Investing.com – Pinterest (NYSE:PINS) stock plunged 10.5% while PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) jumped 6% in Monday’s premarket trading as the latter ruled out pursuing an acquisition of the social media platform “at this time”.
Bloomberg had first reported on October 20 that the payments company was looking to acquire Pinterest at a potential price of around $70 per share, valuing it at $70 billion.
The rumoured deal was being looked at as a mix of opportunities and challenges for both firms.
Under Chief Executive Dan Schulman, PayPal has been trying to go beyond payments to combine aspects of ecommerce and banking.
Pinterest’s millions of users would have helped PayPal meet its target of doubling the number of active accounts to 750 million by 2025. But any deal would have carried execution risks. Merchant platforms that are already PayPal customers would have looked at Pinterest as a competitor.
Pinterest is at a critical juncture as co-founder Evan Sharp (OTC:SHCAY) is leaving the company to join LoveFrom, a firm led by Jony Ive, who had been chiefly responsible for designing Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)'s iPhone.