Pinterest Slumps After Warning Covid-19 Has Impacted Advertisers

(Bloomberg) -- Pinterest Inc. shares slumped after the company said the coronavirus outbreak hurt advertisers and triggered a revenue decline in April.

The online search and discovery company also did not issue guidance for the rest of the year. It tossed out its previous 2020 forecast last month.

“The spread of COVID-19 has certainly had an impact on our business and the businesses of our advertisers, but we remain optimistic about the future,” Todd Morgenfeld, chief financial officer of Pinterest, said in a statement.

April revenue fell 8% from a year earlier, Morgenfeld told analysts on a conference call. “Things like food and beverage, health and beauty had relatively better demand in the early part of this crisis,” he added. “But even those advertisers began to experience supply chain difficulties that had various impacts on their appetite for spend.”

Pinterest shares dropped 18% in extended trading, after closing at $20.81 in New York earlier on Tuesday.

Pinterest reported revenue of $272 million for the quarter, up 35% from a year ago and slightly better than average analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

The company also had 367 million monthly users in the quarter, 26% growth over a year ago and above Wall Street expectations, according to consensus data compiled by Bloomberg.

The company ended the quarter with $1.74 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, and posted a net loss of $141 million for the period. It still plans to increase operational spending in the second quarter, but at a slower pace than the first three months of the year.

Pinterest is the latest digital advertising company to report better-than-expected first-quarter sales despite a hit to the business at the end of March when the coronavirus outbreak started to impact marketing budgets.

Unlike Facebook Inc. and Snap Inc., however, Pinterest did not say anything to alleviate concerns about the current state of its business. Facebook, for example, said revenue was “flat” in the first three weeks of April, a sign to some that the industry had stabilized since the initial shock from Covid-19 lockdowns.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.