New York, NY (PreIPOSwap.com) – 1/10/2019 (Zero Hedge Exclusive)
Recently Pinterest announced they will go public as soon as April. But the question as with any IPO is what will the interest be? Do investors have interest in Pinterest?
The visual search engine and shopping tool is expected to tap underwriters in January and complete an initial public offering as soon as April. The company was valued at just over $12 billion with its last private fundraise, a $150 million round in mid-2017, and is on pace to bring in $700 million in revenue this year. The company, founded in 2008 by Ben Silbermann (pictured), is also in talks to secure a $500 million credit line, per the report, not an uncommon move for a pre-IPO giant like Pinterest. To date, the company has raised nearly $1.5 billion from key stakeholders such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital, Fidelity and SV Angel. Pinterest recently reached 250 million monthly active users, up from 200 million in 2017.
That’s all well and good – but can Pinterest continue to perform in a seemingly poor 2019 stock market? That’s the biggest question investors will want to know – not so much about the underlying social technology which is incredibly useful (but not clearly commercialized). Let’s dive deeper into Pinterest, starting with data from Crunchbase:
Pinterest has raised a total of $1.5B in funding over 15 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Jul 19, 2018 from a Secondary Market round.
With names like Goldman Sachs and Andreessen Horowitz it seems that this company has the blessing of the Wall St. and Silicon Valley wizards. But is that enough to catapult Pinterest much higher?
Pinterest is approaching the $1 Billion ad revenue mark, a key psychological level. An IPO is expected to bring a $13 Billion – $15 Billion valuation of the company, according to CNBC:
After hitting $500 million in sales in 2017, Pinterest is on pace to almost double that this year, said the people, who asked not to be named because the company’s financials are private. Pinterest is having particular success with mobile ads, as the site becomes a more popular place for big fashion and beauty brands to get in front of the company’s 200 million monthly active users.
But the point here isn’t about utility – can they break the social marketing monopoly of Facebook and Google, or at least chip away at it? At least in the case of Facebook which is facing internal problems, Pinterest can pose a viable alternative. For those who aren’t following the Facebook drama, they were exposed as the spooks they really were – harvesting data and selling it to the highest bidder. In response, Facebook has closed millions of accounts and is now banning even real people from joining, making the process so difficult you really have to jump through hoops while wearing a strait jacket just to sign on. This is opening up a huge gap that Pinterest can exploit.
And who doesn’t love Pinterest? It’s become the go to site for crafts, gardening, and all sorts of niches – especially exploited by Google Search.
Only time will tell how this new approach to social media will work – but for those who want to get in before the IPO, checkout Pre IPO Swap.
Pre IPO Swap Analysis Team covers Pre IPO companies looking for the next Google, Amazon, Microsoft, or ….
More info on Pinterest can be found on Pre IPO Swap Matrix – Pinterest