Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies, speaks during the Digital X event on September 7, 2021 in Cologne, Germany.
Andreas Rentz | Getty Images
Palantir Shares continued their rapid run on Friday, rising 11 percent to a record, after the maker of software for the military announced plans to move its listing from the New York Stock Exchange to the Nasdaq.
The stock jumped to $65.77 at the close, giving the company a market cap of $150 billion. Shares are now up more than 45% since Palantir reported better-than-expected earnings last week and have nearly quadrupled in value this year.
Palantir said late Thursday that it expects to begin trading on the Nasdaq on Nov. 26 under its current ticker symbol “PLTR.” While switching listing sites does nothing to change the company’s fundamentals, board member Alexander Moore, a partner at venture firm 8VC, suggested in a post on social media site X that The move could be a win-win for retail investors as it would “force” billions. of dollars in purchases through exchange-traded funds
“Everything we do is to reward and support our retail diamond hands,” Moore wrote, referring to a term popularized in the crypto community for long-term believers.
Moore appears to have subsequently deleted his X account. His firm, 8VC, did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
After the market closed last Monday, Palantir reported third-quarter revenue and earnings that topped estimates and issued a fourth-quarter forecast that beat Wall Street expectations. CEO Alex Karp wrote in the earnings release that the company “absolutely delivered this quarter,” driven by demand for artificial intelligence technologies.
U.S. government revenue rose 40 percent to $320 million from a year ago, while U.S. commercial revenue rose 54 percent to $179 million. On the earnings call, the company highlighted a five-year contract to expand its Maven technology to the US military. Palantir founded Maven in 2017 to provide AI tools to the Department of Defense.
The post-earnings rally is consistent with the period following last week’s presidential election. Palantir is seen as a potential beneficiary given the company’s ties to the Trump camp. Co-founder and chair Peter Thiel was a big booster of Donald Trump’s first victorious campaign, though he publicly fell out with Trump in the years to come.
When asked in June about his position on the 2024 election, Thiel said, “If you put a gun to my head, I would vote for Trump.”
Thiel’s Palantir holdings are up about $3 billion since the earnings report and $2 billion since the election.
In September, S&P Global announced that Palantir would join the S&P 500 stock index.
Analysts at Argus Research say the rally has pushed the stock too high given current financial and growth projections. Analysts still have a long-term buy rating on the stock and said in a report last week that the company had an “excellent” quarter, but downgraded their 12-month recommendation to hold.
Analysts wrote that the stock “is outperforming the company’s fundamentals.”
