As of this writing, shares of Pinterest (PINS +0.49%) are down roughly 55% from their all-time high earlier this year. In this video from Motley Fool Backstage Pass, recorded on Nov. 29, Fool contributors ranked buying opportunities among nine stocks that are down at least 30%. And Pinterest took the top spot among the stocks that were ranked. Watch to see what contributors Jason Hall and Jon Quast believe investors should be monitoring with this social media stock going forward.
Jason Hall: Pinterest. Jon and I put it four and five, Matt put it at No. 1. Well, what's the story with Pinterest. This is the company guys. This is the one that PayPal was trying to buy. I think that was maybe part of why PayPal stock price came down so much. Was maybe the ideas that maybe management doesn't see a lot of growth potential in its core businesses looking outside for other businesses to integrate to drive better growth.
Now, what's happened with the stock? Let's talk about revenue first of all. Revenue continues to grow the red number, that's U.S. revenue. Then the gray number is international revenue. You see U.S. is still by far its largest business. You see that its fourth-quarter revenue of 2020 is still the peak. Growth is still very good. Revenue was up 43% year over year. Just a tiny bit of sequential growth.
Here is the one that's freaking the market out, that's driven the stock. That's really been the story here. Users, monthly active users. International users again. Revenue very heavily skews to the U.S., users very heavily skews outside of the U.S. U.S. users are falling down 10% monthly active users and very, very slow international user growth. There's not another platform out there, there's not another social media platform that's getting these users, they're going to the real-world. Just people are using Pinterest less.
Story here is continued monetization. Making more out of every user that's on its platform and stabilizing those numbers, particularly in the U.S., and then over the long term increasing its average revenue per user outside of the U.S. as it continues to grow its global user base.
Any 30-second comments here Jon?
Jon Quast: Yeah, for me, the one thing that I'm watching, I think their monetization is a central part of this thesis. You are expecting, especially in international markets, you are expecting that average revenue per user to go up and it has been. That's good. You want to see that, you need to see that for this investment to pan out in the long term.
The thing that has me a little bit concerned is the declines in the international user base on a sequential basis, up 1% year over year but down sequentially. It's one thing in the U.S. where they'd already boast a very large user base and it's reasonable to say there's a saturation point here at some point. But internationally, I would think that we're still years and years away from that.
Hall: Down two quarters in a row actually, if we look at it.
Quast: Yeah, exactly.
Hall: That's what the market is reacting to.
Quast: When you see two quarters in a row, that's the start of a trend. Is this a trend that's going to keep playing out or is this just a couple of blips? Hey, a couple of quarters happen all the time. That's for me something I'm a little bit concerned about with Pinterest.
Of the stocks that we talked about today, I still think that Pinterest has the largest potential for a 10X opportunity.
Hall: We'll see how that goes. I'm continuing to hold my shares that's for sure.
