Pinterest Short Sellers Are Getting Crushed

Pinterest Inc (NYSE: PINS) shares are up another 7% on Monday and are now up 45.6% overall in the past two trading sessions after the company reported 4% revenue growth and 49 million new users in the second quarter. Global monthly active users were up 39% compared to a year ago.

While Pinterest investors are celebrating the big numbers, S3 Partners analyst Ihor Dusaniwsky said Pinterest short sellers are getting absolutely crushed.

“PINS shorts more than doubled their year-to-date mark-to-market losses on today’s price move and we should expect a short squeeze in the stock as short sellers look for more attractive short targets elsewhere,” Dusaniwsky said.

The Numbers: Pinterest currently has $674 million in short interest, roughly 6.9% of its total float. As of the end of last week, Pinterest short sellers had endured $375 million in year-to-date mark-to-market losses, including a $207 million hit on Friday alone.

Dusaniwsky said some short sellers seemed to be throwing in the towel on Pinterest even before the blowout report. Pinterest short interest has dropped by 2.56 million over the past month.

Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) remains the most heavily shorted stock in the Interactive Media & Services group with more than $6.2 billion of short interest, but that short interest represents just 1.1% of the company’s float. Of the major social media stocks, Snap Inc (NYSE: SNAP) has the highest short percent of float at 9.2%.

Benzinga’s Take: The Facebook advertising boycott could also be contributing to the positive momentum in Pinterest shares. Investors know that advertisers avoiding Facebook have limited options for other social media platforms that offer anything close to the reach that Facebook does.

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