OK, stop laughing. I got interested in this company via a SA write up. I listened to the most recent quarter’s earnings call. I briefly reviewed their numbers, and while there’s quite a lot to like, the revenue growth has been tepid. But, I’m not all that great at wringing meaning out of the numbers. Despite the lackluster revenue growth (18% YoY), FWIW the stock price is up 140+% YTD. The balance sheet is solid with $3B in cash etc. and zero debt. SBC has been coming down. They are GAAP profitable, the board authorized a $1B stock buy back. They say that they are not interested in acquisitions because no other company has anything they want.
Basically, this is a company deep in AI, that’s all they do. They’ve released a new product, AIP (AI Platform) which they are touting as being a total game changer. Their goals are to be in the S&P, which they claim they will be eligible for after next quarter. But more grandiose than that they unabashedly say that they want to be the most important s/w company in the world.
Despite the runup this year, the stock is still relatively cheap at ~$15. Just wondering if anyone else has looked at PLTR? Any thoughts?
I held PLTR during their IPO and run up thereafter. I got out when the share prices ran away to $35.
I think this will continue to be a company that is hard to figure out other than their basic numbers. It’s a smart group of capable people who are in it for the long term, and I like their vision, strategy and positioning. What I don’t like are the nature of their core focus on military and governmental relationships. In contrast to more commonplace public companies, there isn’t as much specific buzz around successes, conquests and earth shattering developments. It’s more of a contract - revenue spend basis.
I’m back in with them, however, I do not own any shares. I’m looking for something to happen by 2025. If not, I’ll roll up and out.
Thanks for the reply. What attracts me to PLTR now is the new product, AIP. I speculate the focus on military and government because they write such high dollar contracts. Maybe it’s hard to get enterprise customer to spring for that. I don’t know.
As we can see, their margins are generally not great. This is a growth “story”… but the results do not show it yet. Combined with their inward looking corporate culture, this needs to be a numbers game.
Their beat and raise guidance still indicates tepid growth. Based on the long term nature of their clients and the even longer time to value for AIP, I expect we will see real acceleration in 2-4 quarters, minimum.
AIP likely follows the study->wireframe->pilot use cases-> data expansion → growing potential →
This has taken excruciatingly long for them in the past. I’m sure it will not accelerate due to bureaucratic infighting, application owner and functional entrenchment that built these silos in the first place.
AIP stands to break all of that down. The culture shock cannot happen until someone takes a chance on opening up the datasets for the tool to provide benefit.
We’ll need to continue channel checking for growth indicators. I’m not holding my breath until later next year, minimum.
Over the last four Q, they have grown between 22 and 13%, trending down each Q. Sequentially, they barely get more than the previous Q. For this performance, one is paying 16 P/S. That’s a steep premium nowadays. I am paying less for hypergrowers INSP and SWAV and just a tad more for IOT.
So the secondary question is why the market values a low grower so highly (firm big contracts, whatever, I don’t know). But the main question is why should one expect great returns out of a stock that grows this little, costs this much, and is a large cap to boot. Consider that PLTR has a larger cap than INSP, SWAV, and IOT combined.
What I do like is that relative to almost all SaaS I have checked, it is more revenue efficient in that it collects over 530,000 per employee. On top of that, it is nearly profitable per employee. It handily beats Samsara in that respect. But it barely grows while Samsara is in hypergrowth.
And, again, per The Motley Fool, long term appreciation is mostly connected to revenue growth and at this price to growth I don’t see the potential for out-performance.
But that just me–I am no expert and I don’t spend much time on these things.
We would do well to ask this question of every investment idea. The history of outperformance on this board has come from concentrating into companies with potential for outsized returns. Traditionally we judge that potential mainly based on growth expectations, and any other improvements (profits, consistency, durability, etc) we expect. And some of us look at price/mkt cap/“room to grow.”
Also, if I’m going to pay a premium, I want it to be for either:
hypergrowth, or
predictable/steady/durable growth.
(And to be frank, I prefer predictable to hyper. I was willing to build up Axon because I see a lot of that, but the market wasn’t paying up for it. I’m less willing to build up Celsius even though the growth is quite hyper at present.)
But with a company that you have to pay up for (maybe a darling of the market like SNOW) that doesn’t have either of the 2 qualities above…why should we expect great returns?
The only answer I can figure is the hope of acceleration, and as of yet I don’t think we’ve seen that play out. I think predictable/steady/durable trumps even hypergrowth…but for sure it trumps the hope of hypergrowth.
Palantir is one whose price movement in the past 4 months has confounded me. Tepid revenue growth but crazy bullish price movement.
Let’s not forget the board is for discussion of high growth companies. While we’ve had to manage our requirements of “high” in the past year, I don’t believe we are down to the teens level. Let’s moderate discussion of this company and focus on others that meet our criteria. Cheers.
