Pinterest down 20% after earnings

"Pinterest shares plummeted over 20% in premarket trading on Friday after the image-sharing platform said its quarterly revenue forecast was hit by large U.S. retailers scaling back ad spending due to tariff-induced uncertainty. The company last month cut under 15% of its workforce, a restructuring that CFO Julia Donnelly said could disrupt near-term performance, as Pinterest rebuilds its go‑to‑market teams. The warning added to pressure on a business already squeezed by softer retail advertising. Meta in January highlighted strong momentum in e‑commerce advertising, while TikTok survived in the U.S. after facing legal and political pressure. OpenAI, meanwhile, has entered the fray with ad slots on ChatGPT in the U.S., widening the field of players vying for the same marketing budgets. Pinterest's stock is on track to open at its lowest since April 2020. Google has stepped up its commerce push with shopping-focused updates to its Gemini chatbot and AI search, tightening Big Tech's grip on digital ads as smaller players such as Pinterest face a tougher backdrop. "We'll probably see AI-powered Pinterest clones from Meta, OpenAI, and Amazon soon," Bernstein analysts said in a note. At least 16 brokerages cut their price targets on Pinterest's stock, which was set to lose more than $2 billion from its market value of $12.52 billion if the premarket losses hold. The company trades at 9.49 times the estimates of its earnings for the next 12 months, compared with 9.42 for Snap, 29.99 for Reddit and 21.41 for Meta. Last year, Pinterest said it would buy adtech firm tvScientific, as the social media company expands into TV ad inventory for its core consumer goods and retail advertisers." Source: [https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/pinterest-plunges-tariffs-weigh-large-customers-ad-spending-2026-02-13/](https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/pinterest-plunges-tariffs-weigh-large-customers-ad-spending-2026-02-13/) Blaming it on tariffs while its competitors haven't seems like an excuse to me. It's certainly cheap now with trailing PE under 10 but it looks like a story that's reminiscent to PayPal, aka a value trap. If your competitors are growing while you're forced to do layoffs, the selling probably isn't over yet. I just don't see a world where someone would buy this over buying the very platform we're communicating on. Yeah the valuation is different, but one company is hiring staff and growing at 60%+ for the last 6 quarters while the other company is laying off staff and growing sub 20% and constantly either miss on revenue or EPS targets.