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Cindywcy
2022-05-25

wait for price to drop lower than buy

Palantir: Just Overhyped And Unprofitable?

SummaryI take a side-step from my typical valuation stock/DGR investing to heed a member and client

Palantir: Just Overhyped And Unprofitable?

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{"i18n":{"language":"en_US"},"data":{"magic":2,"id":9022322003,"tweetId":"9022322003","gmtCreate":1653480994502,"gmtModify":1676535289356,"author":{"id":4097322786112660,"idStr":"4097322786112660","authorId":4097322786112660,"authorIdStr":"4097322786112660","name":"Cindywcy","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"userType":1,"introduction":"","boolIsFan":false,"boolIsHead":false,"crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"fanSize":0,"starInvestorFlag":false},"themes":[],"images":[],"coverImages":[],"extraTitle":"","html":"<html><head></head><body>wait for price to drop lower than buy</body></html>","htmlText":"<html><head></head><body>wait for price to drop lower than buy</body></html>","text":"wait for price to drop lower than buy","highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9022322003","repostId":2238553638,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"2238553638","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1653471600,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/2238553638?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2022-05-25 17:40","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Palantir: Just Overhyped And Unprofitable?","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2238553638","media":"Seekingalpha","summary":"SummaryI take a side-step from my typical valuation stock/DGR investing to heed a member and client ","content":"<html><head></head><body>Summary<ul><li>I take a side-step from my typical valuation stock/DGR investing to heed a member and client request; to look at Palantir through my lens of investing.</li><li>I&#39;ve long been interested in Palantir because I understand the procurement/governmental side of the business due to my career.</li><li>However, Palantir has problems. It&#39;s my view that the company is not investable, even at this valuation.</li><li>Palantir is a great example of a great business idea being uninvestable due to a materially unattractive cost structure.</li></ul><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/58c58fa9a9fea9040328236b6e760355\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"720\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/>Michael Vi/iStock Editorial via Getty ImagesI&#39;ve long followed Palantir (NYSE:PLTR), in the way that one would follow something interesting from the periphery of one&#39;s vision. I&#39;ve never engaged with or been close to considering investing In the business. Thereason is that it doesn&#39;t really fulfill any of my targets as far as investments go.However, just because I don&#39;t follow or consider a company good, doesn&#39;t mean it&#39;s not a good investment. Palantir has always been an interesting business because it works in a field where I myself have worked - only on the other side. Mission-critical digital infrastructure.It&#39;s an appealing field.There&#39;s zero doubt about it. Governments need it, and companies need to provide it. Most of the organizations I worked for before my career as an analyst still ran their systems on system backbones constructed in the mid-90s, which when used in 2017 was akin to strapping a rocket engine to a donkey.In this article, we&#39;ll do an A to Z.If you like Palantir, it&#39;s likely you won&#39;t like my conclusion.But I respectfully request that you, if you mean to leap in and defend Palantir, first take the time and look at the arguments.Ready? Let&#39;s get going.Palantir - From A to ZPalantir isnota freshly started tech growth stock. Palantir Technologies is an unprofitable tech company that was foundedafter the dot-com bubble in 2003.Many, many companies in the tech sector have gone from being startups to being profitable blockbusters in that time. Amazon (AMZN) is one of them. The first misconception is that Palantir is a &#34;new&#34; sort of company, but the fact is that it celebrates 20 years next year.The company has some heavyweight names behind it. The founder and Chairman of the business is Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal (PYPL), initially as a company touse PayPal&#39;s fraud recognition systems to reduce terrorism while preserving civil liberties.Now, that&#39;s a mouthful - and unclear.Today, Palantir does a few things, but we need to consider the company&#39;s operations on a high level - otherwise, they quickly become what&#39;s known as &#34;technobabble&#34; among those of us watching science-fiction.Palantir enables organizations to transform large amounts of information into forms/assets that make sense for their workflows/organizations.They do this through one of three principal software platforms:<ul><li>Gotham,enables users toidentify patterns,as well as helping to plan and execute real-world responses to threats that have been identified within the platform. In essence, the software identifies patterns that could be viewed as threats and allows government institutions to formulate effective responses.</li><li>Foundrycreates a central operating system (OS) for data, allowing users to integrate and analyze data in one location. This allows organizations to test new ideas and track data in a way that&#39;s not possible in as simple a manner with legacy operating systems or software.</li><li>Apollois essentially a software delivery system that can handle cloud delivery, on-premise or more advanced deliveries. Apollo delivers both software and updates, both the company&#39;s and customers&#39; own updates.</li></ul>For someone not versed in governmental issues and challenges, even with this very short description, it might be hard to see what good this does the customers.Examples are a must. Here are 2.<ul><li>Palantir is used byAirbus (EADSY) and the aviation industry.It initially started off as an A350 Production software but grew into Skywise, the central OS for the entire airline industry. The company&#39;s software connects 9,000 planes from 100 operators, and Palantir&#39;s systems are used to assist in the design, manufacture, servicing, operations, and maintenance of global airline fleets.</li><li>Utilities such asPacific Gas &amp; Electric (PG&amp;E)use the company&#39;s software in a central hub that could organize and analyze billions of data points every single day. Through Foundry, the company is presented with a complete picture of its operating grid, combining geospatial location, equipment health, and topology to answer questions regarding when to perform preventative maintenance and the like. Foundry has also been integrated in the process of switching off/on its system at critical junctures.</li></ul>This presents, in an effective manner, why the company&#39;s products and services are attractive to its consumers.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8ec9b9affe6c176c14826c624563d5b0\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"335\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/>Palantir Presentation (Palantir IR)This sort of business model is very reliant oneffective sales and marketing.These systems have extremely costly installation costs, high complexity, and very long sales cycles. Customer acquisition is complex and costly, even if these facts raise the entry barriers and moats in comparison to the competition.The fact that there&#39;s a very long history of failures in large-scale ERP system integration, and costly ones, are warning cases for customers and Palantir as well. This includes use cases such as Waste Management&#39;s (WM) $500M ERP failure, and military ERP integration failures of twice that amount. It&#39;s no surprise from these failures that institutions are extremely leery about implementing large-scale solutions and have become cautious to invest. So, one of the main challenges for Palantir is indeed overcoming this, and the track record that the company has with governments and megacorps spells out, in a very real way, that the company is succeeding in this.One confirmation of this was the way Palantir worked with the NSH to track the progress of COVID and contain the pandemic. Palantir also developed Tiberius, a software for vaccine allocation used in the United States and got a contract with the Food and Drug Administration in the US back in 2020.Some fresh stats.58%of the $1.5B in revenues generated in 2021 came from Government, the rest from the Commercial segment.57%came from US domestic customers, 43% from abroad.Average RPC (Revenue per Customer) on a TTM was $6.5M, which is down YoY, with the top twenty customers at an average of $43.6M, quite a bit above that, and up YoY. What this means is that big customers are becoming more important to the company.Fundamentally,Palantir does not have a credit rating. It also hasn&#39;t posted positive GAAP EPS at any point as of this time.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/70f70c9ed78a8eaf4f83a3857225106a\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"274\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/>Palantir GAAP EPS (TIKR.com)For the past quarter, with the latest 1Q22 highlights, the company focuses a great deal on the impressive numbers in its revenues. And indeed, in terms of sales revenues, commercial revenues (domestic especially), an increased customer count, and other sales positives.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/de38bee0d98e19141a059418ca1df8d5\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"281\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/>Palantir 1Q22 Presentation (Palantir IR)The company also posts a supposed &#34;adjusted OM&#34; of 26%. Given the number and type of adjustments, I consider these to be near-irrelevant in a profitability context. GAAP OM is negative 9% even with these absolutely superb revenue growth numbers. What this means is that despite record customer growth and record interest for the company&#39;s services, the company as of yet fails to turn a single dollar of GAAP profit.The company speaks of TAM expansion, with large addressable markets overall. The one positive takeaway that I see is that theoretically, given the OM improvement from revenues is that there is a theoretical point when the companycouldturn GAAP EPS positive if the customer growth is high enough.The company keeps adding customers and impressive contracts. The company&#39;s appeal and ability to add customers to its roster across the globe is not the question.The profitability with which the company does this is in question.Everywhere Palantir reports, the company speaks of revenues, customer counts, contracts, deals closed, billings, and &#34;adjusted&#34; margins. The company&#39;s guidance numbersstrictlyfocus on adding revenues, and adjusted sort of margins.The company knows well its challenge of becoming a GAAP-profitable business.How bad is it?I view it as &#34;pretty bad&#34;. Numbers and visual representations of numbers speak louder than words.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f156814bcae6199f997f950293378c58\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"277\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/>Palantir - Profitability/Shares Outstanding (TIKR.com)Palantir has failed to produce positive EBITDA, and positive Operating income, and has recorded massive increases in share count due to substantial SBC over the past few years. The impact of SBC can best be understood by taking look at the gross profit numbers, including SBC.Overall, Palantir has recorded over $2B of SBC in FY20 and FY21, which can be compared to FY20 and FY21 sales revenues of around $2.6B - a fairly exorbitant amount by any standard.I went through the results of excessive SBC in my article on Twilio (TWLO). SBC isn&#39;t a problem - but it cannot be ignored as a cost, as some are wont to do. It needs to be added back, and this means that SBC is a drag on company profits - as any expense is supposed to be.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0a18ebd7c8e030c1fc9e52ea4e71c875\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"332\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/>Palantir Presentation (Palantir IR)One of the main problems with Palantir&#39;s SBC is that management, as of yet, hasn&#39;t issued any sort of guidance as to these expenses or their plan for them, which obviously leaves investors in a bit of limbo. This is especially problematic given that Palantir has lost more than 58% of its value since December of 2021, and now trades below $8/share.Imagine if part of your comp was SBC, and you&#39;ve lost around 50% of that value in less than 5 months. Pretty brutal, regardless of whom you are. Also, a large part of that SBC is being granted to management.Plenty of contributors viewed the SBC as a non-issue in 2021, arguing that the company is about to deliver on multimillion projects which could leave them in a labor lurch if engineers were to leave, which can be prevented with appealing SBC packages. I personally don&#39;t believe, given share price performance and how the SBC is split among the employees, that this acts as a big motivator anymore. You could make an argument that Palantir should be attractive as an insider buying target here.Evidence suggests otherwise.Executives and insiders are selling their stocks as soon as they can, and there haven&#39;t been registered insider buys for a very long time.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e80192d3d629a212bed9b6c9972d8d6d\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"399\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/>Palantir insider trades (MarketBeat)So, Insiders are telling you that &#34;I don&#39;t like this price&#34;. Not at $20/share. Not at $10/share. Not even at $9/share. If the people going to work every day aren&#39;t willing to hold onto their shares, why should you want to buy the company at this price?So, concluding this, I argue that while the company is skilled at presenting us with revenue increases, new clients, new contracts, and interesting case studies,the math still doesn&#39;t work.The numbers are awful.Operational Challenges...A core issue that Palantir is facing is the growth on the commercial side of the business, versus the much-lauded governmental business side of the business. It&#39;s this which for a long time has been called the differentiator between PLTR and other companies. Governmental growth has been the argument for investing in the business, in that the growth here is going to be/could be in the triple digits, but the trend has actually gone the other way, down to only 16% government-specific revenue growth for the latest quarter. That same number was 76% a year ago.As I mentioned above, governmental contracts account for the majority of the company&#39;s revenue. A slowdown here is serious business, and it&#39;s being underestimated by bullish contributors on the company, not even starting to mention some of the math that doesn&#39;t work.Yeah, commercial revenues are on the rise, but part of the bull thesis has always been that governmental, long-cycle, massive-contract-value appeal. If the company is now starting to focus on smaller contract value, commercial-type contracts, that could prove dilutive to the company&#39;s margins. SG&amp;A is already at significant levels, and as I mentioned - these companies need excellent salespeople.I watch a lot of Shark Tank, as I&#39;m sure some of you do as well. And I can&#39;t help but think that when I watch this company and dig through its numbers, I feel a bit like Marc Cuban or Kevin O&#39;Leary telling someone thatyour business model doesn&#39;t work.If you continually adjust your profitability metrics by excluding or adding certain items but are never profitable on any metric that actually matters, you don&#39;t have a profitable business. You have a business - but not a profitable one.Palantir keeps losing money.The net loss for 1Q22 alone was over $100M. If we follow these losses in the accumulated deficit item in the balance sheet, we learn that Palantir has accumulated $5.6B as of 1Q22. That&#39;s around 33% of its entire market capitalization.The problem is, as I say - operating expenses. Operating expenses are a collection of expenses including things like Sales, Marketing, payroll, admin, overhead, and so forth.And Palantir is failing to get these right.Business 101: if your operating expenses are higher than your revenues, that means you arelosing money on a per-sale basis.If this becomes a trend, all you&#39;re doing on a per-sale basis is adding new losses to that accumulated deficit. If shareholders, financiers, or the market keeps propping you up, well, you can go right ahead and keep financing and working your business, continually operating at a loss.On a per-dollar level in sales, the company is spending 39 cents for every dollar made in sales, in Sales/marketing.That&#39;s insane. It&#39;s at a level where Mr. O&#39;Leary if someone came to him with the idea, would say that the time has come for you to take your business idea behind the barn and shoot it. Palantir has been completely unable to bring these down. They&#39;ve remained over 35% foryears.And management has yet to give any concrete plan for bringing this down.Remember, even if they started bringing it down, they&#39;d have tobreak evenbefore we can start talking about GAAP Profit. As of right now, I don&#39;t even see a way for the company to actually break even on a GAAP basis....and doubts about Scalability...When you operate a highly specialized business, your expertise and tailoring your product specifically to consumers is incredibly important and difficult. It takes time. You&#39;re not selling a $1.49 widget at a store; you&#39;re convincing a customer to adopt a highly specialized solution.High CAC (Customer Acquisition Costs) or sales/marketing costs compared to income or sales revenue are typically indicative of advanced products that require a great degree of marketing and tailoring. This is not an issue in itself - it becomes an issue when the argument is for this to be scalable. Because if you&#39;re losing money on every sale now, there really isn&#39;t an argument to be made for the scalability of its sales models that could produce a positive profit.But Wolf Report,you might say -surely you can&#39;t just use a method that would be used on a $50k startup when viewing Palantir? They&#39;re wildly different businesses, and Palantir has a market capitalization of over $15B!They do. They have a massive market cap, and they&#39;ve done very impressive things.They&#39;ve done very impressive things, except the one thing that I care about -they haven&#39;t generated positive GAAP EPS....leading to question the company&#39;s fundamental existenceWhat I love about investing is that it&#39;s a binary sort of thing. It&#39;s a Yes/No- thing.You either have profit, or you haven&#39;t. I don&#39;t allow for senseless and whitewash adjustments. Palantir hasn&#39;t made a profit, and I don&#39;t see any indication that it&#39;s going to turn a profit this year either.Palantir suffers from what typically is the Achilles heel in a startup - not a $15B tech giant -Optimism.The company and the bullish contributors are so in love with the company&#39;s ideas, products, and services. They&#39;re so very convinced, that this is needed. This is something the world, that companies, and governments, desperately need.And you know what?Palantir is absolutely right. The bulls are absolutely right. The world, the governments, and organizations need such products.You will not find me arguing with this. As I mentioned, I worked on this equation, in procurement. I would have been thrilled beyond the moon to be able to take advantage of their excellent offerings.Why?Because Palantir has no real peers. I&#39;ve looked. No company does what Palantir does, not to the degree. Oh, there are businesses like Tyler Technologies (TYL), Verint (VRNT), and Splunk (SPLK) - but none offer the sort of comprehensive solution that is Gotham, Foundry, and Apollo.The problem is- and I want to drill this home with the sort of fervor of slamming a gavel into the tabletop again and again -you are not doing so profitably.What right does a company have to exist, that is unable to generate acceptable GAAP profits in near-on 20 years?How long should patient shareholders wait before carefully knocking on Palantir&#39;s door and asking;&#34;Y&#39;know, I lent you some money a few years back, any idea when I can start seeing some return on that?&#34;A company that does not generate profits is not a company with a future. It&#39;s either a charity or a company that does not deserve to survive.The solutionBecome profitable.Quite an obvious solution there, but it&#39;s really the only thing that can be said. Palantir is focusing on acquiring new customers and adding new contracts - when every sale they make adds more losses, not profits, to their balance sheets.What the company needs to do is one of two things - or preferably a combination of both.<ul><li>Cut Expenses</li><li>Raise prices</li></ul>And speaking of someone from the government, I can tell you that one of the least interesting points when we were procuring specialized solutions, was actually pricing. Fit, ease of use, and scalability were far more important. I&#39;m not claiming to have enough insight into the business that I know what the company &#34;should&#34; charge, beyond saying that Palantir needs to charge more for their products and services. This is in part because I believe it will be hard to cut SG&amp;A from the company&#39;s process due to the highly specialized nature of sales.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6f47371dc88953f0a08fc6aa2134a316\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"344\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/>Palantir Presentation (Palantir IR)Palantir isn&#39;t profitable. Palantir needs to become profitable. There are only two ways to do that. Either spend less or earn more.But earning more while maintaining a cost structure that results in losses, not profits, is not a way to go about it.The obvious result of such a strategy, in the end, is that Palantir will keep dropping. Remember, as interest rates rise, debt will become increasingly more expensive. The company will have to raise capital, and issue equity at more and more expensive levels.In the end, it will all come to its natural conclusion.The company will either become defunct, or it will be chopped up and sold for parts. I personally believe that the company&#39;s products are solid and would probably make for excellent assets in someone&#39;s business - though I do not argue for investing in Palantir as an M&amp;A target.Bulls focus on revenues, sales, and contracts.This is the wrong focus.Before you can start to focus on growing the business, or the product, you must ask yourself -do you have a working business model?A working business model entailsmaking money.Palantir does not.Ipso Facto, Palantir does not currently have a working business model, or at the very least a working cost structure.This is the root of the problem I would want management to address before even designing to give a price target on this business.Valuation &amp; ConclusionSo, do I like Palantir?Absolutely, I do.The company makes the sort of products and services that I would consider to be integral to effective working government and institutions. However, in terms of valuation, the company has fallen very quickly even from analyst mean targets.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a7aa33b3dc2e0b863b7b522e16e7864f\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"435\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/>Palantir Mean Price targets (TIKR.com)The current share price target goes down to below $6 at the lowest, and I consider even that to be too high for an unprofitable business. Despite the mean target being $12.35/share, less than half (3 out of 10) are currently at a &#34;BUY&#34;.It&#39;s pointless to talk about upside in terms of P/E without actual earnings. What we can look at is things like P/S or P/revenue multiples. At a P/S of just below 10X, it can be argued that the company is now below where it should be. At revenue multiples at around 8.5X, it&#39;s lower than ever before - but the quality of those revenues and those sales is very low because they actually don&#39;t net any positive bottom line.Want Palantir?Go options.The only way I currently consider any valid is to make money, or potentially own the company at this time.The $4 puts yield over 15% annualized at a currently offered $0.15 premium.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2afb61d62b3cc80c8043b76b8038ad39\" tg-width=\"492\" tg-height=\"376\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/>Palantir Put Options (Author&#39;s Data, Yahoo Finance)Pretty good returns - as long as you understand that even under these circumstances, under the current profits and cost structure, even $4 is too much from a P/S and a P/Revenue perspective.Still, it&#39;s a nice drop-down from $7.8 per share - over 50%. The company may go there. But if you want it, this is a way to actually make aprofit- if it goes up, or even if it goes down a little. And if it does, you could end up owning PLTR at less than $4 after premiums.Palantir is a relatively unique company.I love the business.I hate management/the way theydo businessbecause they&#39;re a failure in they haven&#39;t generated profit in almost 20 years.For that reason, as they say on Shark Tank, &#34;I&#39;m out&#34;. I&#39;m at a &#34;HOLD&#34;, and I could sell some puts to make some money, but at the same time, even at $4/share, this company is too expensive.Be careful if you&#39;re buying this business because it fails at the most fundamental things businesses are supposed to do.It doesn&#39;t make any money.Thank you for reading.</body></html>","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Palantir: Just Overhyped And Unprofitable?</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPalantir: Just Overhyped And Unprofitable?\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2022-05-25 17:40 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4514249-palantir-just-overhyped-and-unprofitable>Seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummaryI take a side-step from my typical valuation stock/DGR investing to heed a member and client request; to look at Palantir through my lens of investing.I've long been interested in Palantir ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4514249-palantir-just-overhyped-and-unprofitable\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PLTR":"Palantir Technologies Inc."},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4514249-palantir-just-overhyped-and-unprofitable","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"2238553638","content_text":"SummaryI take a side-step from my typical valuation stock/DGR investing to heed a member and client request; to look at Palantir through my lens of investing.I've long been interested in Palantir because I understand the procurement/governmental side of the business due to my career.However, Palantir has problems. It's my view that the company is not investable, even at this valuation.Palantir is a great example of a great business idea being uninvestable due to a materially unattractive cost structure.Michael Vi/iStock Editorial via Getty ImagesI've long followed Palantir (NYSE:PLTR), in the way that one would follow something interesting from the periphery of one's vision. I've never engaged with or been close to considering investing In the business. Thereason is that it doesn't really fulfill any of my targets as far as investments go.However, just because I don't follow or consider a company good, doesn't mean it's not a good investment. Palantir has always been an interesting business because it works in a field where I myself have worked - only on the other side. Mission-critical digital infrastructure.It's an appealing field.There's zero doubt about it. Governments need it, and companies need to provide it. Most of the organizations I worked for before my career as an analyst still ran their systems on system backbones constructed in the mid-90s, which when used in 2017 was akin to strapping a rocket engine to a donkey.In this article, we'll do an A to Z.If you like Palantir, it's likely you won't like my conclusion.But I respectfully request that you, if you mean to leap in and defend Palantir, first take the time and look at the arguments.Ready? Let's get going.Palantir - From A to ZPalantir isnota freshly started tech growth stock. Palantir Technologies is an unprofitable tech company that was foundedafter the dot-com bubble in 2003.Many, many companies in the tech sector have gone from being startups to being profitable blockbusters in that time. Amazon (AMZN) is one of them. The first misconception is that Palantir is a \"new\" sort of company, but the fact is that it celebrates 20 years next year.The company has some heavyweight names behind it. The founder and Chairman of the business is Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal (PYPL), initially as a company touse PayPal's fraud recognition systems to reduce terrorism while preserving civil liberties.Now, that's a mouthful - and unclear.Today, Palantir does a few things, but we need to consider the company's operations on a high level - otherwise, they quickly become what's known as \"technobabble\" among those of us watching science-fiction.Palantir enables organizations to transform large amounts of information into forms/assets that make sense for their workflows/organizations.They do this through one of three principal software platforms:Gotham,enables users toidentify patterns,as well as helping to plan and execute real-world responses to threats that have been identified within the platform. In essence, the software identifies patterns that could be viewed as threats and allows government institutions to formulate effective responses.Foundrycreates a central operating system (OS) for data, allowing users to integrate and analyze data in one location. This allows organizations to test new ideas and track data in a way that's not possible in as simple a manner with legacy operating systems or software.Apollois essentially a software delivery system that can handle cloud delivery, on-premise or more advanced deliveries. Apollo delivers both software and updates, both the company's and customers' own updates.For someone not versed in governmental issues and challenges, even with this very short description, it might be hard to see what good this does the customers.Examples are a must. Here are 2.Palantir is used byAirbus (EADSY) and the aviation industry.It initially started off as an A350 Production software but grew into Skywise, the central OS for the entire airline industry. The company's software connects 9,000 planes from 100 operators, and Palantir's systems are used to assist in the design, manufacture, servicing, operations, and maintenance of global airline fleets.Utilities such asPacific Gas & Electric (PG&E)use the company's software in a central hub that could organize and analyze billions of data points every single day. Through Foundry, the company is presented with a complete picture of its operating grid, combining geospatial location, equipment health, and topology to answer questions regarding when to perform preventative maintenance and the like. Foundry has also been integrated in the process of switching off/on its system at critical junctures.This presents, in an effective manner, why the company's products and services are attractive to its consumers.Palantir Presentation (Palantir IR)This sort of business model is very reliant oneffective sales and marketing.These systems have extremely costly installation costs, high complexity, and very long sales cycles. Customer acquisition is complex and costly, even if these facts raise the entry barriers and moats in comparison to the competition.The fact that there's a very long history of failures in large-scale ERP system integration, and costly ones, are warning cases for customers and Palantir as well. This includes use cases such as Waste Management's (WM) $500M ERP failure, and military ERP integration failures of twice that amount. It's no surprise from these failures that institutions are extremely leery about implementing large-scale solutions and have become cautious to invest. So, one of the main challenges for Palantir is indeed overcoming this, and the track record that the company has with governments and megacorps spells out, in a very real way, that the company is succeeding in this.One confirmation of this was the way Palantir worked with the NSH to track the progress of COVID and contain the pandemic. Palantir also developed Tiberius, a software for vaccine allocation used in the United States and got a contract with the Food and Drug Administration in the US back in 2020.Some fresh stats.58%of the $1.5B in revenues generated in 2021 came from Government, the rest from the Commercial segment.57%came from US domestic customers, 43% from abroad.Average RPC (Revenue per Customer) on a TTM was $6.5M, which is down YoY, with the top twenty customers at an average of $43.6M, quite a bit above that, and up YoY. What this means is that big customers are becoming more important to the company.Fundamentally,Palantir does not have a credit rating. It also hasn't posted positive GAAP EPS at any point as of this time.Palantir GAAP EPS (TIKR.com)For the past quarter, with the latest 1Q22 highlights, the company focuses a great deal on the impressive numbers in its revenues. And indeed, in terms of sales revenues, commercial revenues (domestic especially), an increased customer count, and other sales positives.Palantir 1Q22 Presentation (Palantir IR)The company also posts a supposed \"adjusted OM\" of 26%. Given the number and type of adjustments, I consider these to be near-irrelevant in a profitability context. GAAP OM is negative 9% even with these absolutely superb revenue growth numbers. What this means is that despite record customer growth and record interest for the company's services, the company as of yet fails to turn a single dollar of GAAP profit.The company speaks of TAM expansion, with large addressable markets overall. The one positive takeaway that I see is that theoretically, given the OM improvement from revenues is that there is a theoretical point when the companycouldturn GAAP EPS positive if the customer growth is high enough.The company keeps adding customers and impressive contracts. The company's appeal and ability to add customers to its roster across the globe is not the question.The profitability with which the company does this is in question.Everywhere Palantir reports, the company speaks of revenues, customer counts, contracts, deals closed, billings, and \"adjusted\" margins. The company's guidance numbersstrictlyfocus on adding revenues, and adjusted sort of margins.The company knows well its challenge of becoming a GAAP-profitable business.How bad is it?I view it as \"pretty bad\". Numbers and visual representations of numbers speak louder than words.Palantir - Profitability/Shares Outstanding (TIKR.com)Palantir has failed to produce positive EBITDA, and positive Operating income, and has recorded massive increases in share count due to substantial SBC over the past few years. The impact of SBC can best be understood by taking look at the gross profit numbers, including SBC.Overall, Palantir has recorded over $2B of SBC in FY20 and FY21, which can be compared to FY20 and FY21 sales revenues of around $2.6B - a fairly exorbitant amount by any standard.I went through the results of excessive SBC in my article on Twilio (TWLO). SBC isn't a problem - but it cannot be ignored as a cost, as some are wont to do. It needs to be added back, and this means that SBC is a drag on company profits - as any expense is supposed to be.Palantir Presentation (Palantir IR)One of the main problems with Palantir's SBC is that management, as of yet, hasn't issued any sort of guidance as to these expenses or their plan for them, which obviously leaves investors in a bit of limbo. This is especially problematic given that Palantir has lost more than 58% of its value since December of 2021, and now trades below $8/share.Imagine if part of your comp was SBC, and you've lost around 50% of that value in less than 5 months. Pretty brutal, regardless of whom you are. Also, a large part of that SBC is being granted to management.Plenty of contributors viewed the SBC as a non-issue in 2021, arguing that the company is about to deliver on multimillion projects which could leave them in a labor lurch if engineers were to leave, which can be prevented with appealing SBC packages. I personally don't believe, given share price performance and how the SBC is split among the employees, that this acts as a big motivator anymore. You could make an argument that Palantir should be attractive as an insider buying target here.Evidence suggests otherwise.Executives and insiders are selling their stocks as soon as they can, and there haven't been registered insider buys for a very long time.Palantir insider trades (MarketBeat)So, Insiders are telling you that \"I don't like this price\". Not at $20/share. Not at $10/share. Not even at $9/share. If the people going to work every day aren't willing to hold onto their shares, why should you want to buy the company at this price?So, concluding this, I argue that while the company is skilled at presenting us with revenue increases, new clients, new contracts, and interesting case studies,the math still doesn't work.The numbers are awful.Operational Challenges...A core issue that Palantir is facing is the growth on the commercial side of the business, versus the much-lauded governmental business side of the business. It's this which for a long time has been called the differentiator between PLTR and other companies. Governmental growth has been the argument for investing in the business, in that the growth here is going to be/could be in the triple digits, but the trend has actually gone the other way, down to only 16% government-specific revenue growth for the latest quarter. That same number was 76% a year ago.As I mentioned above, governmental contracts account for the majority of the company's revenue. A slowdown here is serious business, and it's being underestimated by bullish contributors on the company, not even starting to mention some of the math that doesn't work.Yeah, commercial revenues are on the rise, but part of the bull thesis has always been that governmental, long-cycle, massive-contract-value appeal. If the company is now starting to focus on smaller contract value, commercial-type contracts, that could prove dilutive to the company's margins. SG&A is already at significant levels, and as I mentioned - these companies need excellent salespeople.I watch a lot of Shark Tank, as I'm sure some of you do as well. And I can't help but think that when I watch this company and dig through its numbers, I feel a bit like Marc Cuban or Kevin O'Leary telling someone thatyour business model doesn't work.If you continually adjust your profitability metrics by excluding or adding certain items but are never profitable on any metric that actually matters, you don't have a profitable business. You have a business - but not a profitable one.Palantir keeps losing money.The net loss for 1Q22 alone was over $100M. If we follow these losses in the accumulated deficit item in the balance sheet, we learn that Palantir has accumulated $5.6B as of 1Q22. That's around 33% of its entire market capitalization.The problem is, as I say - operating expenses. Operating expenses are a collection of expenses including things like Sales, Marketing, payroll, admin, overhead, and so forth.And Palantir is failing to get these right.Business 101: if your operating expenses are higher than your revenues, that means you arelosing money on a per-sale basis.If this becomes a trend, all you're doing on a per-sale basis is adding new losses to that accumulated deficit. If shareholders, financiers, or the market keeps propping you up, well, you can go right ahead and keep financing and working your business, continually operating at a loss.On a per-dollar level in sales, the company is spending 39 cents for every dollar made in sales, in Sales/marketing.That's insane. It's at a level where Mr. O'Leary if someone came to him with the idea, would say that the time has come for you to take your business idea behind the barn and shoot it. Palantir has been completely unable to bring these down. They've remained over 35% foryears.And management has yet to give any concrete plan for bringing this down.Remember, even if they started bringing it down, they'd have tobreak evenbefore we can start talking about GAAP Profit. As of right now, I don't even see a way for the company to actually break even on a GAAP basis....and doubts about Scalability...When you operate a highly specialized business, your expertise and tailoring your product specifically to consumers is incredibly important and difficult. It takes time. You're not selling a $1.49 widget at a store; you're convincing a customer to adopt a highly specialized solution.High CAC (Customer Acquisition Costs) or sales/marketing costs compared to income or sales revenue are typically indicative of advanced products that require a great degree of marketing and tailoring. This is not an issue in itself - it becomes an issue when the argument is for this to be scalable. Because if you're losing money on every sale now, there really isn't an argument to be made for the scalability of its sales models that could produce a positive profit.But Wolf Report,you might say -surely you can't just use a method that would be used on a $50k startup when viewing Palantir? They're wildly different businesses, and Palantir has a market capitalization of over $15B!They do. They have a massive market cap, and they've done very impressive things.They've done very impressive things, except the one thing that I care about -they haven't generated positive GAAP EPS....leading to question the company's fundamental existenceWhat I love about investing is that it's a binary sort of thing. It's a Yes/No- thing.You either have profit, or you haven't. I don't allow for senseless and whitewash adjustments. Palantir hasn't made a profit, and I don't see any indication that it's going to turn a profit this year either.Palantir suffers from what typically is the Achilles heel in a startup - not a $15B tech giant -Optimism.The company and the bullish contributors are so in love with the company's ideas, products, and services. They're so very convinced, that this is needed. This is something the world, that companies, and governments, desperately need.And you know what?Palantir is absolutely right. The bulls are absolutely right. The world, the governments, and organizations need such products.You will not find me arguing with this. As I mentioned, I worked on this equation, in procurement. I would have been thrilled beyond the moon to be able to take advantage of their excellent offerings.Why?Because Palantir has no real peers. I've looked. No company does what Palantir does, not to the degree. Oh, there are businesses like Tyler Technologies (TYL), Verint (VRNT), and Splunk (SPLK) - but none offer the sort of comprehensive solution that is Gotham, Foundry, and Apollo.The problem is- and I want to drill this home with the sort of fervor of slamming a gavel into the tabletop again and again -you are not doing so profitably.What right does a company have to exist, that is unable to generate acceptable GAAP profits in near-on 20 years?How long should patient shareholders wait before carefully knocking on Palantir's door and asking;\"Y'know, I lent you some money a few years back, any idea when I can start seeing some return on that?\"A company that does not generate profits is not a company with a future. It's either a charity or a company that does not deserve to survive.The solutionBecome profitable.Quite an obvious solution there, but it's really the only thing that can be said. Palantir is focusing on acquiring new customers and adding new contracts - when every sale they make adds more losses, not profits, to their balance sheets.What the company needs to do is one of two things - or preferably a combination of both.Cut ExpensesRaise pricesAnd speaking of someone from the government, I can tell you that one of the least interesting points when we were procuring specialized solutions, was actually pricing. Fit, ease of use, and scalability were far more important. I'm not claiming to have enough insight into the business that I know what the company \"should\" charge, beyond saying that Palantir needs to charge more for their products and services. This is in part because I believe it will be hard to cut SG&A from the company's process due to the highly specialized nature of sales.Palantir Presentation (Palantir IR)Palantir isn't profitable. Palantir needs to become profitable. There are only two ways to do that. Either spend less or earn more.But earning more while maintaining a cost structure that results in losses, not profits, is not a way to go about it.The obvious result of such a strategy, in the end, is that Palantir will keep dropping. Remember, as interest rates rise, debt will become increasingly more expensive. The company will have to raise capital, and issue equity at more and more expensive levels.In the end, it will all come to its natural conclusion.The company will either become defunct, or it will be chopped up and sold for parts. I personally believe that the company's products are solid and would probably make for excellent assets in someone's business - though I do not argue for investing in Palantir as an M&A target.Bulls focus on revenues, sales, and contracts.This is the wrong focus.Before you can start to focus on growing the business, or the product, you must ask yourself -do you have a working business model?A working business model entailsmaking money.Palantir does not.Ipso Facto, Palantir does not currently have a working business model, or at the very least a working cost structure.This is the root of the problem I would want management to address before even designing to give a price target on this business.Valuation & ConclusionSo, do I like Palantir?Absolutely, I do.The company makes the sort of products and services that I would consider to be integral to effective working government and institutions. However, in terms of valuation, the company has fallen very quickly even from analyst mean targets.Palantir Mean Price targets (TIKR.com)The current share price target goes down to below $6 at the lowest, and I consider even that to be too high for an unprofitable business. Despite the mean target being $12.35/share, less than half (3 out of 10) are currently at a \"BUY\".It's pointless to talk about upside in terms of P/E without actual earnings. What we can look at is things like P/S or P/revenue multiples. At a P/S of just below 10X, it can be argued that the company is now below where it should be. At revenue multiples at around 8.5X, it's lower than ever before - but the quality of those revenues and those sales is very low because they actually don't net any positive bottom line.Want Palantir?Go options.The only way I currently consider any valid is to make money, or potentially own the company at this time.The $4 puts yield over 15% annualized at a currently offered $0.15 premium.Palantir Put Options (Author's Data, Yahoo Finance)Pretty good returns - as long as you understand that even under these circumstances, under the current profits and cost structure, even $4 is too much from a P/S and a P/Revenue perspective.Still, it's a nice drop-down from $7.8 per share - over 50%. The company may go there. But if you want it, this is a way to actually make aprofit- if it goes up, or even if it goes down a little. And if it does, you could end up owning PLTR at less than $4 after premiums.Palantir is a relatively unique company.I love the business.I hate management/the way theydo businessbecause they're a failure in they haven't generated profit in almost 20 years.For that reason, as they say on Shark Tank, \"I'm out\". I'm at a \"HOLD\", and I could sell some puts to make some money, but at the same time, even at $4/share, this company is too expensive.Be careful if you're buying this business because it fails at the most fundamental things businesses are supposed to do.It doesn't make any money.Thank you for reading.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":234,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":[],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"EN","currentLanguage":"EN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":30,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ORIG"},"commentList":[],"hasMoreComment":false,"orderType":2}