Pinterest Reportedly Eyeing 2019 IPO, Nearing $1B Ad Revenue

The lifestyle-planning social network Pinterest apparently wants to go public within the next year. A new report from CNBC indicates the travel, recipe and fashion-centric website wants to launch its initial public offering by the middle of 2019. According to CNBC’s sources, Pinterest has accumulated almost $1 billion in ad revenue, which could be seen as an important milestone in the process.

Pinterest, which launched in March 2010, could apparently double its $500 million sales figure from last year by the end of 2018, per CNBC. The very nature of the app makes it appealing to advertisers: Pinterest users “pin” things they like, from travel destinations to clothing brands, into lists that their friends can look at. A pin on Pinterest is a more accurate endorsement of a product than a Facebook or Twitter "like."

Merchants can also post “buyable pins” on the site, taking out the middleman between users and products. More than half of Pinterest’s 200 million users reportedly use the site to purchase products, which is significantly higher than on Facebook or Twitter.

While the San Francisco-based company clearly has a niche and an audience who will use it over other similar services, CNBC’s report pointed out some potential problems with the upcoming IPO. The $1 billion ad revenue figure sounds impressive on the surface, but leaked financial documents acquired by TechCrunch in 2015 said Pinterest’s goal was $2.8 billion in annual revenue by 2018.

The social network’s valuation is between $13 and $15 billion, per CNBC’s sources. Uber and Airbnb reportedly plan on going public in 2019, as well, making it a crowded year for tech startups. Snap Inc. went public last year and has not had the easiest time on the market. However, Snap faces stiff competition from Instagram, a problem Pinterest may not necessarily have.

Aside from the features that differentiate Pinterest from the competition, its audience demographics are also worth noting. According to the site’s business webpage, 70 percent of its monthly users were women as of September 2017. That is a much greater gender disparity than Twitter or Facebook, which are a bit more even in that regard.

Pinterest noted that half of all new signups are men.