Palantir stock tumbles as lifted annual forecast comes short after Q1 beat

Investing.com -- Palantir Technologies hiked its annual forecast guidance Monday after reporting quarterly revenue that beat Wall Street estimates as the big data analytics company's new contract wins boosted performance amid the ongoing artificial intelligence boom.

However, the company’s new guidance still fell short of elevated expectations, sending its shares tumbling following the report.

Palantir Technologies (NYSE:PLTR) dropped more than 9% in premarket trading Tuesday.

In Q1, Palantir reported adjusted earnings of $0.08 a share, up from $0.05 a share a year earlier, while revenue was up 21% to $634.3 million. That compared with analysts estimates for adjusted EPS of $0.08 on revenue of $615.3M.

The climb in revenue was led by new contract wins, with commercial revenue up 27% to $299M and government revenue rising 16% to $335M amid a 42% jump in the number of customers in the quarter from a year earlier.

For Q2, adjusted income from operations was guided between $209M to $213M on revenue in a range of $649M to $653M, which is above analyst forecasts for revenue of $642.9M.

Looking ahead, the company said it now expects its revenue for 2024 in a range of $2.68B to $2.69B, up from the previous forecast range of $2.65B to $2.67B, but missing the consensus estimate of $2.71 billion, according to LSEG data.

Adjusted operating income is expected to be $868M to $880M.

“With the stock up 226% yoy, we believe investors will focus on the sustainability of US Commercial growth to underwrite whether Palantir can maintain or accelerate 20%+ total revenue growth over the medium term,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in a post-earnings note.

“We continue to view Palantir as uniquely positioned to leverage its core data stitching competencies into enterprises that are looking to deploy AI use cases. Over 915 organizations have participated in AI boot camps to date, and 136 deals closed in 1Q24 (vs. 70 in 1Q23),” they added.

Goldman said it will be monitoring how effectively Palantir can convert boot camps into bookings and revenue, considering this go-to-market strategy is still being formalized “as well as to better understand the cadence of bookings growth and $1mn+ deals driving the model.”

(Yasin Ebrahim contributed reporting)