KLAR · Forward model · United States · Management target case
What has to happen in United States
Model as of
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United States
Basis quarter$376M
Final quarter$507M
Implied CAGR+6%
Final revenue mix42%
The margin story, not the volume story. US GMV grew 27% year on year to $7,887m and US revenue 37% to $376m, but the point is the transaction margin: 23.4% of revenue against 14% a year earlier, against a Global ex-US book at 53.8% and 'most established markets' at approximately 60%. The US take rate is already the highest in the group at 4.77% of GMV, roughly double the ex-US 2.32%, because the US mix is weighted to Fair Financing, which carries interest income and books provisions upfront. Nearly all of this model's value comes from closing that margin gap, not from US volume. Revenue is projected as GMV multiplied by a take rate because both are disclosed every quarter; active consumers and ARPAC are group-only and cannot constrain a regional line.
Last four quarters
2025 Q3
$317M
Reported
2025 Q4
$413M
Reported
2026 Q1
$399M
Reported
2026 Q2
$376M
Reported
Pay Later (charge-card equivalent), $4,543m of US GMV in 2026 Q2Fair Financing / point-of-sale instalments, $3,216m and growing fastestPay in Full (everyday spending), $128mKlarna Card and Klarna Membership subscriptionsInterest income on the US consumer receivables bookGain on sale of US Fair Financing receivables sold into forward-flow arrangements
US GMV ($m, deseasonalised)
8234/qtr
growing +2.0% per quarter
$7,887m of disclosed US GMV divided by this line's own 0.9579 Q2 factor, because the engine reseasonalises it.
Revenue per $1m of GMV
$44446
drifting 0.0% per quarter
$376m over $7,887m is a 4.77% take rate, rebased by 0.9323 to the post-fair-value reported basis from H2 2026.
United States
Latest: $507M (2031Q2E)
| Period | Value |
|---|---|
| 2024Q1 | $179M |
| 2024Q2 | $200M |
| 2024Q3 | $210M |
| 2024Q4 | $261M |
| 2025Q1 | $238M |
| 2025Q2 | $275M |
| 2025Q3 | $317M |
| 2025Q4 | $413M |
| 2026Q1 | $399M |
| 2026Q2 | $376M |
| 2026Q3E | $363M |
| 2026Q4E | $433M |
| 2027Q1E | $362M |
| 2027Q2E | $379M |
| 2027Q3E | $392M |
| 2027Q4E | $467M |
| 2028Q1E | $390M |
| 2028Q2E | $408M |
| 2028Q3E | $422M |
| 2028Q4E | $503M |
| 2029Q1E | $420M |
| 2029Q2E | $439M |
| 2029Q3E | $454M |
| 2029Q4E | $541M |
| 2030Q1E | $451M |
| 2030Q2E | $472M |
| 2030Q3E | $488M |
| 2030Q4E | $581M |
| 2031Q1E | $485M |
| 2031Q2E | $507M |
Assumptions & reasoning
- The 'EBITDA margin' here is the DISCLOSED US transaction margin - $88m of transaction margin dollars on $376m of revenue, 23.40% - and it is already NET OF CREDIT: $105m of US provision for credit losses and $63m of US funding costs are inside it. Consumer credit sits where Klarna's own disclosure puts it, not in a separate line. The 25.10% entered is that 23.40% divided by 0.9323, which puts it on the post-fair-value reported basis the driver runs on; the dollars are identical either way.
- The 23.4% margin in the basis quarter was 'modestly below the first quarter as we completed a back book receivable sale in Q1 that we did not repeat' - so the 26.6% printed in 2026 Q1 was the outlier, not this quarter's 23.4%.
- US GMV is 22% of group GMV but US revenue is 36% of group revenue, because the US take rate is roughly double the ex-US one. The US is a mix story before it is a growth story, and the Fair Financing weighting that produces the high take rate is also what produces the low margin.
- SEASONALITY APPLIED, factors [0.9325, 0.9579, 0.9721, 1.1376] by ratio to a CENTRED four-quarter moving average of this line's own disclosed revenue. Q3 signal 0.0279 against a window-to-window spread of 0.0030, a 9.37:1 ratio; Q4 signal 0.1376 against a 0.0328 spread, 4.20:1 - well above the 2.34:1 at which Goldman's GBM was rejected in this repository. Ten quarters give six centred windows, so Q1 and Q2 rest on ONE window each and are corroborated instead by three other facts: US GMV fell sequentially in both Q4-to-Q1 transitions (-14.8% and -16.8%) against 27-43% year-on-year growth, GMV-derived factors give the same shape ([0.8961, 0.9889, 0.9575, 1.1576]), and management guides Q4 2026 to be 'our strongest transaction margin quarter of the year'.
- The factors are fitted to REVENUE, which is the object the engine multiplies, and are then used to deseasonalise GMV into 'units'. The units trace is therefore GMV deseasonalised by a revenue factor and equals literal reported GMV only in the basis quarter. Take-rate seasonality is left inside the factors rather than in the price drift; it is small, the US take rate ranging 4.31-4.52% across 2024 with no repeat of that pattern in 2025.
- The fair-value presentation change from H2 2026 names 'our US and German Fair Financing'. Klarna does not publish how the roughly 10bp of GMV effect splits between the two, so the SAME 0.9323 revenue factor and 1/0.9323 margin re-basing is applied to both verticals. A Fair-Financing-weighted allocation would put about 69% of it in the US; Germany's share of the ex-US Fair Financing book is not disclosed, so that allocation cannot be built without inventing it. The group total and pre-tax profit are unaffected by the choice.
- capexIntensity is EXACTLY ZERO and it is not laziness. Depreciation of $12m a quarter is already deducted inside the transaction margin and again inside the group overhead ratio, and Klarna's cash capex is $8m a quarter for the WHOLE company - below its own depreciation. Any positive intensity would double-count.
- Klarna does not disclose operating expenses by region, so US profitability below the transaction margin cannot be observed at all. This vertical's margin is a CONTRIBUTION margin, not a segment profit margin; every dollar of operating cost sits in corporate overhead.