Summary
PLTR has a wide moat Gotham business, and its Foundry business has massive growth potential.
The company continues to forego GAAP profitability today in order to invest aggressively for the long term.
What are PLTR shares worth today? We detail our full valuation model.
One of our few and our highest conviction tech investments, Palantir (NYSE:PLTR) has a wide moat Gotham (government) business and its Foundry (commercial) business has massive growth potential. Despite posting fat adjusted gross margins, the company continues to forego GAAP profitability today in order to invest aggressively for the long term.
What are PLTR shares worth today? In the following sections, we will attempt to give an estimate.
#1. Qualitative Analysis
For a more thorough appraisal of the qualitative aspects of PLTR, please check out our full investment thesis. That said, in order to provide the proper context for our quantitative assumptions and analysis we will briefly outline our qualitative appraisal of the company here:
Strong Government-Backed Moat
PLTR's high-quality data analytics and artificial intelligence Gotham platform combine with its decades of successful partnership with US and US-aligned government agencies to give it a very strong competitive standing for winning additional government projects. As Big Data and A.I. grow in importance for national security in the years to come, we expect PLTR's share of the pie of government spending to only increase.
In fact, its Q1 results showed exactly that with total government revenue surging by 76% year-over-year and US government business growing by an even faster The contracts it is winning include a 5-year contract worth up to $90 million to help protect and manage the U.S. nuclear stockpile, powering all 11 DoD combatant commands for major exercises, servicing other major defense contractors, and - most recently - expanding its Space Force partnership.
This robust growth should continue for the foreseeable future as their total government revenue is less than 10 basis points of total US defense spending and senior US government personnel remain thrilled with their product. As Space Force Colonel Krolikowski stated in the wake of the expanded Space Force partnership:
I’m excited about this partnership and the work we are doing to provide better data-driven decision making to our leadership. Palantir’s technology and framework has truly accelerated our ability to remove data stovepipes throughout the community and create actionable knowledge
Accelerating Foundry Growth
PLTR's other major platform - Foundry - is seeing accelerating growth in its pursuit of commercial contracts and it is investing aggressively in ensuring that momentum continues. In fact, PLTR expects that their Foundry business may one day become their largest source of revenue.
n Q1, US commercial revenue grew by 72% and overall revenue grew by 49% year-over-year fueled by 11 new commercial customers coming on board and 29% growth in revenue per customer. Q2 should see similarly strong growth, with management forecasting 43% year-over-year growth with 30%+ annual growth expected through 2025 as management is pursuing multiple strategic growth initiatives:
(1) A free Foundry trial for select companies to assist them with re-opening after COVID-19 and hopefully win their long-term business.
(2) Investing heavily in growing and enhancing their sales team by adding nearly 50 sales personnel in Q1 with the expectation of growing by over 100 by year-end.
(3) Buying equity in some of its smaller clients that it believes will be long-term winners while also creating a symbiotic relationship with them.
(4) Exploring ways to play a role with Bitcoin and the broader emergence of cryptocurrency.
(5) Adapting their product and marketing to attract a wider range of businesses, thereby boosting their qualified pipeline by 2.5 times in the U.S. and U.K.
Solid Balance Sheet
With billions of dollars in cash on the balance sheet, minimal debt, and adjusted free cash flow positive, PLTR is well-capitalized and sufficiently liquid to continue investing aggressively in its growth initiatives.
Strong Brain Trust
Operating in a space where technical and innovative capabilities are the name of the game, PLTR is well-positioned to win given its ability to attract and retain the best and brightest minds in the industry.
#2. Quantitative Analysis
Now that we have established that PLTR is a high-quality company in virtually every respect with strong growth momentum and a lengthy runway, let's dig into numbers to see if we can get a sense of how much it is actually worth.
The company is currently valued at an enterprise value of $38.4 billion as its market cap of $40.3 billion includes a substantial net cash position. The company is expected to generate ~$1.5 billion in revenue in 2021 and just over $1.9 billion in 2022. Meanwhile, its EBITDA is expected to come in at $363.2 million in 2021 and $508.3 million in 2022. By 2025, PLTR has an announced goal of achieving $4 billion in revenues.
They view their total addressable market as currently being ~$119 billion and we expect this to grow rapidly as the quantity and role of data and A.I. are increasing quickly and PLTR continues to invest in developing new capabilities which should expand its sphere of addressable operations over time.
Their government and commercial addressable markets are both roughly equivalent, and the U.S. government total addressable market is a whopping $26 billion currently. Given that we believe their US government business is by far their strongest, this is an important number for us to latch onto in our projections.
We believe that the US will continue to place an ever-increasing amount of trust in PLTR as it desperately strives to defeat China in the A.I. race over the next several decades. Seeing that PLTR has already won some extremely important contracts with the US government, we expect them to be the odds-on favorites to win a large portion of the US total addressable market in the years to come.
While we are optimistic that they will capture at least 25% of their current total addressable market from the U.S. government by the end of the decade and will see solid growth in their other business opportunities, they do face some stiff competition in the commercial space from companies like Microsoft (MSFT) and foreign governments - even if US-aligned - may be somewhat cautious of linking their critical government agencies to a US company.
As a result, we see them capturing a more conservative 5% of current total addressable market in each of these categories over the next decade (which is quite conservative given that these total addressable markets will likely grow significantly during that span). In fact, the global big data market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22.4% through 2030, with the North American big data market expected to grow at a 15.6% CAGR and Europe's big data market expected to grow at a CAGR of 19.1%, so they would only need to capture only a few percentage points of the total addressable market at that point to reach $10+ billion in revenue.
Using these assumptions means that we expect their revenue to grow from ~$1.5 billion at year-end 2021 to ~$11 billion by the end of 2030. While this might sound ludicrous, we see little reason to expect their growth rate to slow after this year as they are making aggressive investments in their business and are only now starting to really ramp up their sales team while also partnering with vaunted sales teams at companies like IBM (IBM) and with Amazon's (AMZN) Web Services business to facilitate growth. To reach $11 billion by the end of 2030, they would only need to grow at an annualized 25% rate, which we believe is very doable given their aforementioned strengths and initiatives, particularly in the US government business, along with the fact that they are likely to not pay out any dividends or buy back shares over that period and instead continue investing aggressively in their business.
Now that we have arrived at a revenue number, let's look at the profitability potential.
PLTR demonstrated during Q1 that its operating profitability is improving rapidly. During Q1, they generated earnings-per-share of $0.04 as the adjusted gross margin expanded by 800 basis points year-over-year to 83% and the contribution margin soared by 1900 basis points to 60%.
As a result, adjusted operating income improved $133 million year-over-year, coming in at $117 million in Q1 2021 (adjusted operating margin of 34%). Adjusted free cash flow was $151 million in Q1, good for a 44% adjusted free cash flow margin.
While these numbers look fantastic as a 34% adjusted operating margin would imply ~$3.75 billion in operating income by 2030 which, given that they will likely still be growing by 20%+ annually at that point under our assumptions, would likely warrant a multiple of ~50x (depending on interest rates and overall macroeconomic conditions). As a result, the company would conservatively be worth ~$190 billion by 2030, making it a near 5x over the next 9 years (which would represent a ~20% CAGR to 2030). Under this assumption, PLTR should be worth an enterprise value of ~$85 billion today (which would represent a 9%-10% CAGR to 2030), which would put the shares at a fair value of between $45 and $50 today.
However, this model overlooks one major negative factor that makes the adjusted free cash flow numbers misleading: stock-based compensation. While we do not take issue with this management practice given that it is being used to attract and retain the best talent in the industry without draining the company's cash pile that it needs to invest aggressively to win long-term in the space, it is still important to account for its impact when modeling the company's valuation.
In Q1 2021, stock-based compensation and employer payroll taxes related to stock-based compensation totaled a whopping ~$230 million. While this figure will likely grow to some degree as the company continues to grow and add payroll, it will ultimately decline as a percentage of the total revenues as the company continues to grow. Stock-based compensation currently accounts for ~2.3% of the company's total equity valuation and we expect this to decline over time as the company will likely grow faster than its payroll.
Therefore, through 2030, we conservatively estimate average annual dilution of ~1.5% from stock-based compensation and estimate it will be at $2 billion annually by 2030. This would leave GAAP operating income at just $1.75 billion in 2030, and, at a 50x multiple would imply the company would be worth just $87.5 billion at that point, making it a mere 2.3x from its present value. Adding in the dilutive impact of 1.5% annualized stock-based compensation and the estimated per-share value in 2030 would be $44, making it a double over a 9-year period (i.e., just a mediocre ~8% CAGR).
As a result, it is reasonable to conclude that shares are currently fairly valued. However, at the same time, it is important to realize that there are two factors that will significantly impact this assessment:
(1) Operating Margin: The company has significant momentum in improving its operating margins. As they continue to scale rapidly, there is a strong likelihood that operating margins will improve further. Of course, competition will also increase, so there will be pressure on gross margins. Ultimately, we expect them to reach an adjusted operating margin of 40% as rapid scaling should more than offset competitive pressures, especially in their government business, which should enjoy fatter margins than their narrower moat commercial business. This 600 basis point improvement alone would raise their estimated 2030 valuation by a whopping 37% and push their expected shareholder CAGR firmly into the double digits.
(2) Growth Rates: We used somewhat conservative growth rate assumptions in our model as we do not want to bank on their commercial business becoming a powerhouse given that competition is likely to be stiff.
That said, all of that stock-based compensation is going towards attracting and retaining some of the brightest data analytics, machine learning, and software engineering minds, which should not be underestimated. As a result, we would not be shocked at all to see them gain better headway in the commercial market than our initial model assumes and therefore significantly outperform their 2025 and our 2030 revenue estimates.
While it is true that it is easier to sustain a high growth rate at their current (relatively) small size and that the bigger you scale the harder it is to sustain that growth rate, we also know that they are only know really trying to scale their sales team, they are reinvesting aggressively into their business, and the role of data, machine learning, and software is likely to explode exponentially in the coming decade, providing a massive tailwind to their growth.
While we assume a 25% annualized growth rate through 2030 from the present, if they can simply increase that to 30%, their revenue will be closer to $16 billion, which in turn would likely lead to even higher operating margins and immensely higher operating income, making their stock-based compensation even a smaller portion of the pie and their upside potential immensely higher than it is perceived to be today.
Of course, the downside risk is that their Foundry platform will fail to make any significant headway in the private sector, leading to dramatically declining growth rates and them having to continue leaning heavily on their government business. Such a scenario would lead to mediocre total returns as their revenue would likely only end up in the $8 billion range and - though their stock-based compensation would obviously be lower as well - their operating income would probably wind up being ~$1.5 billion, making the company worth only $75 billion, or presenting a mere mid-single digit CAGR through 2030 which would make it a rather unappealing comparative investment.
Investor Takeaway
PLTR is a great company and is very likely to remain a mission-critical component of US government technical infrastructure for the foreseeable future. That alone gives the business significant stability concerning its future and will likely lead to strong growth.
However, stock-based compensation and lingering uncertainty about the long-term competitive strength of its Foundry platform are the main overhangs weighing on the stock right now. While we believe that the former overhang is a major key to positively resolving the latter uncertainty, only time will tell.
Based on our assumptions of 25%+ annualized revenue growth through 2030, 40% adjusted operating margins in 2030, and $2 billion in 2030 stock-based compensation, we expect the company to be worth at least 3x what it is today and generate ~12%-13% annualized returns over that period, making it a buy today and a strong buy at $20 or less.
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