By Mackenzie Tatananni
Palantir Technologies stock stands to benefit from deepening ties to the U.S. Department of Defense, including a 166% boost to the budget for one of its artificial intelligence-equipped software systems, analysts said.
William Blair analysts led by Louie di Palma reiterated a Market Perform rating on the stock Wednesday following an after-hours announcement from the Defense Department. The agency said it had raised the contract ceiling for Palantir's program that provides Maven Smart System software licenses to the U.S. Combatant Commands by $795 million.
The MSS is a data analytics platform that uses AI to prioritize targets in battle. At the end of March, the NATO Communications and Information Agency said it had completed an acquisition of a Maven system to modernize war-fighting capabilities across its 32 member states.
Last May, the Pentagon awarded Palantir a $480 million, five-year contract for its Maven program. Since then, adoption of the software by the U.S. Combatant Commands has been "far greater than expectations," William Blair wrote. The firm is "under the impression" that the Combatant Command spent $185 million for licenses for the first year of the contract.
The 166% increase in ceiling value, to $1.275 billion from $480 million, supports a continued surge in MSS spending, the analysts said. Their math indicates that annual spending on licenses for the software could average $272.5 million over each of the next four years for the program to hit its ceiling value.
"In our view, the program could hit $200 million in spend for 2025, and increase by $50 million per year over the next several years," the analysts wrote. They noted that Palantir has a separate contract for software licenses for the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force.
Last month, William Blair argued that Palantir's involvement in the Army's Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) initiative seemed "inevitable" based on the accelerating adoption of its Maven software.
The NGC2 program plans and executes battlefield missions. Given its size and "strategic significance," the analysts believe NGC2 would be one of Palantir's largest contracts to date. The latest increase to the contract ceiling only supports their belief that the Army will announce a related contract award sometime in the near future, the analysts said.
Shares of Palantir climbed 4.5% to $125.99 on Thursday. The S&P 500 was flat and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was up 0.6%.
Write to Mackenzie Tatananni at mackenzie.tatananni@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 22, 2025 12:05 ET (16:05 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Comments