Pinterest Shares Rise 2.4% as Stock Continues Rebound From Post-Earnings Selloff Amid Its AI-Driven Ad Push

Shares of Pinterest Inc. climbed 2.40%, or 56 cents, to $23.64 as of 10:15 a.m. EDT Tuesday, extending a gradual recovery from the sharp selloff the stock experienced earlier this month following its second-quarter earnings report, even as the company’s shares remain down significantly for the year.

The visual discovery and search platform reported second-quarter results on Aug. 4 that beat Wall Street expectations on nearly every headline metric, yet still saw shares tumble 7% in after-hours trading that evening after the company issued sales guidance investors viewed as underwhelming relative to the strength of the quarter itself.

According to figures compiled by LSEG and reported by CNBC, Pinterest posted adjusted earnings per share of 43 cents, well ahead of the 36-cent consensus estimate, on revenue of $1.18 billion, topping expectations of $1.15 billion. Total revenue grew 18% year over year from $998.2 million in the same period last year. The company reported a net loss of $47 million, or 8 cents per share, compared with net income of roughly $38.76 million, or 6 cents per share, in the prior-year quarter.

Despite the earnings beat, Pinterest’s forward guidance drove the immediate negative reaction. The company projected third-quarter revenue of between $1.19 billion and $1.21 billion, with the midpoint of $1.2 billion falling in line with, but not meaningfully ahead of, analyst expectations, a signal that some investors interpreted as evidence of intensifying competition for digital advertising dollars from larger rivals, including Meta’s Instagram platform.

Pinterest CEO Bill Ready struck an upbeat tone in the company’s earnings release despite the guidance-driven stock reaction. “Our Q2 results reflect the scale and strength of our platform: more than $1.1 billion in revenue, growing 18%, and 640 million monthly active users, our 11th consecutive quarter of double digit user growth,” Ready said. He pointed specifically to the company’s growing investment in artificial intelligence as a driver of its underlying business momentum. “AI is at the heart of our momentum and is a clear accelerant for our business. It is trained on our unique human curation of style and taste, making Pinterest more personalized and actionable for users, while improving performance for advertisers,” Ready said.

Pinterest’s global monthly active users grew 11% year over year to 640 million during the quarter, extending what the company described as its 11th consecutive quarter of double-digit user growth. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $311 million, with an adjusted EBITDA margin that Simply Wall St reported had risen to 26% for the quarter, alongside robust free cash flow of $270 million and net cash from operating activities of $293 million.

According to Simply Wall St’s analysis of the results, bulls on the stock have pointed to Pinterest’s AI-driven personalization tools and shopping features as a path toward higher user engagement, stronger advertising performance and improved margins over time. The company’s user base skews increasingly young, with Generation Z now making up more than half of Pinterest’s total monthly active users, a demographic trend that supports the platform’s positioning as a discovery-focused, visually oriented service distinct from more traditional social media feeds. Revenue growth during the quarter was not driven by discounting, with ad impressions up 16% and average pricing per ad up 1%, according to Simply Wall St’s breakdown of the results.

The company has continued expanding its AI and advertising technology infrastructure through both internal development and acquisitions. Pinterest’s first-quarter results, reported earlier this year, highlighted the company’s acquisition of tvScientific, a connected television advertising platform, as part of a broader push to expand beyond its core mobile and desktop advertising business into new formats. Pinterest also signed a long-term cloud services agreement with Amazon Web Services valued at $4 billion through 2031, described by the company as the largest infrastructure commitment in its history, focused on supporting AI-driven visual search and recommendation capabilities for its expanding user base.

During the company’s second-quarter earnings call, Ready also addressed Pinterest’s growing use of freely available, open-weight artificial intelligence models, a topic that Reuters noted has drawn increasing attention from corporate boardrooms as companies weigh the high costs associated with proprietary AI infrastructure against more accessible, openly licensed alternatives.

Despite the underlying growth metrics, Pinterest shares have significantly underperformed over the course of 2026. According to Simply Wall St data from earlier this year, the stock was down roughly 23.7% year to date as of the first-quarter reporting period, even as current-quarter earnings estimates had been revised upward by nearly 19% over the same window, reflecting persistent investor concern about advertising demand, pricing pressure and competitive positioning despite continued growth in the company’s underlying user and revenue metrics.

Insider selling activity has also drawn some investor attention in recent months. Pinterest co-founder Benjamin Silbermann has continued a pattern of regular share sales through Charles Schwab & Co., according to SEC filings, including a planned sale of 46,875 shares valued at approximately $1.09 million disclosed earlier this month. Filings show a consistent pattern of similarly sized 46,875-share transactions occurring monthly between June and August, part of Silbermann’s ongoing disposition of Founders Shares originally dated from 2019, alongside smaller transactions such as an 8,414-share sale in May. Such planned, scheduled insider sales are common among long-tenured company founders and executives and do not necessarily signal a change in outlook regarding the company’s prospects.

Pinterest currently trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of roughly 53.1 times, according to Simply Wall St’s valuation analysis, a multiple that reflects continued investor expectations for future earnings growth even amid the stock’s underperformance so far this year. With Pinterest’s third-quarter earnings report not expected until early November, investors are likely to continue closely watching the company’s user growth trends, AI-driven advertising tools, and competitive positioning relative to larger platforms like Meta’s Instagram as key indicators of whether the stock can sustain its recent modest recovery from the post-earnings selloff earlier this month.