We are now seeing a wave of longtime private companies coming public and with that we are getting data on usage, financial performance, and a host of other issues that is very useful market data.
I spent some time looking at Pinterest’s S1 today. They filed it a week or two ago.
I found this chart of user growth quite interesting:
That shows monthly active users in the US and International over the last few years on a quarterly basis.
Pinterest is rapidly growing its user base outside of the US but usage in the US has stalled out.
This chart, also from the S1, shows revenue growth in the US and Internationally:
So what you can see is that Pinterest has been growing its US revenues rapidly but not its US user base. And on the other hand, Pinterest has been growing its International user base but its International revenue is still nascent.
So the question is whether Pinterest will be able to monetize its rapidly expanding international user base.
That is the kind of insight you can get from reading these S1s. I find them fascinating and try to read them when they come out.
I don’t plan to buy Lyft or Pinterest when they come public. That’s not really my thing. And I don’t have an opinion on whether they are attractive investments or not. But I do think we can learn a lot about these businesses from reading S1s and that can help us with the investments we do have.