5min chapter

Fintech Business Podcast cover image

Interview: Klarna's Chief Commercial Officer David Sykes

Fintech Business Podcast

CHAPTER

Klarna's Recent Performance and Fundraise

Klarna was valued at 46 billion, the most valuable startup in Europe. The company has been around significantly longer than a lot of other fintech companies. Klarna pivoted from a growth mindset to one that balanced both growth and profitability.

00:00
Speaker 2
You've hit on one of my favorite topics, which is the, you know, rewards points specifically on credit cards, functioning as a transfer of wealth. I mean, it's interesting. I wrote maybe a couple months back about some academic analysis that said exactly that. And it was basically, or customers below, there's like 740 FICO or 780 FICO functionally, you know, it was an economic net negative even with whether it was cashback or miles or whatever. Because even in cases where they were paying their entire bill on time, the points were inducing them to overspend. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And there's, you know, a wealth of sort of academic research that bears this out around like, okay, if you're paying something with cash, it's physical cash, which I know, you know, who uses that anymore. Even in New York, last couple of times I visited, I could use my card everywhere. If you're heading over a physical cash, it's painful, you know, it's higher friction. Maybe you think twice about it. Debit is easier. You know, credit allows you to sort of disaggregate the pleasure of purchasing and the pain of making that payment, you know, 20, 30, 40 days later. I do want to ask you some questions about some of the, you know, the recent performance, fundraise, etc. You know, media loves a narrative. And I don't know if I'm officially part of the media. I try not to sort of buy into the hype cycles. But during sort of the height of the pandemic, you know, you guys raised a huge round, led by SoftBank, valued the company at 46 billion, most valuable startup in Europe. You know, obviously, where we are now in 2023 looks a lot different for a lot of reasons, you know, obvious one being interest rate, interest rate environment has changed. That has impacted the VC environment, valuations of growth companies, private and public, you know, not certainly not specific, you know, to Klarna. You know, I tend to think of this as like a rationalization of the valuations, you know, across the board. Klarna is relatively unique in the sense that it's been around significantly longer than a lot of other, you know, fintech companies, 18 years ish by my calculations and was previously profitable. Can you tell us a little bit about what the last couple of years have been like? Yeah,
Speaker 1
look, it's been a rollercoaster ride. Like, I'm not going to find one, I hope. Fun one for anybody in the, for anybody in the sector, it's been, you know, it's been an interesting ride. Look, I think, I think what happened is, you know, it's exactly what you want to take a little bit, particularly ride, you know, interest rates were placed at zero, cash was, you know, effectively free, and investors were prioritizing growth. And those high valuations actually enabled Klarna to raise, you know, quite a lot of capital, in a very non-dilutive fashion, that really put us in the position that we are in state. Like, you know, America, or the United States is only our largest market by revenue because of the investment that we were able to make the last two years. And so when I look back on those investments, like, you know, why in large, we always make the right decisions, you know, on aggregate, you know, the investments we made propelled us to being the company we are today, and to, you know, situations where like, no, we start to see, you know, positive margins in markets like the United States ride. And I think the big change is just a change of focus, you know, two years ago, growth was the priority, and future cash flows, whereas now it's, you know, now it's a profitability ride. And I think the great thing about Klarna was that almost like the underlying work that had been done for, you know, 15, 16 years before the real growth phase, just put us in a great position like the underlying business was extremely healthy. It wasn't one of these speculative, fueled by venture business models, the underlying business was great. We were just investing a lot the growth, we were just investing a lot the growth. And you can see that in, you know, our latest results, right? So basically, the moment we pivoted from a growth, a solely growth mindset to a mindset that was balanced on both, you know, maintaining growth, which you can see, but also, you know, getting back to profitability, you know, we were actually able to, you know, course direct pretty fast, you know, you know, I think you'll see us on a, on a, on a month basis, you know, hit profitability this year, just on what the trajectory that, that we were able to have losses, you see things like, you know, our credit losses are down 35%, you know, year on year, but we're growing. And I think that's really exciting. Like, for most of the other players in the sector, you know, one of two things has happened. If they're racing back to profitability, they're doing it at the expense of growth. You know, they've just pulled the handbrake up. In many instances, you see GMB declining, you see customer numbers declining, right? I think the fact that we're on track to hit, you know, hit our goals of, you know, being, you know, net, net, net this year, while still growing fairly healthily, I think is a, I think is a, not, not just an indicator of the hard work everybody's done. I think it's an indicator of the fundamentals of the underlying business. And that is why we were profitable for, you know, for a decade before, you know, the real growth
Speaker 2
by the growth phase.

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