Pinterest Selects Goldman, JPMorgan to Lead IPO

(Bloomberg) -- Pinterest Inc. has picked Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to lead its initial public offering, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The visual search site, where users post and look for pictures that interest them, could raise about $1.5 billion in an IP0, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the matter wasn’t public. The company could go public in the first half of the year, the person said.

Pinterest raised $150 million in a private funding round in 2017 at the same share price it had two years earlier -- for a total valuation of about $12.3 billion. As of last year, the San Francisco-based company had almost 250 million monthly active users, people familiar with the matter have said.

The selection of the banks was reported earlier by Reuters.

Pinterest’s possible listing adds to a deep roster of tech and gig economy IPO candidates this year. The largest of them is Uber Technologies Inc., which could command a valuation of as much as $120 billion, according to people familiar with the ride-hailing company’s plans.

Lyft Inc., Uber’s smaller rival, is also planning to go public, as is Airbnb Inc. and Slack Technologies Inc. Slack plans to forgo a typical IPO and pursue a direct listing, a person familiar with the matter has said.

Plans for offerings by those companies, some of which were impacted by the 35-day U.S. government shutdown, may be affected if President Donald Trump and Congress fail to reach an agreement to keep open federal agencies including the Securities and Exchange Commission past the Feb. 15 expiration of a temporary deal.

--With assistance from Sarah Frier.

To contact the reporter on this story: Olivia Zaleski in San Francisco at ozaleski@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Fournier at efournier5@bloomberg.net, Michael Hytha, Matthew Monks

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