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Pinterest Inc. has laid off some of its recruiting team and plans to slow hiring for the rest of the year, a representative said, making the online image and idea-sharing platform the latest social-media company to let go of staff amid a wobbly digital-ad market.
“We’re closely monitoring the global macroeconomic environment and have decided to slow down our hiring for the remainder of 2022,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday, confirming news reported on Monday by the website The Information.
“We made great hires at Pinterest this year and have strong talent in place to support the needs of our business. With less need for hiring support, we’ve made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our recruiting team.”
The company declined to provide more specifics on the scope of the cuts, or any other information. Pinterest
PINS,
had 3,225 full-time employees at the end of last year.
Shares of Pinterest were down 3.9% on Tuesday. The stock has plummeted 58% so far this year. By comparison, the S&P 500 index
SPX,
has fallen 17%.
The cuts at Pinterest follow a big round of layoffs at Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc.
META,
and at other big tech firms, following a pullback in spending on technology and digital ads. Media companies like Gannett Co. Inc.
GCI,
and CNN have also recently announced cuts. BuzzFeed Inc.
BZFD,
on Tuesday said in a filing that it planned to shrink its workforce by 12%.
Pinterest in June appointed Bill Ready as its new chief executive, with Ben Silbermann, a company co-founder and then-CEO, transitioning to a newly created executive chairman role. And in the wake of Pinterest’s third-quarter earnings, announced in October, some analysts found things to like about the company. Pinterest at that time reported profit and sales that were above estimates. MKM Partners, in a note at that time, called it “the only silver lining in the digital ad space.”
However, Pinterest executives said that trends in October were heading toward the low end of their fourth-quarter outlook.
“Q4 revenue is backend weighted to November and December given holiday seasonal moments,” Chief Financial Officer Todd Morgenfeld said on Pinterest’s earnings call in October. “And given this and the overall ad market volatility, there could be a wider range of outcomes including some downside risk to our guidance.”
MKM Partners noted that the platform had attracted more younger, Gen Z users, and stronger than expected demand from large U.S. retail advertisers. But while the company grew monthly active users quarter over quarter, MKM said, monthly active users were down 3% year over year.
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