Klarna Group (NYSE:KLAR | KLAR Price Prediction) stock is sliding midday Monday, with shares down 7% to $19.38 ahead of the buy now, pay later (BNPL) firm’s second-quarter report. The pullback unwinds part of a three-week rally right before a binary event.
Klarna stock had climbed 4% for the week and 6% for the month through Friday’s close, and shares are down 33% year to date (YTD). The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2025, and Tuesday’s report before the market open is its most anticipated print since that listing.
Pre-Earnings De-Risking Ahead of Tuesday’s Print
There’s no fresh company-specific Klarna news driving Monday’s drop. The move looks like straightforward profit-taking and risk reduction into an earnings event, with traders trimming exposure after a run that lifted the stock heading in. Positioning ahead of a binary earnings event often outweighs fundamentals in the final hours before a release.
The Street is looking for a Klarna loss of $0.06 per share on revenue of $995 million, per Fiscal.ai. Morgan Stanley raised its price target on Klarna stock to $21 from $18 while keeping an Equal Weight rating, and the 12-month average target sits at $24.55 per Koyfin. Of 22 analysts covering the stock, 13 have a Buy or higher rating and 9 have a Hold.
Retail sentiment on Stocktwits was neutral even as message volume surged 300% over 24 hours. One analyst noted expectations for a Q2 2026 beat on the back of robust e-commerce results, while flagging that Klarna’s discount to its larger BNPL competitor “likely only compresses with sustained execution on credit,” per TheFly.
Klarna’s own guidance sets the bar. For Q2 2026, management guided to GMV of $35.5 billion to $36.5 billion, revenue of $960 million to $1 billion, transaction margin dollars of $375 million to $395 million, and adjusted operating profit of $30 million to $50 million. The $995 million consensus revenue figure sits inside that range, shifting the focus to margins and credit.
Last quarter, Klarna posted a loss of $0.01 per share against a $0.13 consensus, on revenue of $1.012 billion, up 51.3% year over year (YoY). Fair Financing GMV grew 138% YoY to $4.1 billion, reaching 12% of total GMV, and interest income rose 56% to $284 million. Management has told investors that credit-loss provisions are expected to rise across Q2, Q3, and Q4 on seasonality, Fair Financing growth will moderate as comparables normalize, and the foreign exchange tailwind from a weaker dollar will diminish through the year.
BNPL Peers Split: Sezzle, PayPal, and Affirm
Sezzle (NASDAQ:SEZL) stock is down 5% to $122.89 midday Monday. The smaller BNPL platform’s shares are still up 103% YTD, though Sezzle stock is down 32% for the month after a sharp reset from July highs, and up 9% for the week through Friday. That mixed pattern reflects investors still digesting Sezzle’s most recent print rather than reacting to anything new today.
PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) stock is down 2% to $60.35 in the large-cap payments corner. PayPal shares are up 11% for the month and up 6% YTD, holding steadier than either Klarna or Sezzle heading into the Klarna earnings report. The scale of PayPal’s payments platform makes it less sensitive to any single BNPL data point.
Affirm (NASDAQ:AFRM) stock is down 4.17% to $75.08 Monday, giving back a chunk of last week’s advance after the shares closed Friday at $78.35. Affirm had gained 4.12% for the week through Friday’s close, though it remains down 4.11% over the past month, and it’s still up 5.27% year to date on that same basis. As the larger U.S.-listed buy-now-pay-later platform, Affirm serves as the natural valuation anchor for Klarna, and the fact that it’s falling alongside Klarna on a day with no sector news suggests investors are trimming BNPL exposure broadly ahead of Tuesday’s print rather than singling out one name.
The split across the three names supports the read that Monday’s action is Klarna-specific positioning rather than a category event. When Sezzle, PayPal, Affirm, and Klarna splinter on the day before an earnings report, it usually points to single-name flows and hedging, not a macro repricing of BNPL.
What to Watch
Investors can watch for whether Klarna’s revenue lands inside the guided $960 million to $1 billion range, whether transaction margin dollars hit the guided $375 million to $395 million, and whether adjusted operating profit stays positive within the $30 million to $50 million guide. Provision growth and full-year commentary are the two swing factors that could dictate the reaction into Wednesday.
The other tells for Klarna include how much provisions climb, and whether management reaffirms the full-year framework of GMV above $155 billion and adjusted operating profit above 6.9% of revenue. Tuesday’s release before the open could set the tone for BNPL sentiment into the back half of the year.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Top Gaining Stocks
Top Losing Stocks