We recently published a list of Billionaire Paul Singer Says Stay Away from These 7 AI Bubble Stocks; 3 Tech Stocks He’s Buying. Since Pinterest Inc’s (NYSE:PINS) ranks 9th on the list, it deserves a deeper look.
Billionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Management has reportedly said in a latest letter to investors that mega-cap AI tech stocks are in “bubble land” and Nvidia is “overhyped.” The fund said in its letter that it’s skeptical about the notion that technology companies will keep buying AI chips in high volumes in the future, adding that AI is “overhyped with many applications not ready for prime time”. It also claimed that many AI use cases are “never going to be cost-efficient, are never going to actually work right, will take up too much energy, or will prove to be untrustworthy.” The fund reportedly said in its letter that AI is in effect software that has failed to deliver “value commensurate with the hype”.
The $66 billion Elliott Management founded by billionaire Paul Singer, who is one of the most feared activist investors in the US, said there are “few real uses” of AI other than “summarising notes of meetings, generating reports and helping with computer coding”.
Elliott Management said in its letter that it stayed away from “bubble” stocks included in the Magnificicient Seven group.
Elliott Management last year posted a modest gain of 4.7%. However, it has a record of no down years since the financial crisis in 2008. Since its inception in 1977, the fund has reported just two down years, a feat hard to match in the hedge fund industry.
While Elliott calling mega-cap AI stocks a bubble is a major development, it’s certainly not a surprise. Many investors and market experts have been warning about the hype around major AI stocks.
Here is what Insider Monkey’s founder and Research Director Inan Dogan said about Elliott Management’s latest thoughts on AI stocks:
“I have been saying that NVDA’s market cap assumes that the company will make around $150 billion in profits perpetually which is crazy. Elliott is saying the same thing and it is becoming news! Investors don’t know how to bet on the AI revolution, so the only visible companies that they think will benefit are semiconductor and cloud companies. That’s why they have been piling into NVDA. It doesn’t mean that other tech companies are in a bubble territory. In contrast, if Elliott is right that other megacaps are overspending on NVDA chips right now, this implies that their earnings are understated and they are actually much more profitable and cheaper than Elliott thinks. That’s why NVDA and cloud companies are in different categories. NVDA could be in bubble territory but I am not sure other megacaps in the Magnificient Seven group are in a bubble.”
For this article, we analyzed the top AI stocks in the Mag. 7 group which according to Paul Singer are in a bubble. We also talked about three AI/tech stocks that were in Singer’s portfolio, as of the end of the first quarter of this year. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
Photo by Souvik Banerjee on Unsplash
Pinterest Inc (NYSE:PINS)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 64
Elliott Management owns a $1.2 billion stake in Pinterest as of the end of June, latest data shows.
Pinterest Inc’s (NYSE:PINS) biggest strength and moat is its unique niche audience and the fact that it’s playing on its own turf instead of competing with giants like TikTok or Facebook. Over 500 million active users turn to Pinterest Inc (NYSE:PINS) every month with a clear intention: get inspiration for ideas and buy stuff online for their home or office. Women make up two-thirds of Pinterest’s user base, and over 40% are Gen Z, the fastest-growing cohort. The company has taken several steps to better monetize its audience. Since 2023, they’ve enhanced click-through rates, with 97% of lower funnel revenue coming from direct links, more than 80% previously. Pinterest Inc (NYSE:PINS) API initiative for third-party integration is also working, with a whopping 40% of revenue coming from that step. The company talked about this during Q1 earnings call:
“One of our most important initiatives began in earnest in 2023 with our efforts to increase adoption of the API for conversions, which provides a server-to-server connection for advertisers to measure and attribute conversions. I’m pleased to report that we’ve grown the adoption of the API to nearly 40% of total revenue, up from 28% of total revenue at our investor day last September.
As I’ve mentioned previously, revenue from retail advertisers who have adopted the API for conversions tends to grow significantly faster than revenue from those who have not yet adopted. This trend continued to hold in Q1 and underscores our desire to drive more privacy-centric measurement, particularly to lower funnel advertisers where it’s most impactful. We’re seeing a reinforcing effect take place. As advertisers adopt and see the benefits of shopping ads, mobile deep linking, or direct links, they are more incentivized to adopt our privacy-centric measurement.”
Analysts believe Pinterest’s partnership with Amazon will also boost Pinterest Inc (NYSE:PINS) revenue. This year the partnership is expected to bring in about $120 million of incremental revenue.
Meridian Contrarian Fund stated the following regarding Pinterest, Inc. (NYSE:PINS) in its fourth quarter 2023 investor letter:
Pinterest, Inc. (NYSE:PINS) is a social media platform that enables visual discovery and generates revenue mainly through online advertising and e-commerce. Earnings declined after the company saw tremendous user and revenue growth in 2020- 2021 and grew operating expenses as if the pandemic-fueled growth trajectory would continue. Normalized growth trends and a macro slowdown that affected ad spend eventually hurt earnings per share. We believed that Pinterest had a significant opportunity to resume earnings growth because:
Pinterest has an attractive franchise and appears under-monetized vs. social media peers given how well its user experience lends itself to online shopping. 2. Its new CEO, who led commerce initiatives at Google, may portend a virtuous self-help/self-improvement opportunity to unlock monetization. 3. The high levels of operating expense growth vs. sales prior to our investment provides an opportunity for leverage and expense reductions to improve earnings.
Pinterest’s stock performed well in the quarter as the thesis played out and the company reported strong results while raising 2023 guidance. We pared back our position during the quarter due to stock appreciation and as the investment becomes less contrarian as our thesis plays out.”
Overall, Pinterest Inc’s (NYSE:PINS) ranks 9th on Insider Monkey’s list titled Billionaire Paul Singer Says Stay Away from These 7 AI Bubble Stocks; 3 Tech Stocks He’s Buying. While we acknowledge the potential of Pinterest Inc’s (NYSE:PINS), our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than PINS but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: Analyst Sees a New $25 Billion “Opportunity” for NVIDIA and Jim Cramer is Recommending These Stocks.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
