PayPal’s Shares Soar 6 Percent After Announcing That It Isn’t Looking To Buy Pinterest At The Moment

Shares of American payments giant PayPal were up more than 6 percent in pre-market trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange on Monday, following its announcement that it isn’t looking to buy social platform Pinterest right away. The announcement came on Sunday following last week’s rumours and speculations that PayPal was looking to acquire Pinterest. An update on PayPal’s website clearly states that it is “not pursuing an acquisition of Pinterest at this time”.

Following the announcement last week, Pinterest shares rose by over 10 percent while that of PayPal fell by about 3 percent. The reverse is the case this Monday as Pinterest shares were down by more than 12 percent in pre-market trading.

Bloomberg reported last week that PayPal was interested in buying Pinterest for $70 per share which would value the social platform at about $39 billion. Reports also had it that PayPal was already in late-stage talks to acquire Pinterest.

In April 2019, Pinterest went public and was valued at a little over 10 billion. Created by Ben Sibermann, Evan Sharp and Paul Sciarra, Pinterest is an image sharing site as well as a social media platform that is designed to enable people to share their ideas, interests and information using majorly images and on a lesser scale, GIFs and videos. As of March this year, the platform has more than 478 million global monthly active users and is operated by Pinterest Inc. The company is based in San Francisco, USA.

PayPal is one of the biggest payments brands in the world. The American multinational fintech company operates its business in several countries. The company is one of the many that benefitted from the boom in online shopping and mode of payment, following the coronavirus pandemic that left people locked up in their houses.

PayPal’s push to acquire Pinterest comes with a boom in the social commerce sector and competitive pressure from e-commerce platform Shopify which is investing heavily in merging fintech and e-commerce. If the acquisition had pulled through, it would have signalled the payments company’s launch into the social commerce space which is one of those booming areas that companies are starting to leverage.