Pinterest, Inc. (PINS) Stock Price & How to Invest

Pinterest runs a visual discovery platform where people save images (pins) into collections (boards) around things they plan to do or buy: a kitchen renovation, a wedding, an outfit, a recipe. That planning behavior is the whole business model. Because users arrive with intent to acquire something rather than to scroll a social feed, Pinterest sells that intent to advertisers, and advertising is close to 100% of revenue. The company earned about $4.6 billion over the trailing twelve months, with gross margins near 79%, from roughly 640 million monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2026. Revenue is concentrated in the United States and Canada, which produced about $880 million of the $1.18 billion booked in Q2 2026, and the gap between regions is stark: US and Canada average revenue per user runs about $8.30 a quarter against roughly $1.86 globally.

The investment picture is a monetization story, not a user story. Users keep growing (Q2 2026 marked an eleventh straight quarter of double-digit growth, with Gen Z now more than half the base), but for years the revenue per user did not keep pace, and CEO Bill Ready has framed the diagnosis as attribution rather than demand: Pinterest sends advertisers many times more clicks than it did three years ago without proportional revenue. The 2026 response has been an automation and AI push through the Performance+ ad suite, third-party ad demand piped in from Amazon and Google, a January restructuring that cut roughly 780 roles toward AI work, and a conversational Pinterest Assistant launched in July. Elliott Investment Management put $1 billion into a convertible note in March 2026 to fund buybacks under a $3.5 billion authorization, and share count has fallen to about 566 million. Revenue growth reaccelerated to 18% in Q2 2026, then guidance for Q3 implied 13% to 15%, and the stock fell on the deceleration. That whipsaw is the pattern to expect from this name.

Pinterest sells advertising, so the revenue line moves with marketing budgets and it has almost no other business to cushion a downturn. A concentrated slice of that spend has come from cross-border Asian retailers whose economics were disrupted by tariff changes and, in Europe, by regulatory action against those sellers, which held European growth to 12% reported and about 7% in constant currency in Q2 2026. GAAP profitability is thin (a $47 million net loss in Q2 2026, driven partly by restructuring charges and heavy share-based compensation) even as adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow look healthy, so which number you anchor on changes the valuation conclusion substantially. Competition for shopping intent comes from far larger budgets at Meta, Google, Amazon and TikTok, and general-purpose AI assistants are a new and unpriced threat to visual product discovery. There is also an active securities class action in the Northern District of California covering statements made between February 2025 and February 2026 about tariff exposure. Guidance-driven single-day moves of 10% or more have happened repeatedly in this stock.

36 analysts publish price targets on PINS, averaging $27.64 against a $23.36 price as of August 2026, or +18.3%. The published targets run from $21.00 to $42.00, a wide spread, and the ratings split 19 buy, 20 hold, 0 sell. Over the last six months there have been 10 raises and 0 cuts among the published actions. A price target is what an analyst published on a date, not a prediction, and sell-side ratings skew positive across the whole market.

Read the full PINS forecast and price target for the target table, the recent rating actions by firm, and how the consensus has shifted.

We give no verdict on Pinterest, Inc.. Both cases are real, which is why the question is contested at all, so here is the strongest version of each.

The case for buying. Ad automation closing the clicks-to-revenue gap. Pinterest's Performance+ suite automates bidding, targeting and creative for advertisers, and the company says adopters grew lower-funnel spending more than twice as fast as non-adopters. The most optimistic published target, $42.00, assumes this works close to its best case.

The case against. Pinterest sells advertising, so the revenue line moves with marketing budgets and it has almost no other business to cushion a downturn. The most pessimistic target, $21.00, is roughly what PINS is worth if this bites instead.

Read the full bull and bear case on PINS, including what would have to change to break either one. Walnut is not an investment adviser.

A simple financial snapshot. These are approximations and refresh quarterly; for current figures see Pinterest, Inc.'s investor relations page or your broker.

• Revenue (TTM): ~$4.6 billion
• Q2 2026 revenue growth: ~18% year over year, with Q3 guided to ~13-15%
• Monthly active users: ~640 million, up ~11% year over year
• Adjusted EBITDA margin: ~26% in Q2 2026, full year guided to ~30%
• Free cash flow (TTM): ~$1.3 billion
• Market cap / forward P/E: ~$13 billion at ~$23 a share, ~11x forward earnings

The valuation reflects a market that believes the cash flow and doubts the growth. At roughly 11 times forward earnings and around 10 times trailing free cash flow, Pinterest prices closer to a mature media asset than to a company growing revenue 18% with users up 11%. Trailing GAAP multiples look very different (net income was only about $249 million over twelve months, and EV/EBITDA on a GAAP basis screens above 50x), which is why bulls and bears citing the same company quote opposite numbers.

Other names that sit close to PINS: same theme, named as a direct competitor, or held beside it in the same funds. Each entry says which. Worth a look if you are thinking about diversification within a thesis rather than concentration on one ticker.

There are three common ways to get PINS exposure. Buy shares (or fractional shares) directly at any major broker. Hold an ETF that includes it, which spreads the position across many companies. Or build it into a focused thematic portfolio, so PINS sits alongside other stocks that express the same thesis.

Walnut takes the portfolio route. Describe a thesis where PINS fits (for example “AI infrastructure” or “dividend-growth large-caps”) and the AI proposes 5 to 6 constituents with target weights. You review the plan and fund it through your own broker when you're ready.

New to this? Start with how to invest in stocks, see how to analyze a stock with AI, or compare the best AI stock analyzers.

Pinterest is a profitable, cash-generative advertising business with more users than its revenue implies, priced for the market's doubt that it can close that gap.

Whether PINS is worth buying today depends more on your time horizon and what you already hold than on any single call. We walk through valuation, what would have to go right, and the risks in is PINS a buy or a sell?, and where the stock could go from here in the PINS stock forecast.

For income investors, whether PINS pays a dividend and how the payout looks is covered in does PINS pay a dividend? And to weigh PINS against a peer, read the full side-by-side comparisons: PINS vs META and PINS vs SNAP.