What CEOs Are Saying: Fintech at a Crossroads
Anaysis of earnings calls from Klarna, Western Union, and LegalZoom
On Thursday, Klarna reported its first-ever billion-dollar revenue quarter. The stock fell 26% that same day. By week’s end it had lost 65% of its value since the company’s IPO five months earlier, erasing nearly $10 billion in market capitalization.
That gap between a business growing at 38% and investors who aren’t satisfied is a useful lens for the moment financial services finds itself in. Three companies reported earnings this week in and around the payments and legal services space: Klarna, Western Union, and LegalZoom.
They don’t compete with each other, but they share a common pressure: Technology keeps making it easier to do what they do, and each has made a different bet about what that means for them.
Here are three takeaways from each call.
Klarna Group | Q4 2025
Results: Strong revenue growth, but missed its own profit guidance
Klarna is a financial technology company best known for “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) — the option at checkout to split a purchase into installments, often interest-free. Founded in Stockholm in 2005, it handles payments for nearly a million merchants in 26 countries and has 118 million active consumers. Klarna went public on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2025, raising $1.37 billion at $40 per share. By the time of this earnings call, the stock had fallen significantly from its opening-day high, a backdrop that hung over the entire discussion.
Revenue grew 38% to over $1 billion in Q4, and GMV (gross merchandise volume — the total value of all purchases made through Klarna) came in at $38.7 billion, above the top of guidance. But the company’s transaction margin — essentially the profit left after processing and credit costs — came in below what management had projected, and the stock sold off further after the call.
