I almost forgot this company existed until the IPO rush came... Who still uses $PINS? OK, apparently over 250M people each month... wow, Twitter has ~300M monthly active users. I'm somewhat impressed from this number alone. But who the hell are these 250M people? No one I know has used Pinterest in YEARS, as far as I know. Girls used it in college to save ideas for their weddings... How has the platform and its user base evolved into 250M people over the last ~10 years? As somewhat expected, The United States has what I would consider to be uninspiring user growth... but international growth is VERY impressive. (see chart) Revenue growth is impressive too... ~$300M in '16, ~$500M in '17 and ~$750M in '18. Searching "PINS S1" on Google, the first two results are seeking alpha articles; "Pinterest: Overpriced from Launch" and "Pinterest is a Deep Value". People are clearly divided here. In hindsight, not terribly surprised IPO has done well. Largely misunderstood by US investors imo.
Now, if $PINS could just figure out how to monetize those international users... (see chart) But until then, US monetization appears to be on fire as they recorded a very strong quarter in Q4 2018, probably knowing the IPO was coming and pulling some sales forward, but growth has still been impressive. What has advertiser feedback been when using PINS? How does it compare to FB/Instagram? Advertisers always looking for new platforms, probably a good place to push product and be close to point of sale, and I would have to guess the average user is above average disposable income. All in, its pretty interesting. Maybe I only feel this way because the IPO has done well. Who knows. Wish I had taken it seriously earlier. (also, in previous post, whoever put together this S-1 for PINS and used the same maximum value (200) on the Y axis for both the US/International MAU numbers should be fired. 26% growth in the US looks nearly flat, would look/feel more impressive if max was only 100M!)
