Pinterest Shares Dip 1% in Pre-Market Trading Amid Insider Selling

Pinterest shares dipped a little over 1% in pre-market trading Monday (Oct. 9).

This happened despite Wells Fargo adding the social media site to its Signature Picks portfolio, Seeking Alpha reported Monday.

The decline in the price of Pinterest’s stock comes during a three-month period in which the number of sells exceeded the number of open market buys by nearly 6 to 1, with the company’s corporate insiders making 29 sells and five open market buys in the last three months, Nasdaq reported Monday.

Over the past 12 months, insiders made 109 sells and 56 open market buys, Nasdaq said.

The most recent insider activity took place Sept. 27, when Pinterest Chief People Officer Christine Deputy disposed of 14,896 shares, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

On Sept. 20, Deputy and five other corporate insiders disposed of shares, according to SEC filings posted on Pinterest’s investor relations website Sept. 22.

When adding the company to its Signature Picks portfolio, Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski said, per the Seeking Alpha report, that Pinterest “is making the optimal strategic move to outsource monetization to third parties to overcome its attribution/scale challenges.”

The company’s improvements in its advertising products and third-party partnerships are likely to improve its financial position, Gawrelski said, per the report.

Over the last year, Pinterest has seen a 50% surge in the number of purchasable items saved to boards on the platform by users, PYMNTS reported Sept. 22.

“We’ve made Pinterest more shoppable by enabling people to shop and buy across all surfaces of our platform,” the company said in materials released Sept. 19.

Pinterest has made its platform more shoppable by fostering partnerships with retailers, prioritizing collaboration over competition, and ensuring smooth transitions to its mobile applications and websites. It has also expanded its shopping ad offerings.

About six weeks earlier, during a quarterly earnings call, Pinterest reported that its number of monthly active users (MAUs) grew 8% during the most recent quarter — reaching 465 million — and that users were spending more time on the platform due in part to improved post and ad recommendations made possible by artificial intelligence (AI).