Pinterest overtakes Twitter – reports stellar results

Pinterest, the image-sharing social network, has edged past Twitter in monthly active users (MAUs) for the first time. Its financial results for the third quarter of 2019, ending 30 September 2019, reveals it now has 322-million MAUs. 

The last time Twitter reported the number, in February, it had 321-million. It announced at the time that it would stop reporting MAUs, apparently because the number was consistently declining and gave an inaccurate picture of the health of the business. Twitter now reports monetisable Daily Active Users (mDAU), which refers to people who use the site or app directly and not through third-party apps, meaning they can be targeted with ads. Its Q3 results show a 145-million mDAU total, up 17% from the previous year.

South Africa has matched Pinterest’s global growth, with the latest SA Social Media Landscape 2020 study, shortly to be released by World Wide Worx and Ornico, revealing 3.7-million active users in this country.

“In Q3, we redesigned Pinterest to make the service more intuitive and improved recommendations quality to help people discover new ideas they didn’t know about before,” said Ben Silbermann, Pinterest CEO and Co-founder. “We are also expanding the number of shoppable products on Pinterest, which makes it easy for our users to go from inspiration to action.”

“In the third quarter, revenue grew 47% year over year and MAUs grew 28% to 322 million. We saw double-digit user growth in nearly all international countries,” said Todd Morgenfeld, Pinterest CFO. “We are thrilled to serve Pinterest ads in 28 markets currently, compared to seven at the end of 2018. Pinterest also realized adjusted EBITDA profitability in Q3.”

Q3 2019 Financial Highlights

The following table summarizes our consolidated financial results (in thousands, except percentages, unaudited):

* For more information on these non-GAAP financial measures, please see “―About non-GAAP financial measures” and the tables under “―Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results” included at the end of this release.

Q3 2019 Other Highlights

The following table sets forth our revenue, MAUs and average revenue per user (“ARPU”) based on the geographic location of our users (in millions, except ARPU and percentages, unaudited):

Full year 2019 outlook

• Total revenue is expected to be between $1,100 million and $1,115 million, compared to our prior forecast of $1,095 million and $1,115 million.
• Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $(30) million and $(10) million, compared to our prior forecast of $(50) million and $(25) million.*

* With respect to projected 2019 Adjusted EBITDA, we are unable to prepare a quantitative reconciliation without unreasonable efforts due to the high variability, complexity and low visibility with respect to certain items such as taxes and interest income that we are unable to quantify and that would be required to reconcile projected Adjusted EBITDA to net loss, the nearest GAAP equivalent. We expect the variability of these items to have a potentially unpredictable and potentially significant impact on future GAAP financial results, and, as such, we also believe that any reconciliations provided would imply a degree of precision that would be confusing or misleading to investors. For more information on this non-GAAP financial measure, please see “―About non-GAAP financial measures.”