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• Leadership change will help company to change focus on ecommerce business from advertising business model
Pinterest Inc (NYSE: PINS) on Tuesday said its longtime Chief Executive Officer Ben Silbermann would step down, handing over the reins to Google commerce executive Bill Ready.
Shares of the company jumped more than 8% to $21.33 in the extended trading after the news but dropped to around $20.50 after 15 minutes.
Investors are expecting Pinterest to shift to e-commerce initiatives from its advertising-based business model, as the company, earlier this month, announced that it is acquiring The Yes, an AI-powered shopping platform for fashion brands.
“In our next chapter, we are focused on helping Pinners buy, try and act on all the great ideas they see. Bill is a great leader for this transition. He is a builder who deeply understands commerce and payments,” Silbermann, who co-founded and headed the company for the last 12 years, said in a statement.
Bill Ready, for the past two years, ran the commerce and payment operations at the Alphabet Inc-owned (NASDAQ: GOOGL) search giant and, earlier to that, held worked as a chief operating officer at PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL).
Pinterest has more than 400 million monthly active users and has long focused on its advertising business. But in recent years, it has shifted to make e-commerce more of a priority.
Silbermann, who co-founded the company in 2010 and took it public in April 2019, will serve as the first Executive Chairman.
“As someone who has spent most of my career in commerce and payments, it’s so clear to me that Pinterest has the opportunity to build something unique—something special,” Ready said in a LinkedIn post.
Pinterest is down 45.8% year to date and are nearly 76% off of 52-week highs.
Picture Credit: Forbes
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