and marketing to insights and product development,” Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Sebastian Siemiatkowski said in a video presented by his own AI avatar.

The firm said it has reduced its workforce by about 40% since 2022 as it automated more customer service duties, and Siemiatkowski said Klarna was “on track to hit $1 million in revenue per employee.”

Earlier this year, Klarna filed for a US IPO in what was expected to be one of the year’s biggest financial company listings. The firm was seeking to raise at least $1 billion at a valuation of more than $15 billion, Bloomberg News reported. 

But the firm paused the float after Donald Trump’s sprawling tariff announcement on April 2 sent shockwaves through global equities. Since then, several fintechs have moved ahead with their plans for stock market debuts, including Chime and Etoro. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com