Good morning. Niclas Neglén helped take Klarna public in September 2025. Now, after six years as CFO, he’s leaving—alongside David Sandström, the company’s chief marketing officer of nearly a decade—in a leadership transition. The changes were announced the same day Klarna tempered its full-year guidance and watched its stock fall about 22%. Both executives will transition out of their roles by early 2027.
Klarna, a Sweden-based buy-now-pay-later company, is a digital bank and payments provider with nearly 120 million global active users. Companies such as Apple, Nike, and Sephora offer Klarna as a payment option for their shoppers. It trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker KLAR. Klarna is backed by Sequoia Capital, which has invested in the company since 2010 and remains its largest institutional shareholder.
On Tuesday, the company reported second-quarter diluted earnings per share of $0.01, beating Wall Street’s expectations, while revenue increased 27% year over year to approximately $1.04 billion. Klarna also reported a surprise $9 million net profit. However, Klarna tempered expectations for full-year revenue and volume growth, cutting its full-year revenue outlook to $4.08 billion–$4.16 billion, citing weakness in German retail spending, its largest market in Europe.
Shares fell an additional 2.19% on Wednesday, closing the regular trading session at $14.73 per share.
“Transaction margin dollar guidance was raised for the full year but still fell short of our expectations,” Niklas Kammer, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, wrote in an analyst note on Wednesday. Visibility into Klarna’s volume growth trajectory has declined, resulting in a material 2-percentage-point-per-year reduction in our volume growth expectations, he wrote.
Neglén played a key role at Klarna, building the finance organization and taking the company public. He has been “a trusted partner to me and the board through six years of growth and change,” Sebastian Siemiatkowski, co-founder and CEO of Klarna, said in a statement. The company said it has begun a search for a New York-based CFO.
The CFO and CMO transitions were not the result of any disagreement with Klarna on matters related to the company’s operations, policies, or practices, the company said in a statement.
I asked Shawn Cole, president and founding partner of executive search firm Cowen Partners, for his assessment of the CFO change. “It’s a natural transition for any company,” Cole told me. Neglén’s tenure and accomplishments at Klarna are significant, he said. “What the company needed to go public may not be what it needs as a public company,” he added.
He continued: “I would also assume that having the CFO based in London created some strain, particularly now that Klarna is U.S.-listed. The fact that the company called out New York in the press release is of note. Foreign companies often use New York as a prestige and capital-markets signal because of its proximity to investors, analysts, and the exchanges.”
The CFO mandate now shifts toward a more strategic, external-facing finance leader with deep U.S. public company experience, capital markets expertise, credit and balance-sheet sophistication, and experience in banking and regulated financial markets, Cole said. “That is not a difficult profile to find in New York,” he said.
Klarna’s new CFO will need to be a pro at navigating Wall Street.
Sheryl Estrada
Sheryl.Estrada@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
