Pinterest’s active user growth is declining. No thanks to countries that are gradually opening to business. Workers are gradually going back to work, and businesses are no longer being operated remotely.
In its latest performance update, the world’s largest catalog of ideas MAU dropped to 444 million in Q3, down by 10 million on the previous reporting period. From the graph as shown below, Pinterest’s Q2 numbers were down 24 million MAUs before that. The social media platform has lost some 34 million active users overall after a steady growth stretching two periods.
The decline is not unexpected—most people did virtually all their shopping online at the peak of the COVID outbreak. Pinterest has a lot of products that focus more on ecommerce, and this attracted millions of shoppers to the platform at the peak of the pandemic. With the gradual reopening of physical stores, people are having fun doing their shopping offline.
At the heart of the pandemic, Pinterest added over 100 million active users. That period marked a great achievement for the company as it touted itself as a virtual shopping mall. Of course, reality is beginning to set in as the physical stores begin to reopen for business.
“As lockdowns eased, people have embraced life outside their homes, a trend that caused a dramatic decline of our year-overyear growth rate of monthly active users (MAUs) in Q2 and Q3, as consumer preferences shifted away from our core at-home use cases.”
Despite adding over 100 million active users during the pandemic, the company’s revue took a big hit. “We achieved strong 43% yearover-year revenue growth in Q3, but our momentum was slowed by lower demand in one of our largest verticals, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG). We believe this lower demand was largely due to COVID-related issues, including supply-chain disruptions, inventory and labor shortages, and rising commodity prices.”
Meanwhile, PayPal recently denied reports making the rounds that it wanted to buy Pinterest. The online payment behemoth says it is not pursuing an acquisition—at least not now.
Recall that Bloomberg had lately reported that PayPal was negotiating a $45 billion acquisition of Pinterest. Reuters later confirmed the rumored acquisition, which has now been denied by PayPal.
A source had told Reuters that PayPal was offering $70 per share, mostly in stock for Pinterest. Currently no deal is certain, but things could still change in no time.
The deal would have been PayPal’s biggest acquisition, and would also helped Pinterest delve more into ecommerce. Pinterest’s ambition is to become an ecommerce powerhouse. The app has never hidden the fact that it wants to make its platform a hub for brands and shoppers.
