PayPal said it is not prosecuting at all the acquisition of Pinterest, unlike what the media announced last week. The news on the Net, in fact, reported the company was buying the platform at a cost of 45 million dollars. But, apparently, the situation would be very different from what has been reported by the media.
PayPal will not acquire Pinterest: company confirmation
PayPal will not acquire Pinterest. Tien-tsin Huang, a payments analyst at JP Morgan, said a deal with Pinterest would involve “a significant integration risk” for PayPal. In particular, according to what he said: “The management of a platform mainly focused on promoting user engagement and advertising would require PayPal to use muscles that it is not used to using”. For its part, Pinterest is certainly not in an optimal condition. Both because it risks losing its co-founder Evan Sharp and because the slowdown in user growth is hindering future growth prospects.
At this point, the platform is expected to attract the interest of other buyers. Especially if we consider the very particular situation of PayPal, whose shares were up 3.6% after the claims of the company’s contact began to circulate on the Net. Conversely, Pinterest’s shares, which had risen 13% after talks about the deal were reported last week, plummeted by about 12%. Somehow, therefore, the platform has to recover. But maybe PayPal won’t be the lifesaver it needs.
Sure, it sounds pretty strange to know this way, especially after the media has been talking about this acquisition in recent weeks. But perhaps for the company it is too risky a move. And the company is not yet ready for such a step.