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Big data secret company Palantir (PLTR) released its first post-bell earnings report on Thursday, beating analysts’ expectations in terms of revenue and earnings for its fiscal third quarter.
These are the biggest numbers in the announcement compared to what analysts expected, as compiled by Bloomberg.
Returned: $ 289 million vs. $ 279.3 million expected
Losses per share: $ 0.94
The company reported 52% revenue growth in the quarter and raised its guidance for fiscal 2020. Shares were down 4.7% after the announcement.
Palantir provides big data analytics to the private and public sectors, giving organizations a deeper understanding of everything from the location of improvised explosive devices in war zones to how automakers can improve manufacturing processes.
But Palantir has also seen its share of controversy. The amount of information its software is able to track – license plate numbers; Social security numbers; social media accounts; addresses; bank records; interpersonal relationships – led to comparisons with the police of thought crimes in “Minority Report”.
During the quarter, the company said it had “entered into fifteen deals with new and existing customers, each worth a total of $ 5 million or more, including contracts with the US military and the National Institutes of Health. , as well as a contract renewal with one of the world’s largest aerospace companies worth a total of $ 300 million over five years. “
Strong dependence on public markets
Analysts and investors are trying to determine what kind of impact President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will have on defense spending going forward. Palantir, which works with the Department of Defense, relies heavily on its business in the government sector, with Bloomberg claiming it accounts for half of the company’s sales. The other half comes from Palantir’s private sector activities.
The divisions are divided into two different products that analyze data: Palantir Gotham and Palantir Foundry.
A custom option, Palantir Gotham is used by businesses, government agencies, and law enforcement to comb vast expanses of information and uncover previously invisible patterns and identify relationships between datasets ranging from social media posts and addresses to license plate numbers and personal connections.
Foundry is an out-of-the-box option for customers ranging from pharmaceutical and automotive companies to aerospace companies such as Airbus, and aims to reduce costs associated with Gotham, such as the need for multiple engineers on site.
The company is guided by billionaire co-founder and CEO Alex Karp. A graduate of Stanford Law School, like co-founder Peter Thiel, Karp has been running Palantir shortly after its inception. He also expressed his belief in the need for Silicon Valley companies to work with the US government and law enforcement.
Palantir says its software has helped businesses and government agencies with everything from convicting Ponzi scheme Bernie Madoff and disaster recovery to tackling cyber attacks and child exploitation. There is even an apocryphal story that the company’s technology was used to help locate Osama Bin Laden.
The company also claims that its software has helped the U.S. military track insurgents in Afghanistan by planting improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by finding correlations between weather conditions, command-wire IED attacks and biometric information. found on explosive devices. Additionally, the company says it provided its software to the Salt Lake City Police Department, helping officers cut the time it takes to complete complex investigations by 95%.
Palantir used this type of predictive policing model in New Orleans, according to The Verge. But predictive policing is controversial and, according to studies, can lead to greater police oversight of minority and low-income communities.
The company has also been targeted by protesters and its own employees for the work it does with ICE. After denying working with the ICE’s deportation arm, Karp told CNBC in January 2020 that his company’s software was being used to “find undocumented people in our country.”
In the past, according to Bloomberg, Palantir has lost a number of partnerships with high-profile companies including Hershey, Coca-Cola, Home Depot and American Express due to the high costs of the tech company. So far, however, the company is fearless and continues on Karp’s path.
A previous version of this article was posted on September 28, 2020.
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