Pinterest files for IPO



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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Pinterest is considering its future on Wall Street with the digital scrapbooking site filed on Friday for an initial public offering.

This follows a similar filing with securities regulators earlier this month by the Lyft News Company in what promises to be a busy season for technological IPOs. It is also expected to sell shares to the public in the coming weeks: Lyft's rival, Uber, and Slack's messaging app.

Pinterest said in its statement that he intended to register himself on the New York Stock Exchange using the symbol "PINS". The company has not yet specified the number of shares sold as part of its IPO nor the amount of funds raised.

The San Francisco-based company reported $ 756 million in sales last year, a 60% loss from 2017. Last year, it recorded a loss of $ 63 million. 130 million in 2017.

Pinterest allows users to search and "pin" images as a source of inspiration for fashion, interior design, travel, and more.

The company said it has more than 250 million users each month and that users have saved more than 175 billion pines since the launch of the site.

According to PitchBook Data, Pinterest has collected nearly $ 1.5 billion in private markets and its last value was $ 12.3 billion in 2017.

Pinterest has long avoided being labeled a social network. Because of this, users are not required to add friends or make connections. It also means that he has been able to avoid the problems of his biggest rivals such as Facebook.

Despite the lack of networks of friends, many advertisers still consider Pinterest to be part of their "social" budget, said Andrew Lipsman, an badyst at eMarketer, which means he's competing partially with Facebook, Snapchat and others.

Pinterest generates advertising revenue when companies promote pins in user feeds. According to Lipsman, Pinterest has the potential to be more valuable than most digital media for advertisers because it has direct information about the wishes of the user.

Everything is clear in research – if a user is looking for new floor lamps or diamond rings, he is likely to want to buy these things.

"Visual research has a much bigger impact in terms of driving desire," Lipsman said.

Pinterest was founded in 2010 by Ben Silbermann and Evan Sharp, who continue to serve as CEO and product manager, respectively.

The company is working on developing its research on artificial intelligence, which allows people to take a picture or download a screen shot of an article and find similar products on Pinterest.

Like many other technology companies, including Facebook and Google, Pinterest will create two categories of shares: one that will give its holder one vote per share and another that will get 20 votes per share. Shares held by executives and board members will be converted into second clbad, more powerful shares. The Pinterest deposit did not break down the percentage of ownership.

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