Parkev Tatevosian, CFA on $PINS (Oct 26, 2026)

Pinterest is scheduled to announce its quarterly financial results after the stock market closes on October 29, 2026. So, this is somewhat good news for Pinterest and its upcoming earnings release.

Of course, I have Pinterest shares in my portfolio and have ranked it as one of the top 10 stocks you can buy in 2026. So, investors ask me: "What do I think of Pinterest before the earnings announcement?

Do I think it's a buying opportunity before they deliver this huge update to investors?"

This is the question I want to answer in this video, as well as provide you with the key numbers you should look for on Pinterest when it announces these results.

Pinterest stock has fallen 14% since the start of the year in 2026, but has recovered significantly from its lows. It was trading at $15 at one point this year, and is now trading at over $22.

This momentum is largely driven by improved performance and improved investor sentiment. Investors have a very negative view of Pinterest. Sentiment, as measured by the valuations investors are willing to pay for the company, is nearing all-time lows.

However, the fundamentals of the business are improving. Pinterest is one of the few social media companies that adds users from North America. These accounts are considered the most profitable for social media companies because they come with a higher average revenue per user.

Furthermore, Pinterest users tend to be younger age groups, and Pinterest lags behind other social media companies in terms of average revenue per user because its younger users don't generate much income.

However, as its users age and mature, average revenue per user will increase because marketers will be willing to pay a higher price to attract purchasing decisions from people using the Pinterest platform.

In general, Wall Street analysts who follow Pinterest are optimistic about the company's earnings per share prospects. They estimate that over the next few years, the company's earnings per share will grow at a much higher rate than this impressive growth rate for a company trading at a single-digit forward price-to-earnings ratio.

When I make a video about Pinterest, I usually get a lot of comments about the company's stock compensation, and even with the stock compensation included in the income statement, the operating profit margin of 6.3% has been steadily improving over the past few years.

In fact, the improvement has been ongoing for much longer than that. One area where I would like to see Pinterest perform better is revenue per employee and total spending on research and development as a percentage of revenue.

Regarding revenue per employee, the company has shown some improvement since 2020, but it is still below the peak levels of around 900,000 in 2022. That was when Pinterest was betting its full weight on a remote work strategy.

They have given up some office space and allowed employees to work from home. But like most companies, they are no longer extreme in this regard. They now have some employees returning to the offices and working in person.

A point was raised regarding the ratio of research and development to revenue, where Pinterest leads its social media peers in this expenditure. This is not something you want unless the company has a proven track record of success in research and development of new products, which Pinterest has not really achieved, has it?

They had their only platform and their only product, and they did not innovate substantially outside of that scope. Their R&D to revenue ratio is 34.4%, higher than Meta's 31.7%.

This percentage is even higher than "Snap" and "Reddit".

Therefore, I would like to see Pinterest's R&D to revenue ratio drop to closer to its smaller peers of around 28% to 29% over the next four to eight quarters.

When looking at Pinterest's long-term growth estimates of 27% earnings per share, the picture looks much better when compared to its forward price-to-earnings ratio of just 9.3.

This means that earnings per share are expected to grow at three times the company's future earnings multiple.

This is a very attractive rate, and it is one of the reasons that prompted me to buy Pinterest shares for my portfolio, and why I ranked it among the top 10 stocks to buy. Of course, I have been disappointed since the beginning of 2026 until now.

The stock fell 14% while the broader S&P 500 index rose more than 10%. Therefore, it suffers from very poor performance. Today, I reaffirmed my ranking of Pinterest as one of the top 10 stocks after reviewing their latest results.

Now, should you buy before or after the profits? That's a matter of risk management. If you are risk-neutral, meaning you don't care about risks as long as you get compensation for them, then if you were in this situation and wanted to add shares and didn't own any, I would buy 75% of my allocations before the earnings announcement.

Since the share price is so cheap, I will be more concerned about missing out on the upside, so I will invest 25% of my allocation after the earnings announcement. If you are concerned about risk and want to avoid it, you can take a neutral approach and buy half of your allocation before earnings and the other half after they are announced.

In both cases, this stock is trading at a ridiculously cheap valuation, and I think the risk-to-reward ratio is attractive to long-term investors.