Palantir Slips After IPO Lockup Shares Released
Palantir Technologies (PLTR) stumbled Thursday as shares that were subject to lockup after the data analytics company’s Sept. 30 initial public offering were released.
Insiders were permitted to sell 20% of their shares in the direct-listing IPO, and the remaining 80% were opened up for trading Thursday.
Palantir recently traded at $25, down 7.7%. The stock also skidded after its Tuesday earnings report and has slid 34% in the past week.
To be sure, has still well more than doubled -- up 166% -- since its first day of trading as investors have flocked to cloud-based data-analytics companies.
And many analysts are still bullish on Palantir. On Wednesday, Goldman Sachs upgraded the stock to buy from neutral and more than doubled its share-price target to $34 from $13.
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Goldman was pleased with Palantir’s fourth-quarter report.
Palantir's loss narrowed to 8 cents a share from 29 cents in the year-earlier quarter. Analysts polled by FactSet expected a loss of 3 cents.
Revenue was $322 million, up 40% from a year earlier and ahead of analysts’ consensus forecast of $300 million.
Goldman analysts noted that Palantir’s earnings before interest and taxes came in at more than twice (up 115%) its estimates.
“We were encouraged to see management guide to $4 billion of revenue in 2025, implying 30% compound annualized growth from 2020,” they said.
“With a growing backlog of $2.8 billion in deal value (up 31% year on year), we believe there is increasing visibility into the achievability of that long-term target.”
