Palantir: Rally Has Just Begun

After trending down for months in a row, Palantir's (NYSE:PLTR) shares have finally caught a break and have risen 150% in the last month alone. Given the ferocity of this uptrend, investors are now wondering if the stock is due for correction or if it'll continue trending up. While that's a legitimate concern, there's reason to believe the latter scenario will play out for Palantir. The company posted robust results last month, it expanded its product portfolio and is now rolling out generative AI capabilities in its already-competitive feature set. This stands to accelerate Palantir's pace of customer acquisition, catapult its revenue, and is likely to drive its shares higher in the coming months.

Story Behind the Meteoric Rise

Let me start by saying that the Street had turned bearish on Palantir up until a few weeks ago. The general consensus was that as the world slipped into recession, enterprises across the globe would cut their discretionary spending and Palantir would be revenue challenged very soon. But the software stalwart proved the bears wrong. It handily beat the Street's estimates, reported its first-ever GAAP profits, and its revenue rose to an all-time high of $525.18 million.

What's even more interesting is that bears were arguing that Palantir's government revenue would plateau or decline due to market saturation, but the company actually posted revenue growth across both its reportable segments on a sequential as well as on a year-over-year basis. This commendable feat dissuades bearish narratives floating around in investing forums and is one of the two major reasons why Palantir's shares rallied so ferociously in the last month.

Secondly, Palantir's management made numerous remarks on their Q1 earnings call, emphasizing how they're aggressively rolling out AI features (such as generative AI) in their product portfolio. The word "Large Language Model" was referenced 18 times on the call, whereas the word "Artificial Intelligence" was referenced 21 times. They also launched an Artificial Intelligence Platform, or AIP, and it was referenced 11 times on the call. So, altogether, it was hard to miss that Palantir is taking a full-fledged plunge in the AI race. This led to another bout of buying from investors who wanted to gain exposure to the AI race, and it subsequently drove Palantir's shares to their 52-week-high.

The chart above highlights how the rally in AI-related stocks has been violent in recent months. Some companies weren't able to live up to their promises and/or the Street's expectations and have already seen a sharp selloff in their shares of late. So, naturally, Palantir's investors are now wondering if the stock's rally is sustainable or if it'll fizzle out soon like C3.ai. Well, to me, it looks like the former scenario will be more dominant here.

It's Just Getting Started

There are broadly 3 arguments to be made here. For starters, I believe Palantir is fully capable to live up to its promises on the AI front. See, its platforms were already creating dynamic information reports for their end-users or enterprise clients. Sure, it took manual effort to get the initial setup done, but that's natural since we've to remodel the data stream from different enterprises and fit it inside one unified data pipeline of Palantir's analytics platforms. That part is unlikely to change.

What's different now, is that Palantir has rolled out an LLM (ChatGPT-like chatbot) on its analytics platforms. This is not a humongous task as it used to be, thanks to the open-source community making these tools readily accessible. I, too, am running a 30 billion parameter LLM model on my PC, so have a bit of understanding about its intricacies here. But coming back to Palantir, this move essentially allows end-users to pass text-based instructions to the company's analytics platforms and get a swift response in return.

Secondly, this LLM integration and chat-based functionality essentially cuts short the time that would otherwise go into training personnel on how to use enterprise software in general. It also paves the way to some really dynamic report creation, that wasn't possible previously without requiring a deep know-how of Palantir's platforms. So, I expect enterprise customers to onboard Palantir at an accelerated pace now, which will consequently drive its revenue to new highs in the quarters ahead.

My third argument is that the Street is grasping the capabilities of LLM-based platforms only now, and there's currently a mad rush to invest in AI companies. This calls for multiples expansion. Palantir was trading at 9 times its trailing twelve-month sales, up until 5 weeks ago, when it was surrounded by a plethora of slowdown and profitability-related bearish narratives. But it has, since then, reported its first-ever GAAP profits, proved the naysayers wrong by reporting record revenue, and announced its foray into the AI space to maintain its growth momentum. In light of this improving ground reality, I believe Palantir stock will continue to trade at premium multiples going forward and that'll become its "new normal" valuation.

Final Thoughts

I don't think we'll see Palantir's stock drop down to single-digit anytime soon, now that its growth prospects have improved dramatically. If anything, the addition of generative AI in its feature set only expands the company's headroom to gain market share from legacy and in-house analytics platforms. There might be price corrections from time to time, but that will constitute an opportunity to accumulate Palantir's shares at discounted levels.

Overall, I believe Palantir is well-positioned to grow its customer base at a rapid rate and its revenue is likely to rise to new highs in the quarters to come. So, I reiterate my bullish stance on Palantir, believe its shares have ample upside in store, and opine that investors with a multi-year time horizon can accumulate it on potential price corrections. Good Luck!