Palantir revenue jumps 49% in second quarter

Data-analytics company Palantir released its second-quarter earnings, beating Wall Street’s expectations for revenue and giving upbeat guidance for the current quarter.

Shares of the company were up more than 5% premarket.

Here’s how the company did:

• Adjusted earnings per share: 4 cents vs. 4 cents expected, according to analysts polled by Refinitiv
• Revenue: $376 million vs. $352.3 million expected, according to analysts polled by Refinitiv

Palantir’s revenue jumped 49% year-over-year for the second consecutive quarter.

Palantir said it expects revenue in the current quarter to come in at $385 million, which is higher than analysts’ projected $376 million. It said it now anticipates full-year adjusted free cash flow in excess of $300 million, up from in excess of $150 million. Palantir also reaffirmed it expects annual revenue growth of 30% or greater for 2021 through 2025.

Co-founded in 2003 by tech investors Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale, CEO Alex Karp and others, Palantir provides data analytics software and services to government agencies, including the Defense Department, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the intelligence community.

The company has increasingly sought to diversify its business beyond large government contracts and attract more commercial customers. In July, Palantir launched a subscription-based version of its data gathering and analytics technology, called Foundry for Builders, that’s targeted for start-ups. It said it first signed up companies connected to former Palantir employees across industries like healthcare, robotics, software and fintech.

During the quarter, Palantir said U.S. commercial revenue surged 90% year-over-year and its commercial customer count increased 32% from the previous quarter.

It added 20 net new customers in the second quarter. As of the fourth quarter of 2020, Palantir had 149 customers.

Palantir’s business has gotten a boost from the coronavirus pandemic.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in July renewed an agreement to use Palantir’s software to track vaccine production, distribution and administration across the country. After using Palantir’s tools to track Covid-19 spread and hospitalizations, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in June renewed a $7.4 million one-year contract to use Palantir’s software to monitor and analyze routine diseases and future outbreaks.

At the same time, it has ramped up its investments in special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, which has attracted some scrutiny. A SPAC is a blank-check company that raises money to buy a private entity through a reverse merger and take it public with the help of financing from additional investors. 

The company went public last September through a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Since then, its shares have more than doubled in value pushing its market cap to more than $36.8 billion.

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