Shares in buy now, pay later (BNPL) service provider Klarna jumped 14.5% on their debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, closing at $45.82 (£33.89) per share and giving the company a market valuation of $17.3bn.
The Swedish company opened for trading at around 1 pm EST on Wednesday at $52, a jump of 30% from its initial public offering (IPO) price of $40 per share.
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Klarna co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told Yahoo Finance on Wednesday: “Klarna is now at 111 million users, which is pretty amazing. We've been growing and our main focus for the last decade have really been how do we reach as big of an audience, how do we get as many users as possible.
“And then more recently, we've been starting to focus on how do we sell more services and increase the revenue per user.”
Following the surge in Klarna shares on its first day of trading, stock eased back 1.3% in pre-market trading on Thursday morning.
Shares in Alibaba (9988.HK, BABA) rose on Thursday, after the Chinese tech giant announced plans to raise $3.2bn through an offering of zero coupon convertible senior notes.
Alibaba's Hong Kong-listed shares (9988.HK) climbed 1.5% higher, while New York-listed shares (BABA) were up 2.6% in pre-market trading on Thursday.
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Alibaba said in announcement on Thursday that the net proceeds from the offering would be used towards its strategic focus on strengthening the company's cloud infrastructure capabilities and international commerce business operations.
More specifically, the tech company said that approximately 80% of the funds would be directed towards enhancing its cloud infrastructure, including scaling up data centres, upgrading technology, and improving services to meet growing demand. It said the remaining 20% would be invested in expanding international commerce operations.
Shares in online real estate service Opendoor Technologies (OPEN) surged more than 30% in pre-market trading on Thursday, after the company named its new CEO.
Opendoor said on Wednesday that Kaz Nejatian, currently chief operating officer of Shopify shop (SHOP), had been appointed as CEO. This comes a month after Carrie Wheeler stepped down as Opendoor's CEO, with the company's chief technology and product officer Shrisha Radhakrishna stepping in as interim leader.
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Opendoor also announced that co-founders Keith Rabois and Eric Wu will be returning to the board of directors, with Rabois taking on the role of chairman.