BUZZ-Pinterest falls as Jefferies downgrades to 'hold'

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Shares of image-sharing platform Pinterest PINS.N fall 2.5% to $29.90

Jefferies downgrades rating on stock to "hold" from "buy" and cuts PT to $32 from $40, which still represents an upside of ~4% to stock's last close of $30.66

Brokerage says it believes new products like Performance+ are too early to drive the mid-teens revenue growth implied in Wall Street's Q1'25 estimate

The pace of margin expansion is likely to slow following the last two years of infrastructure cost optimization efforts - brokerage

PINS faces challenges shifting from small-scale experimental brand budgets to larger, consistent "always on" performance ad investments - brokerage

Jefferies says PINS' third party partnerships with Amazon, Google are less incremental to growth than the brokerage had expected

29 of 41 brokerages rate the stock "buy" or higher, 12 "hold"; their median PT is $38, per LSEG-compiled data

PINS stock fell ~22% in 2024

(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru)

((Jaspreet.Singh@thomsonreuters.com ; https://twitter.com/i_jass))