Key Stats for Pinterest Stock
- Current Price: $23.19
- Target Price (Mid): ~$48
- Street Target: ~$29
- Potential Total Return: ~106%
- Annualized IRR: ~18% / year
Now Live: Discover how much upside your favorite stocks could have using TIKR’s new Valuation Model (It’s free) >>>
What Happened?
Pinterest (PINS) lost its finance chief on August 28, and the timing is what gave investors pause. Julia Brau Donnelly, the CFO who three weeks earlier had raised the company’s margin outlook and detailed a $2 billion buyback, submitted her resignation on August 26 and will leave on October 30. Shares fell as much as 3.8% in after-hours trading once the news hit, a move that had not cleared a full trading session. Pinterest named Vikram Naidu, its VP of finance and business operations, as interim principal financial officer and began an external search for a permanent successor.
Pinterest’s 8-K stated plainly that Donnelly’s exit is not the result of any disagreement with the company on any matter relating to its operations, policies, or practices, including accounting principles and practices. She is leaving for a senior role at an early-stage private company, staying nearly two months to hand off, and the interim replacement is an internal hire who has run financial planning since 2024. What the exit removes is continuity, at the exact moment the numbers she set get tested.
The Record She Hands Off
Donnelly’s fingerprints are on the specific commitments that now carry into the second half. On the Q2 call, she raised full-year 2026 adjusted EBITDA margin guidance to approximately 30% from 29%, citing first-half revenue outperformance. She told investors that stock-based compensation, which peaked in Q2, would step down in both dollars and year-over-year growth starting in Q3. And she framed the capital-return story that has quietly done more for per-share numbers than revenue has: Pinterest repurchased over $2 billion of stock at an average price around $18, cut net dilution 12% year-over-year, and drove 30% non-GAAP EPS growth in the quarter. The company also entered a $99 million capped call protecting against convert dilution up to $30.59 per share.
Those are finance-led decisions, and they are the ones an interim CFO inherits mid-execution. A transition does not undo them. It does mean a new voice will be the one explaining, in November, whether the SBC step-down actually showed up and whether the margin bar held.
See historical and forward estimates for Pinterest stock (It’s free!) >>>
A Beat, a Soft Guide, and the Gap Underneath
Revenue grew 18% to $1.180 billion, and adjusted EPS of $0.43 beat the $0.36 consensus, yet Pinterest guided Q3 to 13% to 15% growth, landing on the consensus midpoint rather than above it. The stock fell 8.68% in reaction. Donnelly’s bridge was reasonable: foreign exchange flips to a headwind, and the Prime Day shift plus a World Cup benefit together fade by roughly 1.5 points into Q3. The market still heard a company that could beat, but chose to guide conservatively.
UCAN revenue accelerated 5 points to 18% on ad-platform gains and a sales reorganization, while Europe decelerated to 12% and faces its toughest comparison of the year in Q3. CEO Bill Ready put the opportunity in one line: “We 5x the number of clicks to advertisers over that last 3-year period, but we certainly didn’t 5x the revenue.” Engagement has outrun monetization for years, powered by AI trained on the platform’s taste graph of more than 80 billion monthly searches, run on open-source models at less than 8% of the cost of closed ones. If international converts the way UCAN just started to, revenue has room well past user growth. If it stalls while tailwinds fade, Pinterest stays a mid-growth ad platform with rising compute costs.
On valuation, the stock trades at roughly 8.5 times forward EV/EBITDA and 2.5 times NTM revenue. Reddit sits near 15 times forward EBITDA and nearly 7 times revenue, and Meta around 9 times EBITDA with far slower user growth. Snap is cheaper at 1.5 times revenue, but is not expanding margin or users at Pinterest’s pace. Read against that set, Pinterest’s discount to Reddit looks, in our view, more like the market pricing guidance risk than a permanent quality gap.
See how Pinterest performs against its peers in TIKR (It’s free!) >>>
TIKR Advanced Model Analysis
- Current Price: $23.19
- Target Price (Mid): ~$48
- Potential Total Return: ~106%
- Annualized IRR: ~18% / year
See analysts’ growth forecasts and price targets for Pinterest stock (It’s free!) >>>
TIKR’s mid-case reaches around $48 by the end of 2030, roughly 18% annualized. The two revenue drivers are the UCAN go-to-market rebuild that just produced a 5-point acceleration and the international monetization catch-up that follows the same playbook. The margin driver is operating leverage toward an approximately 30% net income margin as AI cost efficiency flows through. The primary risk is the one this quarter surfaced: international stays stuck while tailwinds fade, and the engagement-to-revenue gap closes more slowly than assumed. If the UCAN playbook travels, the model’s scenario points to a stock that roughly doubles from here; if it does not, the current multiple already reflects the disappointment.
Conclusion
The handoff gets its first real test at November’s Q3 print, and two numbers decide how the leadership change reads. Watch whether revenue clears the top of the $1.19 billion to $1.21 billion guide rather than the midpoint, which would confirm that the fading tailwinds were the whole story. And watch whether the stock-based compensation step-down Donnelly promised actually lands, because that is her specific commitment now in an interim CFO’s hands. Clear the range with SBC declining and Europe stabilizing, and the transition fades to a footnote. Miss on either, and the new finance team starts its tenure defending a bar it did not set.
See what stocks billionaire investors are buying so you can follow the smart money with TIKR.
Should You Invest in Pinterest?
The only way to really know is to look at the numbers yourself. TIKR gives you free access to the same institutional-quality financial data that professional analysts use to answer exactly that question.
Pull up Pinterest, and you’ll see years of historical financials, what Wall Street analysts expect for revenue and earnings in the quarters ahead, how valuation multiples have moved over time, and whether price targets are trending up or down.
You can build a free watchlist to track Pinterest alongside every other stock on your radar. No credit card required. Just the data you need to decide for yourself.
Analyze Pinterest on TIKR Free →
Looking for New Opportunities?
- See what stocks billionaire investors are buying so you can follow the smart money.
- Analyze stocks in as little as 5 minutes with TIKR’s all-in-one, easy-to-use platform.
- The more rocks you overturn… the more opportunities you’ll uncover. Search 100K+ global stocks, global top investor holdings, and more with TIKR.
Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
