How to buy or invest in Palantir shares
There are two ways to take a ‘buy’ position on Palantir shares. You can either trade on the price of shares rising with spread bets and CFDs, or you can invest in the company directly by share dealing.
Palantir shares: the basics
Palantir is listed on the NYSE under the PLTR ticker. The company started trading on 30 September 2020 at $10 a share, which was more than the reference price of the NYSE, set at $7.25 a share. This share price set the company’s market cap at the $16 billion mark, which was less than the estimated market cap of $20 billion.
Since the IPO, Palantir shares had remained within a band of $9 to $10 a share at the time of writing (27 October 2020).
Palantir: a brief history
Palantir has been around since 2003, when the company was founded by the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel and several others. Peter Thiel is still at the company as chairman, and the current CEO is Alex Karp – another founder.
The company has a history steeped in secrecy, with very little known about its operations of the projects that it has carried out for government entities until recent years. It has however, never struggled to secure funding from outside investors, managing to raise over $2.75 billion even before the company went public in September 2020.
Palantir key personnel
Palantir doesn’t have any definitive information about the company leadership on its website, but we do know the following roles, gathered from employee profiles on LinkedIn:
| Peter Thiel | Chairman |
| Alex Karp | Chief executive officer (CEO) |
| David Glazer | Chief financial officer (CFO) |
| Shyam Sankar | Chief operating officer (COO) |
| Dane Stuckey | Chief information security officer |
| Jeffrey Buckley | Chief accounting officer |
What is Palantir’s business model?
Palantir’s business model is based on big data analytics. The company operates business-to-business (B2B), and its data analytics platform is used by clients including the CIA, Centre for Disease Control, the US Army, the US Navy and the National Security Agency (NSA).
Plus, the company also worked on a track and trace system for the US government during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as foreign nations like the UK’s National Health Service (NHS).
Palantir has three main projects: Palantir Gotham, Palantir Foundry and Palantir Apollo. Each of these has a specific function.
Palantir Gotham and Palantir Foundry are platforms. Gotham integrates and transforms data from multiple streams – including emails, documents, images and videos – into a single data asset. Foundry reimagines how people use data by removing the barriers between back-end data management and front-end data analysis. Palantir Apollo is the delivery software that powers Palantir’s platforms in the public cloud and beyond.
Each of these projects has been integral to Palantir’s development as a cloud computer and data analytics firm since its founding – and they all have an essential role to play in the company’s business model.
How has Palantir been performing?
Before its IPO, Palantir has never reported a profitable year. But, for the first six months of 2020 the company reported revenue of $481.2 million – and this could be expected to increase in H2 2020, particularly now that the company’s stock is available to investors, which could help to boost expansion and revenue.
Who are Palantir’s main competitors?
Palantir’s main competitors include Tableau, Tyler Technologies, Verint, and Splunk. These are all technology companies that focus on business intelligence or data management. Splunk is the largest of these companies, with a market cap of almost $35 billion at the time of writing (27 October 2020).