Specialist
Former Leadership Team Member at Pinterest Inc
Agenda
- Operating environment for search and discovery regarding potential for curated commerce
- Comparison of advertising capabilities – Pinterest, Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and others
- Pinterest's monetisation strategies beyond promoted pins
- International expansion opportunities and penetration risks
- 2019 outlook and beyond – upcoming IPO and profitability potential
Questions
1.
Could you begin with your industry-wide overview of Pinterest’s operating environment, highlighting any key trends you think investors should be paying attention to?
2.
What ad-spend trends would you identify, how is Pinterest fitting into these trends and how does that correlate to its ability to win incremental spend in the future?
3.
Who do you see as Pinterest’s main competitors, how do you see Pinterest stacking up against them and what are its key points of differentiation?
4.
How would you quantify the percentage of Pinterest’s ad spend that you think is exposed to competitors such as Instagram, Amazon and single-player solutions, both in the near and long term?
5.
Facebook and Google have faced some PR issues recently. Do you think Pinterest is similarly exposed to brand-safety risks based on its business model?
6.
How do you see Pinterest positioned in relation to the main threats or opportunities you think it faces?
7.
Could you elaborate on what measures Pinterest might take to mitigate the risks, especially as it relates to search engine optimisation?
8.
How much would you say Pinterest currently relies on SEO as a user-acquisition vehicle, both domestically in the US and internationally?
9.
Pinterest has announced its IPO. What immediate core initiatives would you expect investments to be focused on?
10.
What are your thoughts on Pinterest’s management and its strategy so far?
11.
What is your outlook on Pinterest’s growth strategy and what do you think the drivers of user growth might be?
12.
Pinterest users are known to be majority female. What steps do you think need to be taken to gain more traction with males?
13.
How would you segment current Pinterest users into cohorts?
14.
How much of an opportunity is international expansion for Pinterest? Are there any markets that you think should be prioritised above others?
15.
Can you unpack the main penetration risks internationally?
16.
What do you think is achievable user growth across US and international markets for Pinterest in the next one, three and five years?
17.
In the US market, would you suggest it is more of an ARPU story than a user growth story? How would you think about ARPU for a business such as Pinterest?
18.
Could you break down Pinterest’s advertiser profile from small-to-medium businesses, mid-market and enterprise brands?
19.
How do you think Pinterest approaches capturing spend from enterprise brands, and what steps do you think it needs to take to do so?
20.
How do you think Pinterest resonates with performance advertisers vs brand advertisers?
21.
How capable do you think Pinterest is of attracting spend from alternative verticals? It seems to have resonated well with CPGs and retail companies, but how do you think it will fare with auto, technology and others?
22.
What is your outlook for Pinterest’s main monetisation strategies?
23.
What execution risks would you consider for Pinterest’s efforts to ramp commerce efforts?
24.
What incremental revenue opportunities do you see commerce efforts are for Pinterest?
25.
What investments do you think are necessary on the Pinterest platform to gear it up for more commerce efforts, and on what timeline do you expect it could realise some of those efforts?
26.
What take rate do you think Pinterest could potentially get from brands once it implements that scalable commerce model?
27.
How would you say Pinterest’s ROI in advertising compares to its peers?
28.
What are your thoughts on Pinterest’s advertising platform capabilities and how do you think it could improve?
29.
How important would you say video is for a business such as Pinterest, and do you think management is likely to try to monetise video?
30.
What is your outlook for Pinterest’s R&D spend in the future?
31.
What are your expectations for cost of sales and marketing spend in the market, especially as it relates to international expansion? Is it higher than it would look in the US, and are there any ways to improve?
32.
You mentioned that DAU/MAU is fairly static for Pinterest. What steps do you think need to be taken to change that?
33.
Do you think there are any limitations on how much ARPU Pinterest can generate in the near term, based on where its DAU/MAU is?
34.
Aside from ways to improve engagement, how do you think Pinterest could drive up its ad targeting capabilities?
35.
Pinterest has been close to to producing a net income recently. What is the road to becoming profitable, or do you think profitability is even a focus for management at this stage?
36.
Would you say Pinterest is limiting its own ability to reinvest in the business and then efficiently scale up, by focusing so much on profitability at this early stage?
37.
Do you see any potential attractive M&A opportunities for Pinterest across its initiatives, or is there any appetite for M&A at this point at all?
38.
What is your outlook for Pinterest 12-24 months from now? What would be your best-case and worst-case scenarios, and do you see any potential wildcards on the horizon for Pinterest?
39.
How would ARPU fall in line with your best-case and worst-case scenarios?
40.
What KPIs do you think are best to track Pinterest’s relative health, perhaps out of DAUS, WAUs and MAUs?
