Klarna Pauses IPO, Report Says, a Blow to the 2025 Market for Deals
Fintech firm Klarna has halted its planned
initial public offering (IPO)
after President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs announcement, according to a report.
The
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL)
company, which was founded in Sweden and redomiciled to the U.K. last year, "was set to launch marketing shares for the offering Monday, but decided this week to postpone,"
The Wall Street Journal
reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The news clouds the 2025 outlook for the IPO market, which after Trump's reelection was seen as poised to
shake off recent doldrums
; several other planned offerings may also now be on hold, the
Journal
reported. Klarna declined to respond to
Investopedia's
request for comment.
Klarna last month
filed a registration statement
with the
Securities and Exchange Commission
, applying to list on the
New York Stock Exchange
using the symbol "KLAR." Prior to the filing,
Bloomberg had
reported that Klarna was targeting a valuation of
more than $15 billion
in its New York listing.
Recent IPOs have met with mixed results. Nvidia-backed cloud-computing company CoreWeave (
CRWV
), which went public a week ago, is down 15% today but still trades above
its IPO price
. Conservative media company Newsmax (
NMAX
), which began trading earlier this week, is off more than 20% today—and well off highs seen just a few days ago—but also well above
its IPO price
.
The
Journal
on Thursday reported that ticket-selling platform StubHub postponed its own
planned listing
. A StubHub spokesperson declined to comment.
UPDATE—This story has been updated with StubHub's response.