Sweden's Klarna swings to loss as fast growth hikes costs, shares fall 23%

By Supantha Mukherjee

STOCKHOLM, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Swedish "buy now, pay later" services provider and online bank Klarna KLARN.N swung to a net loss in the fourth quarter and gave weaker-than-expected guidance for 2026 as fast growth also hiked costs, sending the U.S.-listed group's shares down 23% in early trade on Thursday.

Klarna's net loss for the October to December period stood at $26 million against a profit of $40 million a year earlier, missing an average forecast loss of $9.8 million expected in an LSEG poll of analysts.

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said that the company's rapid growth weighed on results as costs were booked up front while the revenue and profit would come later.

"As growth comes down a little bit, that will start to play out very favourably," Siemiatkowski told Reuters.

Quarterly revenue at the fintech group, which went public in New York in September, crossed the billion-dollar mark for the first time, rising 38% year on year to $1.08 billion, while analysts on average forecast sales of $1.07 billion.

"The company is growing fast, and evidently the transition from scaling to engagement and lending growth is weighing on some KPIs (key performance indicators)," JPMorgan wrote in a note to clients.

Higher processing and funding costs were key reasons for the weaker than expected results, and the outlook for 2026 was also below expectation, the analysts wrote.

The company's share price fell 23% to a record low of $14.53 by 1457 GMT.

Klarna has said early adoption of AI across operations has helped it shrink its workforce despite rapid expansion, and it has used part of the savings to raise wages. Siemiatkowski said on Thursday the average employee compensation had risen 60% since 2022.

"More and more of the jobs at Klarna that will exist even in an AI-powered world will be about human relationships, whether it's a relationship with our merchants or relationship with our consumers," Siemiatkowski said.