Pinterest, Inc. (NYSE:PINS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Ross Sandler: Hey. Just following up on the prior question on priorities and investment levels. So Todd, if revenue — I know we don’t have a ton of visibility, but let’s just say low single digits is what we see in the first half and then it improves to something higher than that in the second half of the year, what kind of margin expansion might we see based on the planned investment levels that you talked about for 2023? And then the second question, Bill, you guys have talked about using an ad partnership idea as a supplement to your direct ad sales, where you bring in demand from some of these retail media networks and DSPs and other third parties. So could you just talk a little bit more about timing and magnitude of something like this? It didn’t come up on that prior checklist. So is that more of a 2024 event? And then how do you — if you do implement that balance, the partnership idea with direct ad sales? Thanks a lot.

Bill Ready: Yes. Thanks a lot. I’ll hit your second question first then give it to Todd to hit your first question. So we definitely think about sourcing ad demand as an opportunity for us. Our first priority is always going to be our direct sales and the partnerships that we’re driving there. And we feel really good about the progress that our sales team is making on that and how we’re winning with those advertisers that have implemented our latest tools and the most sophisticated and discerning advertisers seeing our performance be the strongest. We feel really good about that first-party selling motion. But we do believe there’s an opportunity to augment our demand with third parties. And you mentioned one of those that we’ve done already around Retail Media Networks.

We think there’s a lot more opportunity in those. And we also think that leveraging third-party demand has been an underutilized lever here, particularly compared to other platforms. And so that is something that we will continue to explore. While no specific updates on specific deals or specific partners or those kinds of things, I do think that is something that we’ll look to take more action on. We’re already taking action on it with Retail Media Networks and something that we’ll look to continue taking action on more in the near-term. It is not something that I’d put into 2024. It’s something that we’re actively exploring. And again, no specific updates or specific announcements on what we do there. But we are very much looking at that as a meaningful opportunity in the near-term versus something that would be relevant to the medium or long-term.

Todd Morgenfeld: And Ross, on your margin question, not to be too basic about it, but in a world where we have a volatile demand picture and some uncertainty on the year, generally from a top line perspective, we know revenue needs to outgrow costs. We talked about meaningful margin expansion a few quarters ago, and that’s something we’re still committed to and understand the levers that are needed to get there. Ideally, we can grow as the demand environment hopefully normalizes given all the factors that Bill describes. Deepening engagement, that strategy is working. We’ve opened up more monetizable supply at lower prices. We’ve built tools, including whole page optimization and mobile deep linking to better utilize that monetizable supply.

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