SAN FRANCISCO — Pinterest has avoided many of the woes of other newly public tech companies. But on Thursday, it stumbled.
In its first earnings report since going public last month, the digital pinboard company posted a narrower loss than a year earlier and a 54 percent increase in revenue. But its earnings per share failed to meet Wall Street expectations, sending its stock tumbling more than 15 percent in after-hours trading.
The results followed the bumpy stock market debuts of several tech companies in recent months. Last week, the stock of the ride-hailing giant Uber dropped on its first day of trading, and has struggled ever since. Shares of Uber’s rival Lyft, which were listed in March, have also fallen below their offering price. Those performances have raised questions about investor appetite for fast-growing but unprofitable tech firms.
Some smaller tech companies that are losing less money have seen their share prices soar after their recent I.P.O.s. They include Zoom, a video conferencing software company; PagerDuty, a cloud computing company; and Beyond Meat, a meat-alternative company.
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“There is a lot of trepidation in the market today because of what we just saw with Uber and Lyft,” said John Mullins, associate professor of management practice at the London Business School.
Other start-ups planning to go public, including the workplace collaboration company Slack, the real estate company WeWork and the food-delivery company Postmates, will need to distinguish themselves from Uber and Lyft, Mr. Mullins said.
Pinterest, which makes money from advertising and lets people discover, collect and share images and ideas about hobbies, travel plans and other pursuits online, went public with a message that stood out from other tech companies: It was close to profitability. The San Francisco company priced its I.P.O. conservatively and was valued at just above its last private valuation. Since debuting at $19, its shares had risen nearly 60 percent.
For the first quarter, Pinterest posted a loss of $41 million, down from $52 million a year earlier. Revenue rose to $202 million from $131 million a year earlier, slightly beating analyst expectations.
Its loss of 33 cents per share was greater than analyst expectations of a loss of 11 cents a share, according to FactSet.
Pinterest also reported 291 million active monthly users, a 22 percent increase from a year earlier.
Mark Mahaney, an internet analyst at RBC Capital Markets, called the after-hours sell-off of Pinterest an “expectations correction” since the stock had risen significantly since its I.P.O.
“Valuation and expectations will now need to settle down,” Mr. Mahaney said. But he added that Pinterest’s revenue growth was higher than Facebook, Snap and Twitter, its social media competitors.
On a conference call on Thursday, Todd Morgenfeld, Pinterest’s chief financial officer, said its users had a “more commercial” mind-set than social media and messaging apps because they used Pinterest to plan parts of their lives, like weddings or meals.
Follow Erin Griffith on Twitter: @eringriffith.
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