Pinterest priced shares of its stock, “PINS,” above its anticipated range on Wednesday evening, CNBC reports. The company will sell 75 million shares of Class A common stock at $19 apiece in an offering that will attract $1.4 billion in new capital for the visual search engine. The NYSE-listed business had planned to sell its shares at between $15 to $17 and didn’t increase the size of its planned offering prior to Wednesday’s pricing. Valued at $12.3 billion in 2017, the initial public offering gives Pinterest a fully diluted market cap of $12.6 billion. The IPO has been a long time coming for the nearly 10-year-old company led by co-founder and chief executive officer Ben Silbermann. Given Wall Street’s lackluster demand for ride-hailing company Lyft, another consumer technology stock that recently made its Nasdaq debut, it’s unclear just how well Pinterest will perform in the days, weeks, months and years to come. Pinterest is unprofitable like its fellow unicorns Lyft and Uber, but its financials, disclosed in its IPO prospectus, illustrate a clear path to profitability. As for Lyft and Uber, Wall Street analysts, among others, still question whether either of the businesses will ever achieve profitability. Eric Kim of consumer tech investment firm Goodwater Capital says despite the fact that Pinterest and Lyft are very different companies, Lyft’s falling stock has undoubtedly impacted Pinterest’s offering. “They are so close together, it’s hard for those not to influence one another,” Kim told TechCrunch. “It’s a much different category, but they are still both consumer tech and they will both be trading at a double-digital revenue multiple. The San Francisco-based company posted revenue of $755.9 million in the year ending December 31, 2018 — 16 times less than its latest decacorn valuation — on losses of $62.9 million. That’s up from $472.8 million in revenue in 2017 on losses of $130 million. The stock offering represents a big liquidity event for a handful of investors. Pinterest had raised a modest $1.47 billion in equity funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, which holds a 13.1 percent pre-IPO stake, FirstMark Capital (9.8 percent), Andreessen Horowitz (9.6 percent), Fidelity Investments (7.1 percent) and Valiant Capital Partners (6 percent). Bessemer’s stake is worth upwards of $1 billion. FirstMark and a16z’s shares will be worth more than $700 million each. Zoom — another tech company going public on Thursday that, unlike its peers, is actually profitable — priced its shares on Wednesday too after increasing the price range of its IPO earlier this week. The price values Zoom at roughly $9 billion, nearly surpassing Pinterest, an impressive feat considering Zoom was last valued at $1 billion in 2017 around when Pinterest’s Series H valued it at a whopping $12.3 billion. Profitability, as it turns out, may mean more to Wall Street than Silicon Valley thinks.<doc-sep>Pinterest Inc. priced its initial public offering higher than expected Wednesday, raising more than $1.4 billion and valuing the company at more than $12 billion. Pinterest PINS, -1.29% announced Wednesday evening that it would sell 75 million shares at $19 apiece, after previously stating a targeted range of $15 to $17. Underwriters — led by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Allen & Co. — have access to an additional 11.25 million shares that could push the totals higher. The company expects to begin trading Thursday morning on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “PINS.” Pinterest is expected be joined by at least two other trading debuts Thursday morning, including fellow Silicon Valley company Zoom Video Communications Inc. ZM, +1.48% , which reportedly priced its IPO above its stated range as well. The market for IPOs has picked up after successful offerings from Lyft Inc. LYFT, +4.09% , PagerDuty Inc. PD, +5.69% and Levi Strauss & Co. LEVI, +0.41% . Brigham Minerals LLC MNRL, +3.35% priced its shares Wednesday at the top of its expected range at $18, but increased the number of shares it sold to 14.5 million from 13.5 million to raise more than $260 million. Hookipa Pharma HOOK, +4.65% priced its shares at $14 on Wednesday, at the bottom of its range, raising about $84 million. Greenlane Holdings Inc. GNLN, +0.82% is also expected to price its IPO this week. For more: IPO market faces biggest week of 2019 so far with Pinterest, Zoom and Greenlane on tap Pinterest admits that it’s “still in the early stages” of its efforts to make money off its image-sharing platform, having only launched advertisements five years ago. The company sees opportunity with international advertisers, a mostly untapped area for Pinterest thus far. Revenue climbed to $755.9 million in 2018, up from $473 million a year prior. The company’s user base is still growing, with international markets leading the way. The company had 265 million monthly active users (MAUs) as of the end of 2018, of which 184 million were based outside the U.S. Pinterest’s domestic MAU count rose by only 8% for the December quarter, while its international user base increased by a third. Pinterest’s IPO filing: 5 things investors should know The online scrapbooking company is not yet profitable, but it’s a lot closer than fellow unicorns like Lyft Inc. LYFT, +4.09% and Uber Technologies Inc., both of which are bleeding cash. Pinterest managed to turn a profit during the past two holiday quarters, but it’s yet to break out of the red on an annual basis. The company lost $63 million last year, compared with $130 million a year prior. Pinterest was privately valued at $12.3 billion in a 2017 funding round. D.A. Davidson analyst Tom Forte recently began coverage of Pinterest’s stock, assigning a neutral rating and a $16.50 price target. While Forte likes that Pinterest’s users have strong “purchase intent,” something well regarded by advertisers, he argued that the eventual IPO price would already bake in the upside potential he sees from Pinterest’s monetization efforts.<doc-sep>SAN FRANCISCO — Pinterest on Wednesday priced its shares at $19 each for its initial public offering, in a sign of healthy demand by investors after the appetite for fast-growing but money-losing tech companies appeared to be on the wane. The price valued the digital pin board company, which lets people save images and links from around the web, at $12.7 billion. That is a little above its last private fund-raising round, which had pegged the company at $12 billion. By selling at $19 a share, Pinterest raised $1.6 billion from big investors in the offering. The shares will begin trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol PINS. Pinterest’s pricing could bode well for the many “unicorns” — start-ups worth more than $1 billion — that are rushing to the public markets. It follows a rocky debut for the ride-hail company Lyft, which went public on March 28.<doc-sep>Bloomberg (Bloomberg) -- Credit Suisse Group AG executives ignored warnings from colleagues about troubled steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta as they channeled $1.2 billion of client funds to his businesses, according to people familiar with the matter.Bankers in Credit Suisse’s commodity trade-finance unit blacklisted Gupta’s Liberty Commodities Ltd. in 2016 because they suspected some of its deals weren’t legitimate, the people said. When they learned about two years later that the bank was lending to his companies through a suite of investment funds, which eventually grew to $10 billion, they flagged their worries to leaders in compliance and the division that housed the loans, one of the people said.The disclosure that Credit Suisse may have put clients at risk despite internal concerns over Gupta’s businesses adds a new twist to the debacle stemming from the March implosion of Greensill Capital, the finance firm at the center of the three-way relationship.Investigations, LawsuitsThe U.K. Serious Fraud Office is now investigating Gupta’s group of companies for suspected fraud, including in its financing deals with Greensill, according to a May 14 statement. Credit Suisse has sued to force Gupta’s Liberty Commodities into insolvency and has since shut the funds that made the loans and launched an internal investigation. Investors are staring at losses as the bank confronts embarrassing lawsuits.“We are currently focusing our efforts on recovering our investors’ money,” Will Bowen, a spokesman for Credit Suisse in London, said in an emailed statement, adding that the bank’s internal probe will focus on “all of the issues” linked to the funds. “We are committed to learning the lessons and will share the relevant lessons learnt at the appropriate time.”Andrew Mitchell, a spokesman for the Gupta Family Group Alliance, or GFG Alliance, a collective of businesses linked to Gupta including Liberty Commodities, denied any wrongdoing.The Greensill saga represents just one of the two disasters that rocked Credit Suisse in the first half of 2021. Since Greensill began unraveling, the bank has announced a $5.5 billion hit from the blowup at Archegos Capital Management.ApologiesFormer Chairman Urs Rohner apologized to shareholders and his successor, Antonio Horta-Osorio, who arrived at the end of April, has promised a sweeping strategy review.Chief Executive Officer Thomas Gottstein, who was head of the division that oversaw trade finance, wasn’t aware of the internal concerns about Gupta that had prompted the bank to cut him off, according to a person familiar with the matter.Employees at the trade-finance unit, which lends money for the buying and selling of commodities, cut ties with Gupta in 2016 after becoming skeptical toward his Liberty Commodities, the people said. They distrusted the documents the company provided, triggering doubts about its transactions, they said. In one example reported by Bloomberg, the company had presented another bank with what seemed to be duplicate shipping receipts. A spokesman for Gupta has denied any wrongdoing.Banking TiesLiberty Commodities pledged assets to Credit Suisse as security for borrowings in 2013 but by early 2016, all such commitments had been extinguished, indicating that the financing relationship had ceased, U.K. Companies House filings show. And while Gupta’s company listed the Swiss bank as one of its lenders in its 2014 annual report, it didn’t in the following year’s report, which is dated May 2016, according to the filings.Their counterparts at other banks, including Macquarie Group Ltd. and Sberbank PJSC, halted trading with Liberty Commodities around the same time because of similar concerns; Goldman Sachs Group Inc. also stopped in 2016, Bloomberg has reported.Nevertheless, executives at Credit Suisse’s asset-management division -- which creates investment products for clients and charges a fee for overseeing them -- began arranging a suite of funds focused on supply-chain finance in 2017. The entities bought securitized loans packaged by Greensill, a firm created by Australian businessman Lex Greensill. Much of the debts were linked to Gupta’s businesses.WarningsOfficials at the commodity trade-finance unit were concerned when they found out about the funds’ links to Gupta and took their fears to Thomas Grotzer, general counsel for the bank’s Swiss division. They also warned Luc Mathys and Lukas Haas, the bankers who helped oversee the trades at the asset-management unit.Grotzer was promoted last month to interim global head of compliance at Credit Suisse. He didn’t respond to requests for comment. Mathys, head of fixed-income at the asset-management division, and Haas, a portfolio manager, were put on temporary leave in March. Neither responded to requests for comment.The bank pushed ahead with the funds and marketed them to investors as being made up of short-term debt secured on invoices, assets considered so safe that Credit Suisse gave the largest vehicle its lowest rating for risk. Yet part of the loans were linked to mere possible future revenues.Other parts of the bank continued working with Gupta as well. Credit Suisse’s investment bankers were due to lead an initial public offering for Liberty’s U.S. steel arm, which was ultimately pulled, according to a statement from the company. Gupta also announced that the Swiss bank would finance his planned acquisition of Thyssenkrupp AG’s steel unit, which fell apart earlier this year.Credit Suisse has so far recouped about $5.9 billion of the $10 billion in these supply-chain funds, but it remains unclear how much will be returned ultimately to investors. Loans to Gupta’s businesses are among a batch of debts that are the “principal sources of valuation uncertainty,” the bank said earlier this month.Liberty Commodities’s external legal advisors investigated “alleged rumors concerning the paperwork” it used in 2019, according to Mitchell, the spokesman for GFG Alliance. They found no evidence to substantiate the rumors, nor was the company “ever subject to further complaints or proceedings,” he said.“LCL has ongoing banking relationships with separate financial institutions,” Mitchell said, referring to Liberty Commodities. “The trade-finance market has been hugely challenging for all but the very largest commodities traders in recent years. Nevertheless, no financial institution has been left out of pocket as a result of lending money to LCL. On the contrary, they have received substantial commercial returns.”More stories like this are available on bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.<doc-sep>
Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann speaks in conversation with Matthew Lynley of TechCrunch during the TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2017 on September 18, 2017 in San Francisco, California. Pinterest raised $1.43 billion in its IPO after pricing the offering at $19 a share on Wednesday, valuing the company at $10 billion. Pinterest, which is expected to start trading on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange, had originally given a pricing range of $15 to $17. But investors appear to be showing an appetite for the social media company despite the challenges Lyft has faced since becoming the first consumer tech IPO of the year last month. CNBC reported earlier on Wednesday that the company would price above the expected range. Pinterest's revenue jumped 60% last year to $756 million, and the company moved significantly closer to profitability with a net loss of $63 million. Still, Pinterest's IPO is below the $12 billion valuation it attained in a 2017 financing round. Pinterest is among the first big tech IPOs of the year and is scheduled to start trading around the same time as videoconferencing company Zoom. Ride-hailing company Lyft was the first big offering to hit the market in March, but the stock has dropped 19 percent from its IPO price. Founded in 2010 by Ben Silbermann, a former Google employee, and Evan Sharp, who was previously a designer at Facebook, Pinterest has grown to 265 million monthly users. The company burst into the mainstream in 2012 with rapid growth, but expansion has since cooled due in part to a work culture that many employees describe as slow when it comes to making decisions. Silbermann's stake is worth close to $1 billion at the offer price. Bessemer Ventures owns shares valued at $1.13 billion, while FirstMark's holdings are worth $844 million and Andreessen Horowitz's stake is worth $827 million. Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase are leading the offering. Watch: Pinterest's path forward