Positive feedback from advertisers on Pinterest has resulted in the social networking company getting an upgrade and price target increase from a Wall Street analyst Monday. PINS stock jumped.
UBS Analyst Lloyd Walmsley upgraded Pinterest to a buy from neutral and raised the price target by 30%, to 35, from 27. PINS stock had surged more than 4% during morning trades but then pulled back. It finished Monday trading up 2.2% to 28.07 on the stock market today.
Walmsley noted that advertisers are seeing significant feedback from Pinterest's partnership with LiveRamp, a data analytics and privacy company.
Grocery retailer Albertsons Companies was the first to advertise through the Pinterest and LiveRamp partnership, which started in January.
PINS Stock: Making Ads More Efficient
The analyst noted that early advertiser feedback on Pinterest's partnership with LiveRamp "suggests significant improvement in making ads more efficient, which should help drive budgets and may unlock additional demand."
Pinterest is an image sharing and social media site that lets users discover and share information on any specific topic, using images and some videos. The company derives almost all of its revenue from advertising. Over the past year advertisers have pulled back due to economic concerns, among other reasons.
Pinterest has developed methods for image searches that leverage machine learning, computer vision and a recommendation engine to help users search, browse and organize images and videos.
The company held its initial public offering in April 2019 that priced PINS stock at 19, raising $1.4 billion.
Meanwhile, PINS stock is up 22% this year.
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