Good morning and welcome to Pinterest Inc. 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I would now like to introduce Ben Silverman, the company's President and CEO and Chairman of the Board. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders.
It's 8 am Pacific Time and I now call the 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders to order. In accordance with their bylaws, I will act as Chairperson of this meeting and Christine Flores, our General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, will act as secretary of the meeting and record the minutes. We're joined today by the members of the Pinterest Board of Directors and the following members of the Pinterest team Todd Morgenfeld, our CFO and Head of Business Operations Christine Flores, our General Counsel and Corporate Secretary and Jane Penner, our Head of Investor Relations. Kat, Perina and Alex Bender, representatives from Ernst and Young, our independent registered public accounting firm are also present and will be available to respond to appropriate questions later in the meeting. We're also joined by Trish Hodson, the Inspector of Elections.
I will now turn the meeting over to Christine Flores, who will conduct the formal portion of the meeting.
Thanks, Ben, and hi, everyone. Thank you again for joining us today. I'm Christine Flores, the General Counsel of Pinterest. Today's virtual only meeting is a live audio webcast. We believe it's important to engage with our stockholders and we hope That this virtual meeting will maximize participation regardless of location.
In addition, having a virtual meeting enables us to reach a larger audience while reducing our costs and environmental impact. Thank you very much to those who are participating in our meeting today. I'm going to cover the formal business of today's meeting, which is described in our proxy statement for this meeting. This meeting will be conducted in accordance with the rules of conduct, Which are in place to ensure a fair and orderly meeting for all stockholders in attendance. You can access these rules in the meeting materials section of the virtual meeting website.
We ask that participants abide by these rules And thank you for your cooperation. The polls opened at the beginning of the meeting and we will close the polls on all matters immediately after the presentation of today's proposals. All Pinterest stockholders entitled to vote at this meeting can do so online. If you are a stockholder entitled to vote and have not yet voted Or if you want to change your previously cast vote, please do so via the website used to access this meeting. If you have already voted by proxy And do not wish to change your vote, your vote will be cast as previously instructed.
No further action is necessary. After voting on these matters, we will announce the preliminary voting results and adjourn the formal part of the meeting and open it up to a general Q and A session. Confirmed stockholders as of the record date may submit questions at any time during this meeting by typing in the box provided on today's virtual meeting platform. As stated in the rules of conduct, due to time constraints, we ask that you limit yourself Two questions and restrict your questions to matters of general interest to our stockholders. We will answer as many questions as time permits.
Broadridge Financial Solutions, our proxy service provider, has indicated by affidavit that the notice of Internet availability of the proxy materials Was mailed to all stockholders of record at the close of business on April 1, 2021, the record date for this meeting. That affidavit together with copies of the notice of Internet availability of proxy materials, the proxy statement And the proxy will be filed with the minutes of the meeting. Trish Hodson has been appointed as the Inspector of Election. She has signed an oath of office promising to execute faithfully the duties of the Inspector of Election. The Oath of Office will be filed with the minutes of the The Inspector of Election has determined that a sufficient number of shares entitled to vote at this meeting are present In person or by proxy to constitute a quorum and we may proceed with the business of the meeting.
The first item of business is the election of the 3 directors as set forth in Proposal 1 in the proxy statement. Frederick Reynolds, Evan Sharp and Andrea Wissam have been nominated by our Board of Directors to serve as Class II Directors Until our 2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders or until their respective successors are duly elected And qualified where their office is otherwise vacated. The Board recommends that you vote for the election of each Director nominee. The second item of business is proposal 2 in our proxy statement to ratify the appointment of E and Y Ernst and Young LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for our fiscal year ending December 31, 2021. The Board recommends you vote for the appointment of Ernst and Young.
The 3rd item of business is our say on pay vote described in Proposal 3 in the proxy statement, which is an approval on a non binding advisory basis on the compensation of our named executive officers. The Board recommends for the approval of our say on pay vote. I'll pause to check if there are any questions related to the proposals or for the Ernst and Young representatives here today. There appear to be no questions related to the proposals for Ernst and Young. It is now 8:0:7 am and the polls are now closed.
Based on the preliminary review of the votes, the Inspector of Elections has informed me that all Director nominees have been elected And each of the other proposals has been approved as per the Board's recommendations. We plan to publicly announce the official voting results in a Form 8 ks after all the verifications have been completed by the inspector. This concludes the formal business Before I turn it over to Jane Punner, our Head of Investor Relations to moderate the Q and A, I would like to remind you that some of our comments today may include forward looking statements, which are subject to the risks And uncertainties described in our SEC filings. We may also discuss certain non GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our Investor Relations website located at investor.
Pinterestinc.com for more information. I'll turn it over to Jane now.
Thanks, Christine. Since we received quite a few questions On the same subject, we've consolidated them into one question, which is what is Pinterest's plan for growth and expansion over the next few years?
Our strategic priorities for 2021 remain anchored in content, the pinner experience, advertiser success and shopping. We plan to continue investing in these areas this year. We expect research and development efforts to continue to focus on pinner product, Ad Product and Measurement Investments. We intend to grow our headcount further, in particular to support our international expansion efforts. We also intend to scale our comprehension and brand marketing efforts in 2021.
We believe these investments will support long term growth and continue to build the foundations for a scaled business over time.
Thanks, Todd. The next question asks about our plan for ethnic and racial diversity, particularly on the Board and in our suppliers and workforce. Also, how many, if any, of the Pop executives who are male of any color are studying or receiving coaching to understand their male privilege biases.
Since Pinterest started, we've aspired to be a place where all people can find inspiration to create a life they love. And we know that realizing this mission requires a culture grounded in diversity, equity and inclusion. We published our 2021 Inclusion and Diversity report earlier this month and it's available on our Newstream website. Our effort to positively shift experience for employees Includes increasing the gender and ethnic diversity of our future workforce, while simultaneously working to enhance inclusion for our current workforce. At the end of 2020, 49% of global employees were women, including 30% of our leadership roles And 12% of U.
S. Employees were from underrepresented races and ethnicities. And Our commitment to building a more inclusive company culture continues. In the Q1 of 2021 alone, we reached a milestone. Our overall workforce comprised 50% women.
We've launched a number of efforts like making sure at least 80% of open roles in the U. S. Adhere to our diverse slate approach to expanding our apprenticeship program and focusing on skills and capabilities in our interview process to attract talented candidates from outside the tech industry. We made progress with women in leadership and are committed to this continued growth. We're committed to, by 2025, increasing the number of people from underrepresented races and ethnicities to 20%, and the work will focus on technical roles and leadership.
By 2025, we'll increase the number of women in leadership by 20%. Hiring is only one part of the equation. We've achieved pay equity across gender and race in the U. S. This means equal pay for comparable work.
We've introduced increased compensation range and level transparency, Revamped and expanded our inclusion training for all employees and this includes our executives. Our expanded educational offerings now include important conversations about how people of different identities experience the world and the workplace. We continue to add these and to incorporate We established the Pinterest Change Network, a competitively selected globally representative group of our employees who partnered with leaders across the company to provide input on major initiatives and new company policies. And we also have employee resource groups They are company supported, employee led groups that play a critical role in driving an inclusive culture and amplifying diverse voices. Finally, we added Diversey to our Board of Directors and added 3 new directors in 2020.
Thanks, Ben. Are you planning any region specific influencers to bring content to and promote the platform? For example, cooking articles According to Regent Gardening or Designs, are you considering any e commerce tie ups like Shopify?
We are building our creator ecosystem by first focusing on core Pinner use cases like food, home decor, fashion, wellness and fitness. We're extremely early in this effort and we recently introduced idea pins, our multi page video format in the U. S, U. K, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, Austria and Switzerland. This new access and capability will empower anyone with a business account to create inspiring content and better interact with their audiences, Building more engaged communities directly on Pinterest.
We hope to add creators across all these markets and expand these efforts globally, But it's still early. In terms of the question on e commerce, we evaluate partnerships that make the most sense and are in the best interest of Pinterest to its long term growth. Our partnership with Shopify continues to grow and helps smaller merchants develop a presence of interest. The integration is now live to Shopify merchants in all of our monetizable markets. We also plan to begin testing seamless on platform transactions later this year.
Is there an effort to bring Amazon to Pinterest? We have Target and Walmart that often Amazon can beat their prices.
We evaluate partnerships that make sense and are in the best interest of Pinterest and its long term growth.
I was on mute. Does Pinterest engage in political activism? If so, please identify which directors support using the company For political activism and what benefit they expect to achieve from this type of activity. Also, will you commit to no political commentary for the CEO, Board and employees?
Pinterest monitors and engages on issues that we believe could impact the company. We prioritize issues based on how we believe we can be the best advocates for Pinners, our business or our employees. Pinterest does not have a political action committee.
Most Pinterest users do not know that you can purchase through the site Or that you can simply snap a picture and then buy the product. What marketing efforts is Pinterest doing to make the purchase and buy functions known to both users and non users?
Interest is unique in that we're a media rich utility where people come to discover what inspires them, to plan and ultimately make their inspiration into reality often by purchasing products. We're making Pinterest shoppable in the following ways. First, we're improving the inventory of reliable product pins with things like our catalog upload tool and partnerships with folks like Shopify in WooCommerce. 2nd, we're improving the discoverability of these products. At the end of Q1, the number of pinners engaging with shopping Sun Pinterest had grown over 200% year on year and product searches were up 20x year on year in Q1.
3rd and finally, we plan to begin testing seamless on platform transactions later this year. Because this feature is a test Not yet available, we're not currently marketing the functionality. Our marketing efforts more generally, we're investing in our brand by launching our first Brand marketing campaign focused on comprehension this year. We want to bring new users to Pinterest and remind existing and previous users of the benefits of Pinterest as a full funnel platform, letting you go from inspiration all the way to action.
How will the company's monetization model Active by new privacy changes in the latest iPhone update.
Apple's ATT policy will be a headwind, But the extent is still unknown. This could have an increasing impact over time depending on how the landscape evolves. The impact of this is not unique to Pinterest. It applies to the entire online advertising industry. We're investing in 1st and it's important to remember that we're still building some of the capabilities that larger platforms have today.
Signal powers our ability to deliver content that is relevant to Pinner's tastes and preferences as well as our ability to see conversions. We have on platform signals, for example, search and save behavior that have not that are not impacted by expected industry and regulatory changes. However, we also use off platform signals, which we do expect to be increasingly impacted by these changes. Finally, privacy is important to us and we try to be clear with our users about the choices they have.
What is Pinterest doing to evolve the product to compete with TikTok and the new way that users are consuming content, specifically In short, 30 to 60 second curated videos.
Today, much of Pinterest Content is based on users pinning items from the web, which has created enormous value for our users and advertisers. Over the last Few years, we've talked about the increasing importance of video content, which has grown enormously up interest. On our Q4 2020 earnings, We mentioned that video views were up 100% year over year. Idea pins are the next logical step, enabling people To not only save video, but to create original videos aligned with our mission. Idea pins are focused on sequences of short video clips that users can tap through, And each individual clip can be up to 60 seconds in length and support 20 pages of content, including a variety of creative editing tools and feature templates for ingredients or instructions so creators can bring their ideas to life in many different ways.
We believe ideas, Bins, will fill an important gap for the video content landscape. On other platforms, Stories are designed to entertain and to watch what other people do, but on Pinterest, idea pins are designed specifically for productivity and their focus on what you want to do.
Will the Board of Directors consider adopting a resolution to eliminate the practice of Staggered
Board. We believe that a Staggered Board structure promotes stability of the Board and fosters a long term strategic vision for the company. Since only part of the Board is up for election in a given year, the remaining Board members are assured of returning, which establishes a level of continuity in management and oversight.
Users say that they are frustrated That it seems that the majority of pins are dead ends. The links are no longer live. How do you plan to address this problem in order to keep customers happy and confident in their use of Pinterest.
Most pins are on Pinterest because someone saved it from a site or because the content owner uploaded it directly to Pinterest. Sometimes when the former happens, the link might have been broken somewhere along the way, And we know this is a bad experience. This can be especially frustrating when you're trying to shop on Pinterest, which is why we're working with merchants to upload their catalogs directly So it's easy to see the latest in stock products right from their stores. With these product pins, when you click the link, it takes you to the checkout page in the retailer We've also made improvements to visual search to help you explore items that are similar to what you see in the pin. In addition to retailers, we're also working more closely with creators and bloggers to bring their content directly to Pinterest, So the pins you click on provide you with more information on how to take action.
Why doesn't Pinterest CEO and management appear on financial channels like CNBC more often. I watch and read a lot of financial news and rarely see the CEO out there. It's important to shareholders to see Pinterest advocated for publicly. Being timid and reserved does not help.
While historically our leadership team has not done much business press, we plan to change that and do more. We hope that this further communication will help shareholders in the general public better understand our business. Also, as I mentioned, a complement to PR will be a scaled comprehension of brand marketing campaign beginning this year. We're launching our first ever marketing campaign focused on comprehension this quarter Because we want to bring new users to Pinterest and remind existing and previous users of the benefits of Pinterest as a full funnel platform, bringing Pinterest from inspiration
Action. How do you moderate what content you post on your website and what content you remove and take down from your website?
Pinterest is generally not a place for harmful and misleading content. There's nothing inspiring about harmful or misleading content, We don't want it on Pinterest. And we'll always be focused on creating a positive experience for our users. And today, we do that in a few ways. The first is 2 policies which we align with the mission of the company to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love.
We want to be an inspiring place for our users and try to create policies that will help make Pinterest an empowering and welcoming place for everyone, and we regularly evaluate those policies to see if they continue to serve the goal. We also try to make reporting as easy as possible and use a combination of human review and automated tools, including machine learning to find and remove the content. We proactively look for and remove that type of content. In addition to taking action on content reported to us, We also disable search results for conspiracy theories. We know these systems aren't perfect and it's impossible to keep all this content off the platform.
However, we regularly seek advice from outside experts to help us understand certain types of content and how we can improve our tools to combat it.
With more people souring on social media, how do you plan on being different from the other social media platforms while continuing to increase Your DAO, MAU and Wow.
The most meaningful difference between Pinterest and traditional social media He's that people typically use Pinterest as a personal utility rather than a source of entertainment or a way to communicate with their friends. This means that they explore and plan personal projects like renovating their home or planning a special event. The data downstream from this kind of planning and that happens on Pinterest, saving and Board Organization is different from the data social sites get from entertainment based activities, Likes and follows. This data set, which we call the taste graph, is one of our most valuable and differentiated assets in attracting both users and advertisers.
What are some ideas for how to keep Pinterest relevant in the post COVID world?
Well, Pinterest has long been a place for people to come and get inspiration to play in their lives. As a personal utility, we believe that many forms of engagement will be relevant in a post COVID world, just as they were before COVID. Our most common use cases include food, home fashion and beauty. More recently, we noted in our Q1 2021 shareholder letter that the engagement we have on shopping surfaces and shopping engagement appears to be quite resilient post COVID. We've also seen traction with Gen Z users who are coming to Pinterest for things like art and fashion.
And finally, video has grown nicely both before and during the COVID pandemic. As we build new organic formats like idea pins for short and native video content, we believe that we will enrich the experience for pinners on Pinterest for the long term. And also, as the world opens up, we hope that Pinterest will come back to Pinterest for the things they used to come to Pinterest for, Things like planning birthdays, planning Thanksgiving, holiday gatherings, weddings and more.
Will dividends be paid in the near future?
We have no current plans to pay a dividend.
As a subscriber to Pinterest from almost the beginning, I love it. When I added the mobile app, I got mainly advertising rather than Being able to explore. Does the mobile app have a higher percentage of marketing on it?
We serve ads on both desktop and mobile and there's not a material difference in ad load by device type. We continue to invest in the overall user experience by surfacing relevant content that is both organic and paid.
Although Andrea has significant experience, what would her other commitments To numerous other boards limit her abilities to focus on Pinterest.
Andrea Wissam does not Currently serve on any other public company board other than Pinterest. It's typical for public company board members to serve on other boards, including Boards of Private Companies and Nonprofit Organizations. Andrea has a deep affinity for our brand and brings a wealth of experience in content and Media. We're confident that she'll continue to add valuable strategic expertise and guidance to our Board of Directors.
Thanks, Ben. It appears at this time that there are no additional questions. In addition to the questions that we received, we also thank you for sharing your comments and suggestions. We value our shareholders and their feedback. Now, I'd like to turn it back to Ben.
This concludes today's meeting. Thank you for attending and for your interest in Pinterest. On behalf of our Board and our leadership team, I'd like to thank you for your continued support. Have a great day.