• Pinterest shares have commenced trading on the New York Stock Exchange
• Price spiked by an incredible 25% in the first 24 hours

Pinterest, a visual-bookmarking platform founded in 2010 began trading its shares on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, and a share’s price spiked to $23.75 thereby making it a 25 percent increase from its set price of $19 prior to the Initial Public Offering (IPO).

Pinterest debuts on New York Stock Exchange

Per reports, Pinterest had set its share price between $15 to $17 on Wednesday night, but when it began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday under the ticker name PINS, a share’s price increased by 25 percent which set it at $23.75.

The visual discovery tool’s IPO also gave it a valuation of $10 billion after $1.4 billion was raised during the IPO, but then, its valuation is less than the $12.3 billion which was it was valued in the private market.

Prior to this time, Business Insider had informed that the San Francisco-based company is trying to change people’s impression that it is photosharing social media platform similar to Snapchat which had reportedly seen a decline in its share price after its IPO launch in 2017.

According to Pinterest, they are a visual search engine in comparison to Google’s early search engine business, and even though many have pointed out the difficulties in advertising on the platform, it is only a nine-year-old company and is still trying to build its advertising business.

Pinterest playing a vital role in the e-commerce industry

Ygal Arounian, Wedbush’s research analyst who spoke to Markets Insider in an email stated that although Pinterest may be generating all its revenue from advertising, the company still plays a vital role in the e-commerce industry as an “image-based search and commerce continues to grow in importance as a sales channel.”

The same view was held by Ali Mogharabi, Morningstar’s analyst who tagged Pinterest a “very high uncertainty”, but noted that the company has promise as a player when it comes to the global digital-advertising space. Mogharabi also said:

“While we don’t expect Pinterest to displace online advertising behemoths Alphabet and Facebook or up-and-coming Amazon, we do expect it to attract a small pinch of digital ad spending which we estimate is an addressable market of nearly $500 billion.” 

A year of high profile debuts

Three weeks prior to Pinterest’s IPO, Lyft, a ride-hailing app launched on the public market on March 29 and weeks later, its stock price was less than what was offered at its IPO. Snap also experienced the same in 2017 after its share price of $17 during IPO declined to $5 by the end of 2018.

Zoom, a video-conferencing company which began trading on Nasdaq on Thursday under the ticker ZM saw an 81 percent increase from its IPO at $36 to $65. It also gave the company a valuation of $9.2 billion.

Uber has also revealed its plans for an IPO in a bid to get a valuation between $90 billion and $100 billion. There are expectations that it will hit the public market next month.