Report: Pinterest may go public as soon as April

Pinterest may follow Lyft and Uber to the public markets in the first half of 2019, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The visual search engine and shopping tool is expected to tap underwriters in January and complete an initial public offering as soon as April. The company was valued at just over $12 billion with its last private fundraise, a $150 million round in mid-2017, and is on pace to bring in $700 million in revenue this year.

The company, founded in 2008 by Ben Silbermann (pictured), is also in talks to secure a $500 million credit line, per the report, not an uncommon move for a pre-IPO giant like Pinterest.

To date, the company has raised nearly $1.5 billion from key stakeholders such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital, Fidelity and SV Angel.

Pinterest recently reached 250 million monthly active users, up from 200 million in 2017.

This year, it launched several new features to make it easier for passive Pinterest users to actually buy products on the platform and introduced the following tab, where users could view only the content from brands and people they follow. It also added the Pinterest Propel program as part of an effort to create more local content for its users and it implemented full-screen video ads to beef up its advertising options — an area where it competes directly with Facebook and Google.

2019 is poised to be a banner year for venture-backed IPOs. Both Uber and Lyft are in IPO registration, filing privately to go public within hours of each other earlier this month, and Slack, too, has reportedly hired Goldman Sachs to lead its 2019 float.

Pinterest didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.