Pinterest rises as Wall Street impressed by investor day comments
Chayantorn
Pinterest (NYSE:PINS) shares rose more than 3.5% in pre-market trading on Wednesday after several Wall Street firms expressed positive sentiment after the company's investor day on Tuesday. 
Citi analyst Ronald Josey upgraded Pinterest (PINS) to buy from neutral and boosted his price target to $36 from $31, noting that he is "incrementally confident" that engagement can continue to rise, the company's approach to advertising is working to improve monetization and adjusted EBITDA margins will continue to rise.
Josey also pointed out that product investments over the past year are improving the user experience.
"To be clear, it remains early days in Pinterest's broader turn-around, but with what CITI believes is an achievable guide of mid-high-teens revenue growth CAGR over the next 3-5 years and adj. EBITDA margins expected to exceed 30% over the same period, it believes the risk-reward in shares is positive," Josey wrote in an investor note.
D.A. Davidson analyst Tom Forte also upgraded Pinterest (PINS), moving his rating to buy from neutral, citing the impact of the company's long-term adjusted EBITDA forecast. 
In addition, Forte raised his price target to $35 from $25 after the investor event.
J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth raised his estimates and price target on Pinterest (PINS), noting that the event was "solid" and the focus on product innovation and lower ad funnel were good news.
"Against a backdrop of recently lowered investor expectations & some uncertainty around whether the company would provide medium/long-term guidance at all, PINS' 3-5 year targets were mostly right down the fairway, in our view, but leave potential room for upside," Anmuth wrote in a note to clients.
At the event, CEO Bill Ready provided the company's three to five year targets of compound annual growth of revenues in the "mid-to-high teens" and adjusted EBITDA margins in the "low 30s" over that time frame.
Engagement growth is running faster than user growth, Ready explained, coming in at a 14% clip in the most recent quarter compared to 8% year-over-year growth for monthly active users.
The former PayPal exec also said that Pinterest (PINS) has seen a 60%-plus increase in saves per monthly active user from AI-driven personalization and that the company has a huge opportunity in the $550B digital advertising market, despite going up against the likes of Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL), Meta Platforms (META) and Amazon (AMZN).
Separately, Pinterest (PINS) also announced a new $1B share buyback program after having bought back $500M in the first-half of the year.
Analysts are largely bullish on Pinterest (PINS). It has a BUY rating from Seeking Alpha authors, while Wall Street analysts rate it a BUY. Conversely, Seeking Alpha's quant system, which consistently beats the market, rates PINS a HOLD.

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