Palantir CEO Alex Karp arrives ahead of a “Tech For Good” meeting at Hotel Marigny in Paris on May 15, 2019, to be held to discuss good behavior for technology giants.
Bertrand Guay | AFP | Getty Images
Palantir reported a fourth-quarter loss on Tuesday, while revenue exceeded analysts’ expectations.
Palantir’s shares fell nearly 12% in premarket trading.
Here are the key figures:
- Revenue: $ 322 million vs. $ 300.7 million expected, according to a Refinitiv analyst survey
- Loss per share: 8 cents, which is not comparable to estimates
The company said average revenue per customer for 2020 was $ 7.9 million, a 41% increase from 2019. The top 20 customers each generated an average of $ 33.2 million in 2020, up 34% on annual basis.
In the fourth quarter, Palantir said, it closed 21 deals worth at least $ 5 million in total, of which 12 were worth at least $ 10 million.
Palantir said it expects to make $ 4 billion in revenue by 2025. In 2021, Palantir said it expects revenue growth of more than 30%. It expects revenue growth of 45% in the first quarter of the year.
In a pre-recorded video released on the company’s earnings webcast, CEO Alex Karp highlighted the company’s long-term prospects.
“We hope that those of you participating in this conversation, who are current investors, stay with us and those of you who prefer a more short-term focus, that you choose companies that are more suited to you,” he said.
The closed government contractor debuted in September via a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange with an opening trade of $ 10 per share. That gave it a market cap of $ 16.5 billion. Palantir has since more than tripled in value, with shares closing at $ 31.91 on Friday, giving it a market cap of $ 52.6 billion.
Palantir has made it a point to distinguish itself from other Silicon Valley-born tech companies. In a letter to investors in his prospectus to go public, Karp said that although Palantir started out in Silicon Valley, “we seem to share less and less values and commitments of the technology sector.” Karp said the company has “repeatedly rejected opportunities to sell, collect, or mine data” as opposed to those “that are based on advertising dollars.” The company has said it will move its headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Denver.
Palantir was more willing to partner with government agencies during Donald Trump’s presidency than other California-based tech companies that received significant cuts from their employees on such contracts. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft employees have urged the company to forgo deals with agencies and military divisions, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and the military.
Palantir, on the other hand, has built his business largely on lucrative deals from the government for its data analysis software, including with ICE. But the company has also said it would generally not do business “with customers or governments whose views or actions we consider to be contrary to our mission to support Western liberal democracy and its strategic allies.”
The company also serves commercial clients, who make up less than half of the business. Palantir reported in its first earnings release that 56% of its third-quarter sales came from the government segment, which has grown faster than its commercial operations.
Palantir said the government segment generated $ 190 million in revenue in the fourth quarter, an 85% year-over-year increase. The commercial segment brought in $ 132 million, up 4% year-on-year.
Palantir did not provide an updated customer count this time, nor with the first release of earnings in November, after disclosing in its prospectus that it had 125 customers in the first half of the year. But it said customer concentration had declined, with 61% of sales through Q3 coming from the top 20 customers instead of 68% in the same period in 2019.
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