Pinterest initiated with a Buy at TD Cowen

TD Cowen analyst John Blackledge initiated coverage of Pinterest (PINS) with a Buy rating and $38 price target The firm’s survey data shows Pinterest “over-indexes on product discovery use case relative to other Social Platforms, a tailwind for monetization.” The survey shows that 44% of U.S. Pinterest users visit the platform to “find or shop for products,” more than double the same metric for other social networks like Reddit, Facebook and Instagram, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm says the company is now injecting billions of user actions into its artificial intelligence models to drive more personalized and relevant content and ads.