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Case Study : Palantir Technologies (PLTR)




I started to take notice of Palantir after reading about it on some private investing forums. After doing some research and background study on the company and its founders (Peter Thiel, Alex Karp) , understanding its unique moats (big data analytics technology and US government connections) and realize it's future growth potential, I decided to invest in Palantir when the Stock was around the $10-$20 range a few months ago. That was before news got out that ARK Invest Fund started to invest in Palantir.



Palantir entry into the stock market was rather muted since they went for direct listing instead of the usual IPO route. Back then it was called Silicon's most secret unicorn for a reason and even it's listing in the stock exchange was considered quite secretive. However all that changed when ARK Invest came in and more people knew about Palantir. The stock price of  Palantir went up significantly after that.

 Holding as of 27th Jan 2021 (source: link)
Peter Thiel who is the founder of Palantir is quite charismatic and able to to pull some of the smartest people to work with him. He founded the money disruptor company PayPal (PYPL) in the 1990s and he was an early investor in some world changing companies like Airbnb, SpaceX, and Palantir.  It seems he even backed Mark Zuckerberg by writing him a $500,000 check when Mark was asking for money to grow his dorm-room startup thefacebook.com (before it became Facebook). I believe he has the right attitude and vision to drive Palantir forward much like Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook, Elon Musk for Tesla and Steve Jobs for Apple.

Here is a spider-web picture showing all the strong connections that Peter Thiel has to influential people in other big companies and organizations. 



The Stock Price of Palantir has been steadily climbing higher for the past few months. The recent spike is due to the positive shareholders' reaction from Palantir's LIVE DEMO DAY on 26th January 2021 where Palantir placed their software (Foundry, Gotham and Apollo) on showcase to the public for the first time. Click this link to watch Palantir Live Demo Day video recording. 




The Live Demo Day was a success as many companies were able to see how the software works and decide if it is something that would invest to benefit their organization. Rio Tinto Group (world's second largest metals and mining corporation) have decided to jump on Palantir's bandwagon and signed a “significant” multiyear agreement with Palantir to use its Foundry analytics platform. To learn more about Foundry and why it is attracting new companies to invest in it, click here.




Palantir has already secured a $1.5billion contract with the Trump administration for its Foundry and Gotham platforms to integrate data pertaining to COVID-19. It is only a matter of time before more companies jump on board.

It's possible downside risk now is it's high valuation on it's stock price since it has shot up 4 times (almost a 3-4 bagger return for me) ever since its direct listing back in October 2020. The New Biden Administration may introduce new regulations that might spell trouble for tech companies like Palantir and may also decide to cut or decrease funding to Palantir (previously funding was increased under Trump). Anyway I will be holding Palantir for long term and will take some profit at some point of time in the future. 

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