Klarna plunged to the most important annual loss within the Swedish “purchase now, pay later” firm’s historical past, however claimed it was on monitor to return to revenue because it reduce credit score losses on the finish of the 12 months.

The privately held Swedish fintech, whose valuation was slashed from $46bn in 2021 to $6.7bn in June 2022, made an annual web lack of SKr10.4bn ($1bn), a 47 per cent enhance in contrast with 2021.

However within the fourth quarter, it greater than halved its web losses from SKr4.6bn a 12 months earlier to SKr1.9bn in 2022. Credit score losses have been SKr1.4bn within the fourth quarter, an enchancment of 18 per cent on the identical interval in 2021.

“We’re making concrete progress in the direction of profitability, concurrently driving development effectively forward of ecommerce and decreasing credit score losses and prices,” mentioned Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Klarna’s chief government.

Klarna grew to become a logo of the exuberance of the fintech growth, changing into Europe’s highest valued non-public firm as on-line procuring boomed through the Covid-19 pandemic, earlier than it was humbled by an 85 per cent reduce in its valuation and a ten per cent discount of its workforce.

Siemiatkowski informed the Monetary Occasions in November that he anticipated the corporate to start out making earnings once more by August or September this 12 months, though he warned it might make a full-year loss in 2023. It final made an annual revenue in 2018, a quarterly revenue within the second quarter of 2019 and a month-to-month revenue in August 2020.