저자: TickerSymbolU채널운영자Alex · 외국인
요약 보기
Dan Ives의 팔란티어 강세론(AI 메시아, 목표가 $25)을 반박하며, 생성형 AI 시대에 팔란티어의 입지는 불확실하고 AIP는 독립 수익원이 되기 어렵다고 주장. 2분기 매출 성장률 둔화(공공 15%, 상업 10%, 전체 13%), 순달러유지율 119%에서 급감, 주식 희석(약 11%)을 근거로 제시. 현재 적정 주가는 $13~15로 보고 기존 보유는 유지하되 추가 매수는 실적 개선 전까지 보류.
다듬은 글
Just a few weeks ago, legendary tech stock analyst Dan Ives declared that Palantir is the Messi of artificial intelligence and set a price target on the stock at $25. But just a few days ago, Morgan Stanley downgraded Palantir shares to “ underweight” with a $9 price target, citing problems with monetizing their AIP artificial intelligence platform.
So, what is this option? Will Palantir's stock price soar to $25 per share, or will it fall by 40% or more? Your time is valuable, so let's get to the point right away. Let me start by saying that this is not a video about Palantir being bad in any way , and I am not rooting for their failure. I made video after video talking about their incredible software development and all the ways they can transform large enterprises with mountains of data.
But there are many misconceptions about what Palantir's platforms actually do , how they do it, and what markets Palantir might capture as a result. That's why Dan Ives can call them the Messi of AI one week and Morgan Stanley can give them an " underweight" rating the next. Let's start with Dan Ives.
Here's a recent excerpt from CNBC's The Exchange program , where he explains his "bull" thesis on Palantir. Dan, Messi SH. I mean, it's a difficult task. I think this is really what Karp created. And in my opinion, it still has n't been revealed as a broader AI game, so I believe they are the Messi of AI.
I think there's a golden path for them right now to monetize what we see as a potential trillion-dollar market opportunity, and I think investors still haven't realized who that golden goose might be. A prime example is Ukraine. Palantir is a key example of this. Do you think this is a situation where investors don't fully understand what this company does, because a significant part of it is defense technology?
And yes, I understand that it is also expanding into the commercial side. But there are many things they can't talk about, such as classified information. This is the biggest misconception. I can say that Palantir's reputation speaks for itself when it comes to any operations , three- letter agencies.
If you're an enterprise CIO, and these are the conversations I've had, you're looking at an AI platform approach, Palantir is potentially a first step. And so I think in this AI gold rush, which I view as the fourth industrial revolution, of course it's Nvidia, Microsoft at the top of the mountain, when Della ...
If you look at the second, third, fourth derivatives, now Palantir is front and center. If you look at our bullish scenario model, I think it's ultimately $25, and I think as they're implemented, more and more investors are starting to pay attention to that. But also, I think this is one of those times where retail has perhaps been ahead of institutional companies in terms of understanding the real potential story of AI.
I can tell you that in my conversations today, institutional investors are asking themselves, “Okay, what do n’t I understand about this story? Where is the overall market opportunity actually worth looking at? And can they move from the public sector to the commercial sector? Because I think when you start looking at it, that's what the opportunities are for them.
I'm just curious how it looks from a commercial perspective? What do you see there ? I would say platform first, in terms of scale, and in terms of actual use cases, they're probably the first step . And I think they probably have the purest AI project in this market. They created it, others are coming, but it just speaks to our view that in this fourth industrial revolution, Palantir is going to be a big player.
I've never heard a big company say that machine learning came from Palantir. Yes. Yes. And of course, there are applications that, you know, supply chain, which is a big area for a lot of companies right now, manufacturing applications. There's something here that's worth mentioning, okay, you're working with the government in a secret capacity, you have these high- level clearances.
also for things like cloud applications, which are only done by a few companies. Palantir is one of them. You will ensure the security of my data. I'm sure that in itself has some prestige among commercial clients , I think. But how does this happen in an uncertain macro environment where people are tightening their belts?
I mean, for big tech companies, we're seeing growth. After all, when it comes to AI, it's what's eating up 10% of next year's budgets, and they're the only ones in the market. They proved it. Now they are proving that it is becoming a bigger part of the enterprise. That's right, stocks are overvalued , so we are optimistic.
Okay, I actually agree with a lot of what has been said here. Foundry has a wealth of AI capabilities for a wide range of verticals, including those with many physical assets, such as defense and aerospace, supply chain and logistics, and manufacturing. And I can tell you from my time at the Department of Defense and from my personal experience with Foundry, Palantir is doing it right when it comes to...
It's about unifying, organizing, enhancing, and reporting on sensitive data to get actionable information to decision makers very quickly. I wish we had something like Foundry when I worked at MIT. And as I said Dan, there's no doubt that retail investors have been way ahead of institutions when it comes to Palantir stock.
But if you look at this passage again, its thesis is not as strong as it seems. Dan Ives believes Palantir has a golden path to monetizing AI. Palantir is probably the first step that enterprises take when they want to implement an AI platform. Palantir will be a big player in the AI revolution. All of these moments are written in the future, not the present tense.
The problem is that the AI revolution has already happened, and it's not the AI Palantir was working on. We are currently in a generative AI revolution that focuses on things like transformer- based big language models , diffusion-based image generators, and generating 3D structures from 2D images using Nerfs.
And we can already see who the current big players are, just by...Looking at the numbers. Record number of ChatGPT users and impressive performance of Nvidia data centers. And product after product is being launched by Google and Microsoft, both of which already have massive distribution channels in the commercial sector and in government.
And make no mistake, all of these products compete with Palantir's offerings. Not because they are better , but because they are gradually abandoning various capabilities that Palantir platforms provide, which reduces the overall value of switching to Foundry. For example, OpenAI recently announced Chat GPT Enterprise.
Will it be even remotely as good as Palantir's AIP? Probably not. But will it be good enough to make some companies think twice before fully investing in Palantir's platforms? Absolutely. That's why this is such a big deal . Additionally, Dan Ives is focusing on getting three- letter government agencies to be referral customers that will force commercial companies to switch to Foundry.
But these same institutions are likely among the smallest beneficiaries of generative AI right now, making them among the least valuable reference customers in the industry . Business leaders...are not stupid. If they think generative AI can improve their productivity and profitability, they will look at how other commercial companies are using it.
That's why Dan Ives said that Nvidia and Microsoft are at the top of the mountain, and it's only when you look at companies developing second, third, and fourth derivatives that Palantir comes to the fore . And that's why I think in this AI gold rush, which I view as the fourth industrial revolution, of course it's Nvidia and Microsoft at the top of the mountain with Nvidia.
If you look at the second, third, fourth derivatives, Palantir is now in the foreground. Don't get me wrong. It is possible that Palantir is opening the door to generative AI for governments. After all, Palantir is one of three companies with a level six security clearance, the highest level of security clearance granted to DISA information systems.
But the other two companies on this list are Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, both of which have close ties to government agencies and are leaps and bounds ahead of Palantir in terms of generative AI. That's why I cover them so much on this channel. Now I know what you're probably thinking. Is n't Palantir's artificial intelligence platform generative AI?
Well, not exactly. AIP is actually a wrapper for third-party models of major programming languages. It allows enterprises to deploy commercial or open-source LLMs, and then AIP sets rules and restrictions on what data the LLM can access, what models it can use to compute its answers, control the kinds of actions it can perform, and keep a complete audit trail of everything the model does, what resources and references it used to do it, and everyone who initially prompted it.
Don't get me wrong, there is tremendous value that AIP adds to the LLM, but there are two big problems that Dan Ives doesn't talk about. First, almost all of AIP's features will eventually be built into the models of major programming languages themselves. Remember that Microsoft owns 49% of OpenAI.
Things like user restrictions and data access permissions, approved actions and audit logs , no-code features and code copilots are...all things that companies like Microsoft, Google, and Meta Platforms are working on today because they want to see widespread adoption of their models. And secondly, Palantir doesn't yet know how they are going to monetize AIP.
On its latest earnings conference call, Alex Karp said Palantir will figure out how to monetize it in the future. As a shareholder, I am very happy about this. But this means that AIP clearly won't be a major part of Palantir's revenue anytime soon . Check out this short excerpt from CNBC's Earnings Central, where RBC Capital Markets analyst Rishi Jaluria explains Palantir's position on generative AI.
Look, based on all the conversations I've had with industry insiders, with the head of IT, with the CIOs, even with Palantir employees and former Palantir employees , this is not really a generative AI company. I think generative AI is a phenomenal technology. I really think this is a seismic shift in the technology landscape, but we really need to carefully examine what technology offerings are being offered.
at the exhibition. What's different here? And when we look at Palantir, and based on all our conversations, it doesn't seem like anything really different when it comes to generative AI. It really does look like the same Palantir services and technologies they sell, and that has its value. I'm not saying there's no value in the technology and its use alongside LLMs that others on the market have, be it Open AI, Anthropic, Meta.
But they don't really add a huge amount of value to be a leader in generative AI, even if they position themselves as such to the investment community and even to CIOs and CEOs. So let's get to the point . I mean, does this create enough value to justify Palantir being an 1834 stock? I-I don't think so, do I ?
I think this is the most expensive promotion in all of software, or at least there, right ? And I think that's due to the interest of retail investment. I think it's thanks to AI. Agiotage. And I just don't think that kind of premium multiplier is justified, especially for a business that we believe is 30% professional services, not 100% subscription software.
And so, for this reason, we don't think the stock is worth the price it's trading at today. We believe they cost significantly less. So, no one is saying that Palantir is a bad AI company , but I think Palantir's position in the whole generative AI revolution is questionable at best, at least in the short term, which means their valuation is questionable as well .
Palantir held its Q2 funding conference call a little over a month ago, and that's when I realized how little they were getting out of generative AI. Palantir's public revenues grew 15% year-over- year, while their commercial revenues grew only 10%. Compare this to the second quarter of last year, where their government revenues might have grown by 13%, but their commercial revenues grew by a whopping 46% year-over-year .
That's why everyone was talking about Palantir's significant transition from the government to the commercial sector last year , but their commercial revenue growth has slowed significantly almost every quarter since then. Okay, but what about their net dollar retention rate, which is a measure of how attached a company is to its existing customers?
A year ago, Palantir finished the second quarter with a net dollar retention ratio of 119%. This means that Palantir's existing customers increased their spending by an average of 19 cents on the dollar. This year, the number was so low that it didn't even get a separate half-slide. This was a footnote on their revenue growth graph.
By the way, this is not the first time that the layout of Palantir's investor presentations has been changed to de-emphasize certain numbers, but it is a topic for complaint. This time, investors should complain about overall revenue growth, which increased by only 13% year-over-year . Last year, Palantir's revenue grew by 26% year- over-year, meaning their revenue growth literally halved.
And with growth... This slow, stock-based compensation is becoming a big problem again. The number of Palantir shares outstanding increased from approximately 2.05 billion shares in 2022 to 2.28 billion in 2023. This means that we, the shareholders, lost 11% of our shares last year. This is one of those moments that investors may be willing to miss when growth is good and the path to capturing market share is crystal clear.
But considering that revenue growth last year was only 13%, this 11% dilution for shareholders is a bitter pill to swallow . So where does that leave us, Palantir investors? In my opinion, the biggest short-term catalyst is their potential inclusion in the S&P 500. If that happens, many more investors will hold the stock, which could make it much less volatile.
Institutions may give them a higher multiplier because it will be a much less risky stock to invest in things like retirement accounts and pension funds. I also look forward to Palantir buying back shares at what I hope will be a reasonable price. And of course, I also hope that Palantir's revenue growth resumes, especially in the commercial sector .
Based on my experience with Foundry, I believe Palantir has something truly special. They have a best-in- class artificial intelligence platform. I just don't think generative AI brings much value. So right now I think their price is fair–around $13-15 per share. This means I plan to keep my current Palantir shares, but will not buy more until they fix their revenue growth, shareholder equity dilution, or both.
Be sure to let me know how wrong I am in the comments. I'm interested in hearing your opinion. And if you want more updates on AI stocks, specifically the ones I'm currently investing in, consider subscribing to my upcoming newsletter. Just go to tickersymbolu.com/ai if you're interested. And don't worry, because I will never spam you.
I'm too lazy for that. But there is another major breakthrough in AI that you need to know about. So be sure to watch this episode next time. And if you feel...I deserve is will allow me to publish more content like this. In any case, thanks for watching. And until next time, with you Ticker Symbol U.
My name is Alex, and I remind you that the best investment you can make is an investment in yourself.
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