# Pinterest stock rockets toward best day on record as analysts cheer ‘valuable and growing’ user base

The results were enough to earn Pinterest at least two upgrades, from MKM Partners analyst Rohit Kulkarni, who bumped his rating on the stock up to buy from neutral, and from J.P. Morgan’s Doug Anmuth, who moved to overweight from neutral.

“We believe the pandemic has led to a fundamental change in the way consumers shop online and how social media can play a bigger role in shopping going forward,” MKM’s Kulkarni wrote. “And, we believe that the recently observed post-pandemic trends at Pinterest are just the beginning of a long-term virtuous cycle between user growth, user engagement, advertiser demand, and monetization.”

Kulkarni, who also increased his price target to $66 from $35, is upbeat about the improvements Pinterest is making to its platform. Upgrades to programmatic and self-serve ad tools, as well as more integrations that allow for e-commerce purchases, could “serve as material 2021 upside catalysts,” he wrote.

J.P. Morgan’s Anmuth acknowledged that he’s late to the game with his upgrade but wrote that he still sees “much room ahead” for Pinterest. “While Pinterest has long had a user base with high commercial intent, we are now getting a glimpse of what monetization and profit can look like,” he said in a note to clients, while raising his price target to $75 from $57.

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Wedbush analyst Ygal Arounian was encouraged by the company’s advertising momentum. “First, while strength among SMB advertisers remained strong, Pinterest saw strength return from [consumer-packaged-goods] and large omnichannel retailers,” he wrote. The company may have benefited somewhat from ad boycotts on other social-media platforms, but Arounian remains upbeat about Pinterest’s ability to maintain its traction with advertisers given that its platform offers a “brand-safe environment” that’s increasingly of interest to advertisers.

He has an outperform rating on the stock and raised his price target to $74.00 from $58.74.

Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik wrote that the company has been acting quickly to try to win “the digital shopping mall race” and capitalize on surging engagement during the COVID-19 crisis. “Pinterest is acting with an urgency we haven’t seen before. launching a plethora of new ad products including branded pages, product tagging, collection ads, and retail stories,” he wrote.

The company’s user base is “valuable and growing” given management’s comments around the strong purchasing intent of Pinterest’s newest crop of users, but the key question for Shmulik is whether Pinterest can hang on to this part of the audience going into next year “given their engagement ebbs and flows with lockdowns/reopening.”

He raised his price target to $60 from $41 but maintained a market perform rating on the stock.

At least 13 analysts hiked their price targets on Pinterest shares after the report, according to FactSet. Of the 29 analysts tracked by FactSet who cover the stock, 18 have buy ratings, nine have hold ratings, and two have sell ratings, with an average price target of $63.19.

Pinterest shares have rocketed 265% so far this year, as the S&P 500
SPX,
+0.77%
has risen 1.3%.