Responding to ongoing market rumors, PayPal Inc has refused of pursuing an acquisition of Pinterest at this time, which was being estimated to be sealed at $45 million.
The news of PayPal acquiring Pinterest started doing rounds last week when Bloomberg News first reported on the companies’ talks, later confirmed by Reuters. People with knowledge of the matter had said that the companies discussed a potential price of around $70 a share a price, valuing Pinterest at about a massive price of $45 billion.
However, sources had cautioned Reuters that “no deal was certain and that the terms could change.”
Had the acquisition proceeded ahead at the reported price, this would have been the biggest acquisition of a social media company, surpassing Microsoft’s $26.2 billion (roughly Rs. 1,95,990 crore) purchase of LinkedIn in 2016.
“In response to market rumors regarding a potential acquisition of Pinterest by PayPal, PayPal stated that it is not pursuing an acquisition of Pinterest at this time,” the company said in a one-sentence statement Monday.
PayPal shares are down by about 11.5 percent while Pinterest is up about 4.5 percent following the announcement. The payment facilitator did not provide any additional details in its statement.
Pinterest’s co-founder Evan Sharp announced earlier this month he would step down as chief creative officer to join LoveFrom, a firm led by Jony Ive, the designer of many Apple products.
PayPal, going against the trend displayed by most businesses owing to the pandemic, has brought life to a couple of acquisitions this year, including its $2.7 billion (roughly Rs. 20,240 crores) acquisition of Japanese buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) firm Paidy and Happy Returns, a company which helps online shoppers return unwanted merchandise, for an undisclosed sum in May. The acquisition of online coupon finder Honey Science in 2019 cost the company around $4 billion (roughly Rs. 29,990 crores).
Through the acquisition of Pinterest, a visual search and scrapbooking platform, the fintech company would have been able to expand its database about the products consumers are buying and the ability to potentially advertise or offer discounts based on that data. The company was founded in 1998 by a group that included Peter Thiel and Elon Musk to help consumers pay for things online at a time when many were still relying on paper checks or cash to conduct e-commerce.