Swedish buy now, pay later firm Klarna reduced its losses by roughly 67% in the first half of 2023, as the company dramatically cut costs in a bid toward profitability.
The company reported overall net operating income of 9.2 billion Swedish krona ($843.5 million), up 21% year-over-year. Failing to record a half-year profit, the firm posted a net loss of 2.1 billion Swedish krona for the period, down 67% from 6.4 billion krona between January to June 2022.
Klarna did, however, say that it recorded one month of profitability in the first half of the year, ahead of its internal target to post profit on a monthly basis in the second half.
Klarna CEO and founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski hailed the firm’s profitability milestone, saying that its results “clearly rebut the misconceptions around Klarna’s business model, evidencing that it is incredibly agile and sustainable,” and supporting a “healthy consumer base.”
“Some claimed Klarna would face difficulties in the tough macro-economic climate with high interest rates, but having led the company through the 2008 financial crisis I knew we had a strong and resilient business model to see us through. Despite the volatile environment, we have done exactly what we set out to do,” Siemiatkowski said.
Credit losses, a measure of how much the company sets aside for customer defaults, sank by 39% to 1.8 billion krona from 2.9 billion.
Buy now, pay later, or BNPL, firms allow shoppers to defer payments to a later date or purchase things over installments on interest-free credit.
These firms are able to offer zero-interest loans by charging merchants, rather than customers, a fee on each transaction — but as interest rates have risen, the BNPL funding model has been challenged.
Siemiatkowski previously told CNBC the company was planning to achieve profitability on a monthly basis in the second half of 2023, suggesting that an aggressive cost-cutting strategy in 2022 — which included hundreds of redundancies — had paid off.
Klarna cut 10% of its workforce in May last year.
“To some degree, all of us were lucky that we took that decision in May [2022] because, as we’ve been tracking the people who left Klarna behind, basically almost everyone got a job,” Siemiatkowski said at an interview in Helsinki, Finland, at the Slush technology conference last November.
“If we would have done that today, that probably unfortunately would not have been the case.”
Klarna said that cost optimization was a key factor behind its ability to churn out a monthly profit in the first half of the year.
The company said that operating expenses before credit losses improved by 26% year-on-year, thanks in part to its push into artificial intelligence.
Klarna said a recently-launched customer services feature “made solving merchant disputes for customers more efficient, saving over 60,000 hours annually.”
Like other fintech companies, Klarna has made a big push into AI lately, as it looks to capitalize on the growing boom in the industry’s growth, following the birth of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
In April, the company revamped its app with a host of new personalized shopping features. It is trying to make the software similar to TikTok, which has a discovery feed for users to find content suited to their preferences.
David Sandstrom, Klarna’s chief marketing officer, told CNBC at the time that the aim was to “offer people products and brands before they knew they wanted them.”
Klarna last year saw 85% erased from its market value in a so-called “down round,” taking the company’s valuation down from $46 billion to $6.7 billion.
Some of the company’s peers, like PayPal, Affirm, and Block, also saw their shares plummet sharply amid a wider sell-off in technology valuations.
Klarna at the time blamed deteriorating macroeconomic conditions, including higher inflation, rising interest rates, and a shift in consumer sentiment.
The Intel headquarters in Santa Clara, California, US, on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. Intel Corp. is scheduled to release earnings figures on April 24.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Intel reported first-quarter results on Thursday that beat analysts’ estimates, while issuing disappointing guidance and announcing plans to slash operational and capital expenses in the coming year, the first under CEO Lip-Bu Tan. The stock fell 7% in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did, versus LSEG consensus estimates:
EPS: 13 cents, adjusted vs. 1 cent estimated
Revenue: $12.67 billion vs. $12.3 billion estimated
Intel said it expects revenue for the current quarter of $11.8 billion dollars at the midpoint of the range, lower than the average analyst estimate of $12.82 billion. The company said earnings will be breakeven, while analysts were looking for profit of 6 cents per share.
Intel said its second-quarter guidance reflected elevated uncertainty driven by the macro environment.
For the first quarter, Intel reported a net loss of $800 million, or 19 cents per share, due to higher costs of sales and some writedowns. That compares with net income of $2.7 billion, or 63 cents per share, last year.
It’s the chipmaker’s first earnings report since Tan over as CEO in March, after Pat Gelsinger stepped down in December under pressure from board members and investors. Gelsinger’s tenure was highlighted by the company’s inability to effectively compete in artificial intelligence and its efforts to move into semiconductor manufacturing for other companies, including competitors.
“The first quarter was a step in the right direction, but there are no quick fixes as we work to get back on a path to gaining market share and driving sustainable growth,” Tan said in a statement.
Intel said on Thursday that it was planning to cut operational and capital expenses, removing management layers, in order to become more efficient. The company said it expected $17 billion in operational expenses this year, down from a previous target of $17.5 billion, and that it would target $18 billion in capital expenses in 2025, down from a previous target of $20 billion.
Intel said it hasn’t included restructuring charges in its guidance. Finance chief David Zinsnertold CNBC’s Kristina Partsinevelos that the reduction in operating expenses would include job cuts, especially for managers, but that Intel has not yet finalized a number of cuts.
“There is no way around the fact that these critical changes will reduce the size of our workforce,” Tan said in a memo to employees that was published by Intel on its website. He said that the cuts would begin this quarter.
Intel’s investors hope Tan can turn around a company that’s been losing market share in its core processor business, and doesn’t have a competitive AI chip to Nvidia, which dominates the fast-growing sector.
Tan has already started to shape his team, last week naming networking chief Sachin Katti to be the company’s chief technology officer and head of AI, leading Intel’s overall AI strategy and product release plans. Tan said on Thursday in a memo that Intel employees would have to work four days per week in the office by September.
Intel’s data center group reported $4.1 billion in sales, which was up 8% year-over-year. Intel said it had merged its networking and edge computing group, previously led by Katti, into its data center organization.
The company’s other big business, chips for PCs, is reported under the Client Computing Group, and it fell 8% on an annual basis to $7.6 billion in sales.
Intel’s burgeoning foundry business reported $4.7 billion in revenue, although most of those sales come from Intel’s other divisions to manufacture its chips.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg presents Orion AR Glasses as he makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
Meta has laid off employees in its Reality Labs division that is tasked with developing virtual reality, augmented reality and related wearable devices.
The cuts affected an unspecified number of employees working in the division’s Oculus Studios unit, which develops VR and AR games and content for Meta’s Quest VR headsets, a company spokesperson told CNBC.
“Some teams within Oculus Studios are undergoing shifts in structure and roles that have impacted team size,” the spokesperson said. “These changes are meant to help Studios work more efficiently on future mixed reality experiences for our growing audience, while still delivering great content for people today.”
Employees working on the Supernatural VR workout app were impacted, the spokesperson said.
“We’re deeply saddened to share that these changes have resulted in the loss of some of our incredibly talented team members,” the company said in a statement posted to the Supernatural official Facebook group. “Their contributions have been instrumental in shaping our journey and yours, and their absence will be deeply felt.”
Meta’s Reality Labs division logged an operating loss of $4.97 billion while scoring $1.1 billion in sales during the fourth quarter, the company said in January.
The social media company reports earnings on Wednesday.
The Verge reported the layoffs earlier on Thursday.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, is set to report first-quarter earnings after the bell Thursday.
Here’s what analysts are expecting.
Revenue: $89.12 billion, according to LSEG
Earnings per share: $2.01, according to LSEG
YouTube advertising revenue: $8.97 billion, according to StreetAccount
Google Cloud revenue: $12.27 billion, according to StreetAccount
Traffic acquisition costs (TAC): $13.66 billion, according to StreetAccount
Google finds itself at the center of an artificial intelligence arms race where its position may be threatened pending mounting regulation and competition from generative AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic. The company is also among those bracing for the potential impact from President Donald Trump‘s tariffs, which could result in a pullback in advertiser spending due to tighter budgets.
Alphabet shares have dropped more than 17% in 2025 so far.
Wall Street is expecting Alphabet to report 10% year-over-year revenue growth for the first quarter, which included a slew of AI announcements, its largest-ever acquisition, cost cuts and regulatory hurdles.
In March, Google released Gemini 2.5, its “most capable” artificial intelligence model suite yet, and Gemma 3, the company’s latest open model. The timing of Gemini 2.5 and Gemma 3 comes after DeepSeek in January released its R1 model, which caused a rift in Silicon Valley after the Chinese startup claimed its AI model was trained at a fraction of the cost of other leading models.
Google AI chief Demis Hassabis told employees at an all-hands meeting in February that he was not worried about DeepSeek and that Google has superior AI technology.
“We’re very calm and confident in our strategy, and we have all the ingredients to maintain our leadership into this year,” Hassabis said, calming concerns from investors and employees alike. He added, however, he thinks the Chinese company is still “something to be taken seriously.”
Google this quarter also announced new personalization features for Gemini, allowing the chatbot to reference users’ search histories, and users can also connect Gemini to other Google apps, including Calendar, Notes, Tasks and Photos.
During the quarter, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced it would be partnering with Google’s Gemini products, giving the company high praise.
“No company is better at every single layer of computing than Google and Google Cloud,” Huang said.
Alphabet also had a number of announcements in autonomous driving.
In March, Waymo began offering robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, through the Uber app and opened up a waitlist in Atlanta. Those markets are just two of several more expected expansions in the U.S. this year.
Alphabet also made its largest acquisition ever in March when it agreed to buy Wiz for $32 billion in cash, almost $10 billion more than it offered for the startup in 2024, and said it expects the deal to close next year, subject to regulatory approvals. With the acquisition, Google will seek to bolster its cloud division’s security offerings. Google is behind Amazon and Microsoft in cloud market share, which may help the company’s argument to obtain regulatory approval.
Google this quarter also faced a slew of regulatory and legal challenges.
Last week, a federal judge ruled that Google held illegal monopolies in online advertising markets due to its position between ad buyers and sellers. The ruling represents a second major antitrust blow for Google. Last August, a judge determined the company has held a monopoly in its core market of internet search.
In April, the company reached a settlement with its employee union, where it agreed to reverse a policy forbidding employees from discussing antitrust litigation. The settlement, which marked a major victory for Google staffers, came ahead of Google’s remedy trial, which will determine the consequences of the search monopoly ruling over the next few weeks.
Education tech company Chegg in February filed a lawsuit against Google. Chegg claimed that Google’s “AI summaries” feature in search have hurt the online education company’s traffic and revenue. Similarly, Reddit in February claimed that Google’s search algorithm caused some “volatility” with user growth in the fourth quarter, but the company’s search-related traffic has since recovered, CEO Steve Huffman said.