(Bloomberg) — PayPal Holdings Inc. said it isn’t pursuing an acquisition of Pinterest Inc., ending days of speculation over a potential $45 billion deal.
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San Jose, California-based PayPal had approached Pinterest about a potential deal, Bloomberg News reported last week. The companies discussed a potential price of around $70 a share, people with knowledge of the matter said, a price that would have valued Pinterest at about $45 billion.
“In response to market rumors regarding a potential acquisition of Pinterest by PayPal, PayPal stated that it is not pursuing an acquisition of Pinterest at this time,” the company said in a one-sentence statement Monday.
Read more: PayPal and Pinterest’s potential deal
An acquisition of Pinterest, a visual search and scrapbooking platform, would have boosted PayPal’s ambitions to become the next global super app. The company was founded in 1998 by a group that included Peter Thiel and Elon Musk to help consumers pay for things online at a time when many were still relying on paper checks or cash to conduct e-commerce.
Pinterest’s shares jumped 13% on Wednesday after Bloomberg News reported the talks between the two firms. The stock has since pared most of those gains and closed near $58 on Friday. PayPal sank nearly 12% over the previous three trading days.
A deal to buy Pinterest would have given the payments firm, which last year paid $4 billion for couponing and price-comparison app Honey Science, even more data about the products consumers are buying and the ability to potentially advertise or offer discounts based on that data.
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