The stock is up $4.09 (24.46%) at $20.81.
From Eric Savitz (we are fans) at Barron's, February 5/6:
- Palantir Stock Soars After Earnings. The CEO Sees a World of ‘Increasing Chaos and Danger.’
- Palantir’s commercial revenue jumped 32% in the fourth quarter. Investors are excited about AI.
Shares of Palantir were sharply higher after the company posted better-than-expected fourth-quarter revenue growth.
Strong demand from the company’s commercial customers offset lighter-than-expected government revenue.
The stock was up as much as 19% in premarket trading the morning after the company reported earnings.
For the quarter, Palantir reported revenue of $608 million—up 20% from a year ago—and ahead of Wall Street’s $603 million estimate. The results suggest an uptick in recent business; revenue grew 17% in the third quarter.
On an adjusted basis, Palantir earned 8 cents a share, in line with the Wall Street consensus estimates as tracked by FactSet.
Palantir’s commercial revenue was $284 million, up 32% from a year ago, and ahead of the Wall Street forecast of $271 million. That includes 70% growth in the U.S. commercial business, a sharp acceleration from 33% expansion in the third quarter, to $131 million.
In an interview with Barron’s, CEO Alex Karp said that the commercial business in the quarter was “bombastic, baller, incomprehensibly good.”
Government revenue was $324 million, up 11% but shy of analysts’ forecast for $333 million. Karp says that the current geopolitical situation—with unrest in the Middle East, war in Ukraine, and a contentious relationship between U.S. and China—will benefit Palantir in the long run.
“The government is a complicated business,” Karp says. “The parts of the government that are preparing to go to war are either using Palantir or are about to use Palantir.”
During the fourth quarter, Palantir closed 103 deals across both commercial and government customers worth more than $1 million, Karp says, double the year-ago quarter.
Shares of Palantir are up 98% over the last 12 months, boosted by excitement around artificial intelligence.
“Our results reflect both the strength of our software and the surging demand that we are seeing across industries and sectors for artificial intelligence platforms, including large language models, that are capable of integrating with the tangle of existing technical infrastructure that organizations have been constructing for years,” Karp said in a letter to shareholders.
For some investors, buying Palantir shares carries political overtones. Originally funded in part by In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm, the company has remained a vocal supporter of the U.S. military. In 2020, Palantir moved its headquarters to Denver from Palo Alto, due partly to the company’s feeling that its business focus didn’t fit in Silicon Valley....
....MUCH MORE
An example of Mr. Savitz's work when he isn't maniacally posting during earnings season, January 6, 2024:Super Intelligence: "AI Is a Child. 2 Investors on What It Might Be When It Grows Up"
And a tribute post from 2010:
Eric Savitz Turned 15,000 Today
Back in 2008 we called him the "Hardest working man in Show Business", a line we repeated during the Feb. 2009 reporting season: "Eric Savitz , The Hardest Working Man In Show Business! And: Book-to-Bill Ratio at 0.10"
As of 6:32 p.m. PST, I counted 22 posts at Tech Trader Daily timestamped "February 25, 2009..."Here's his "15,000 Posts - And Counting":
and I have a feeling that this time of the quarter is what Mr. Savitz lives for. "I feel good..."
Oh my.
A few minutes ago, I hit the “publish” button on Tech Trader Daily post number 15,000. A little back-of-the-envelope math finds that comes to about 11 posts a day for the last 1,348 days; back out the weekends (but not holidays) and you get about 15 posts a day since the thing got going in late May 2006....MORE
