Where Will Pinterest Be in 5 Years

Pinterest (NYSE:PINS), the low-profile, not-quite-social network, has been a solid winner among stocks with initial public offerings this year.

Shares of the virtual pinboard are up nearly 60% from its initial offering at $19 in April, and the company is fresh off a strong second-quarter earnings report. Pinterest posted another round of impressive growth with revenue up 62% to $261.2 million, and its adjusted net loss narrowed from $34.2 million to $24.5 million. In another positive sign, monthly active users (MAUs) increased 30% from 231 million to 300 million. The bulk of that growth came from international markets, as MAUs outside the U.S. rose 38% to 215 million; in the U.S., MAUs increased from 75 million to 85 million.

Where will Pinterest be in five years? It’s not easy to chart out a course for a unique company that’s only been public for four months, but the early reports from the discovery-based search platform offer some clues. Let’s take a closer look.

An international flavor

Like the leading social networks, Pinterest is seeing an increasing percentage of its user base come from international markets. As of the most recent quarter, 72% of its users came from outside the U.S., though the bulk of its revenue still comes from the domestic market, which generated 91% of its revenue last quarter.

In international markets, Pinterest faces both a challenge and an opportunity. The company’s international average revenue per user (ARPU) is much lower than it is in the U.S., at just $0.11 (versus $2.80). That gap is similar to what social networks like Facebook have experienced. American consumers tend to be wealthier and more desirable for advertisers, so whether Pinterest can build an effective advertising business around its international users will be a big determinant of its future success.

The company highlighted the internationalization of its ad business in the recent quarter, and indeed ARPU rose from $0.05 to $0.11, a positive sign. As Pinterest rolls out new products and recruits new advertisers those numbers should steadily rise, but investors should still expect the gap between U.S. and international ARPU to persist. (In the most recent quarter, Facebook had $33.27 ARPU in North America but just $7.05 globally, which includes its home region; Facebook’s ARPU numbers also show how much more room there is for Pinterest’s advertising business to grow on a per-user basis.)

Read more: https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/09/22/where-will-pinterest-be-in-5-years.aspx