By Spencer Feingold

In the latest initial public offering to rouse investors, Pinterest announced Monday it plans to sell 75 million shares at a range of $15 to $17 a piece. The pricing is a drop from the company’s pre-IPO sales, which sold shares for over $20 and valued the company at $12 billion.

But some experts are advising not to read too much into Pinterest’s IPO hype.

“The majority of time when an IPO comes out, that is not the time for a public investor to get into the stock,” Steve Rhodes, editor of Mastering Probability, told Cheddar in an interview Tuesday.

Since its founding in 2010, Pinterest has grown to serve 250 million monthly active users, known as Pinners, and completes over 2 billion monthly searches. The San Francisco-based company earned $755.9 million in revenue in 2018, an increase from $472.8 million in 2017, according to its filing with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. However, Pinterest generated a net loss of $130 million in 2017 and $63 million in 2018.

The company is set to go public this spring on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker PINS.

Rhodes — who publishes Mastering Probability, a daily newsletter on the markets — said everyday investors should be patient and not buy shares at the IPO price.

“It is not about buying low, it is about being able to buy a bottom,” he said, adding that investors should not give in to the “fear of missing out” mentality.

Pinterest’s IPO comes just weeks after Lyft started trading on the Nasdaq, becoming the first ride sharing company to go public. On its second day of trading, Lyft’s ($LYFT) shares dropped more than 11 percent, with the stock falling below its initial public offering price.

Lyft and Pinterest will be two of the high profile startups to IPO this year, but both are still far off from profitability.

“Unless you want to bet on a hope and a dream ... you're taking a tremendous risk in doing this sort of investing,” George Seay, CEO of the financial firm Annandale Capital, told Cheddar on Tuesday. “It is an area to tread very wearily.”

Nonetheless, Seay praised Pinterest for offering a “realistic” share price range. It is a “mark of humility that they want anyone buying in on the IPO to actually make some money,” he said.

Pinterest said its growth strategy is based on improving Pinner products, such as making the site more shoppable, increasing advertising products and capabilities, and developing stronger advertiser relationships.

Instagram, one of Pinterest's main competitors, recently introduced a shopping feature, which allows users to purchase products from advertisers without leaving the Instagram app.

“The natural progression of Pinners’ discovery journey—from inspiration, to planning, to action—takes them down the full purchasing funnel, and advertisers can provide value to them every step of the way,” the company wrote in its SEC filing.

Rhodes predicted that Pinterest’s stock, like Lyft's, will likely start trading below its IPO price and urged investors “to be patient and wait.”

For full interview click here.