Tech Stock News: Shares of Pinterest and Baidu Fall

As earnings season fades into the rearview mirror, there are still some notable stragglers reporting their latest quarterly results. Two of these companies are social-media platform Pinterest (NYSE: PINS) and Chinese online search engine Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU).

Both tech companies saw their stocks tumble after their latest results. Here's a closer look at their quarterly updates.

Pinterest

Shares of Pinterest fell sharply on Friday, following the company's first-quarter earnings release. The stock ended up declining 13.5% by the end of the trading day as investors worried about the company's worse-than-expected non-GAAP earnings per share.

Despite what the Street thought of the report, the company's 54% year-over-year revenue growth and its narrowing loss mark notable progress for the visual search engine and social media platform. Pinterest's non-GAAP loss per share was $0.32, narrower than a loss or $0.38 in the year-ago quarter but worse than analysts' $0.11 consensus estimate for the metric.

"We were particularly encouraged by the strength we saw in U.S. revenue and international user growth," said CFO Todd Morgenfeld in the company's first-quarter earnings release. "Our strong revenue performance allowed us to expand net margin by 20 percentage points year over year, reflecting our continued prioritization and disciplined execution across our strategic priorities."

Baidu

Shares of Chinese search engine Baidu plummeted by 16.5% on Friday. The stock's pullback was triggered by the company's first net loss in over 10 years and its bleak outlook for second-quarter revenue.

Baidu's revenue increased 15% year over year to 24.1 billion Chinese renminbi (RMB), or $3.59 billion. Excluding revenue from divested businesses, Baidu's top line was up 21% year over year. The company's net margin, however, fell from 32% in the first quarter of 2018 to negative 1% in the first quarter of 2019. On a per-American-depositary-share basis, Baidu's loss was $0.15. Non-GAAP earnings per ADS fell 80% year over year to $0.41.

"[M]argins were dampened by our successful CCTV New Year Eve Gala marketing campaign, which accelerated the traffic of Baidu family of apps and highlighted better in-app search user experience," said Baidu CFO Herman Yu in the company's first-quarter update.

But Yu expects a challenging online marketing environment for small and medium-sized businesses in the near term, helping explain the company's weak revenue guidance. Management forecast its second-quarter revenue to come in between a 3% decline and a 2% increase compared to revenue in the second quarter of 2018. Excluding business divestitures, Baidu guided for revenue to rise 1% to 6% year over year.

Amid the company's marketing headwinds, Yu said Baidu "will take this opportunity to improve our monetization capabilities and review our businesses for operational efficiency, while recognizing the importance to invest for sustainable long-term growth."

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Daniel Sparks has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Baidu. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.